Getting out of the palace is almost laughably easy. The guards patrol as expected, and once he's guided Jason down into one of the secret tunnels beneath the palace — created for the escape of the royal family, given an emergency, and known only to the members of his family — there's nothing to stand in their way anymore. He still finds it difficult to move particularly well, but for some reason Jason stays at his side instead of leaving him behind, blade in one hand and the other occasionally silently reaching out to give him a bit of support whenever his breath catches or his steps falter.

He does not acknowledge the help — it is not necessary — but Jason doesn't either, so he allows it to slide. It's little more than passing anyway; minor touches to the small of his back or beneath one arm to make certain he's stable before they fall away again.

The passage lets out past the walls of the palace, in a deserted, dead-end corner at the outskirts of the city. It was, after all, designed to get them as far out as necessary to escape, not to leave them stranded in a pillaged city and likely to draw attention on the way out. There are others that let out closer in, but most are like this one. He knows them all by heart, as well as the fastest routes out of the city itself once on the outskirts. There is, after all, still the outer wall to get past. That one they'll have to traverse a bit quicker, before their escape is discovered and the alarms rung.

But before that, they'll need something more concealing than the prisoner clothes they're wearing. Cloaks and longer shirts, ideally. Jason's magical restraints will need to be covered, and the bandages for his brand can't show either. Not that he has any intention of actually staying with Jason for more than the short amount of time required to steal that clothing. Jason is useful enough as defense, but he does not trust the man even an inch, and backlashes are easy to spot when they're marked as obviously as Jason is anyway, so they're hardly good companions for traveling under the radar. He has no desire to endanger himself; he would rather risk traveling on his own, despite his wounds, than having such an obvious target with him.

Jason shuts the passage smoothly, leaving only a very faint hint of a line where the stone of the door blends in against the wall it's hidden in. It grates a bit, but Jason seems to have no trouble pushing it closed, despite that. It's moderately impressive, given that he knows how heavy those stone doors are, having tested them himself when his mother was making sure he knew all the ways in and out of the palace.

"We'll need something to disguise ourselves," Jason says, voicing what he's been thinking. "We can't exactly go walking out of the city like this."

"Yes," he agrees, studying the surrounding buildings and the distance to the wall to figure out exactly where they are and what's around them. Houses, mainly. It's early morning, about an hour before dawn. The workers will be heading out soon, as will those who make their living off of traveling for trade. That won't be a difficult crowd to blend into.

"Supplies too, if you want to make the next town over without having to detour to an oasis." Jason comes to stand at his side, arms crossing as he squints towards the wall. "It's only half a day, but that's still enough that we'll both need water, especially since you'll be moving slower. Maybe up that to most of a day, depending how quickly you tire out."

He glares, despite the valid point being made. "I am perfectly capable of walking that distance. I am injured, not a cripple."

Jason's, "Uh-huh," doesn't sound even slightly convinced. "Point still stands. We need clothes, water, and travelling food would be good too. Dried meat or something; stuff we can eat while walking. We should get into one of these houses and see how much we can find. Bit of coin would be good too, even though it's kinda shitty to steal from people that need it."

"But murdering guards is acceptable?" he snaps, and then seizes the available chance for what it is. "Things will go faster if we choose separate homes; I will meet you back here." Once he's out of sight he can disappear into the city, which will save him the trouble of having to slip Jason somehow later on.

He doesn't get more than a step before Jason shifts and suddenly strikes, lashing out at his back. He jerks forward, avoids the lightning-fast attack by a hair, but his muscles spasm at the sudden movement and he gasps at the pain and staggers, nearly falling. He turns as fast as he can, slightly bent but at least still on his feet, teeth bared and gripping the one blade he has tightly enough the hilt bites into his palm. It's no match against what Jason's collected, and given what he has seen of Jason's skill he cannot hope to beat him while he's so badly hurt, but he will not make it easy.

But Jason is just standing there, arms crossing again and one eyebrow raised. "And what do you think you're going to do if someone spots you?" The question comes out flat, and then Jason's voice turns mockingly sarcastic when he adds, "Fall over? A peasant could kill you right now if they were brave enough to ignore that blade. We're safer together than separate."

"You are a walking target," he spits back. "Until you have something to cover your hair and those restraints, I am not safer with you than without. I can be missed; you cannot."

Jason's eyes narrow, and that voice lowers to a darker growl. "That sounds like a really terrible attempt to disguise a plan to ditch me, Damian. You got any idea why I'm getting that impression?"

He scoffs. "Perhaps your years imprisoned left you paranoid as well as cursed."

A step closer, teeth flashing in a snarl. "You're not leaving me behind."

"I do not recall promising you anything once we had escaped the dungeons, Jason. What I do is my own business, not yours."

He steps away to widen the distance between them again, keeping an eye on Jason as he starts to turn half away, before Jason threatens, "I'll bring your whole world crashing down on you."

That is enough to make him turn back, to meet Jason's narrowed eyes with a sneer. "You have nothing on me. If you report me to the guards, or my old family, you will be executed as well. Ra's al Ghul does not tolerate the murder of those in his service."

"I know who your father is." He freezes in place, and Jason's small snarl lifts into a smirk. There's a vicious sort of satisfaction to his tone when he spits, "Now, what do you think Ra's al Ghul would do to your mother if he knew that she had a child from his greatest enemy, and let it be raised as his heir? I'd bet he doesn't tolerate treason real well either, and I'd bet that he'd be willing to put me right back in my cell for a piece of information like that, at the least."

His breath comes sharp, mind spinning uselessly in his head as he stares. He can only manage to ask, "How do you know that? That information is—"

"Not as secret as you'd like." Jason's smirk falls away. "You stay with me, or the list of people who know it suddenly gets a lot bigger."

He grits his teeth together. Despite how his mind is struggling, he can't find any other option. He won't risk his mother's life, and Jason is right, she will be killed — at the least — if Ra's finds out that his father is Bruce Wayne, the leader of the resistance. A deliberate deception like that is not one that will be forgiven. Jason has already proven willing to kill without remorse, so he must assume that the backlash will carry his threat out if crossed, and… and he is in no condition to attempt killing him. Even if he weren't injured, he isn't entirely certain that he could kill Jason without use of his magic. Whoever taught him, they were very skilled.

He has no other choice but to accept Jason's terms, at least until something about their circumstances changes.

"Fine," he grinds out. "I will stay. For now."

"Good," Jason snaps back, and then strides right past him, heading to the corner of their dead end to look around it.

"Why are you demanding this?" he asks, making no effort to disguise his anger or frustration. "I will be hunted by more people than you by a large margin; why would you want to stay beside me?"

"What I do is my own business, not yours," Jason mocks, with the flash of a sneer back at him. "Come on; we haven't got time to waste. If the alarms go out while we're still inside the walls things are going to go south real quick."

"I am aware," he almost snarls, but he follows anyway.

He starts to consider that maybe Jason truly is an assassin when his forced companion finds an empty house and then begins to pick the lock, pulling something thin and metal out to do it that he doesn't remember ever seeing him pick up. He follows, keeping pace easily enough due to the caution that Jason is moving with, when the lock pops open and they're allowed entrance to the house. He closes the door again as Jason sweeps in, moving with a quiet grace as he sweeps the rooms of the simple house. He stays silent and still by the door until Jason reemerges from the last one, footsteps heavy enough to actually be heard now and the implicit readiness gone from his frame.

"We're clear," Jason says, though his gaze is still flicking about, examining corners. "Bedroom is that way." One thumb is jerked over his shoulder, in the direction of a now open door. "Grab whatever fits decently enough. Probably want to ditch the old clothes too, if you can. I'll take a look around and see if I can find anything valuable enough to buy us a couple meals when we're at the next town."

He scowls. "I do not recall agreeing that you would be the leader between us, Backlash."

"I'm not," is the instant counter, that's quickly followed by a flicker of a snarl. "But I'm the guy who can actually move faster than a walk without folding over in pain, and I'm the one who knows a little something about being hunted. Every second you waste with your ego is a second closer to us getting caught, so suck it up and get moving, Damian. You want to talk technicalities of pecking order? Wait till we're in the desert."

Jason is right, though he despises the fact. Whoever Jason is, or was, it still grates at him to be taking orders like some commoner. Even if he is no longer an al Ghul, he is still royalty, and he has no intention of bowing to the whims of some backlash criminal, no matter how strangely skilled he may be. That will be something he makes perfectly clear as soon as the time exists to do so, but for now he has no other choice. Unless he wishes for both of them to get caught before they've even left the city, he can't dig his heels in and ignore orders that make perfect sense.

"I am not doing this because you told me to," he declares, and stalks past Jason towards the bedroom. There's a snort, but no other comment.

The house apparently belongs to a couple, and he turns away from the hanging dresses — it would be a disguise, certainly, but he has his pride still, if nothing else — and to the dresser belonging to the man. Luckily, the male of the couple seems to be roughly of Jason's size, perhaps even a touch larger, so once he's dug out the smallest set of clothing from within the drawers it ends up fitting him well enough. At least, well enough that it looks like the clothing of someone mildly impoverished, and thus prone to hand-me-downs and not clothing that fits as it should. He doesn't like it, but he acknowledges that it is better than wearing clothes well-fitted enough to look as though he has some degree of wealth.

He will not admit it, but the looseness of the clothing is also a relief. The lack of consistent pressure against his brands is a good thing; he doesn't know if he would have been capable of standing closer fitting clothes for any real length of time.

He emerges from the room, accustoming himself to the feeling of the rougher fabric against his skin, and considering whether he will end up with blisters from the too-loose boots that he wasn't able to replace from this man's supplies. Possibly, but there's little he can do about that. It will hardly be the first time that he's had a blister; he can handle it. Of more concern is the fact that there did not seem to be any cloaks among this man's clothes, and those are an absolute necessity for escaping this city. They're both far too recognizable without them.

"We will have to find cloaks elsewhere," he announces, as he returns to the main room and finds Jason filling a medium sized sack with what looks like food and water. "If these people had any, they left with them for the day."

"That's a pain," Jason says, frowning a bit. "Whatever. Here, pack the rest of this in while I change." He bristles again, and Jason rolls his eyes and then adds, sickeningly sweet and clearly sarcastic, "Please."

Jason sweeps past him, and while he could simply stand there and refuse to help, it's not really in his best interest either. So despite his irritation over being ordered around, he moves forward and takes over the job of filling the sack with the pile of items beside it. Food, mostly, as well as several full waterskins and a small sprinkling of items that look somewhat valuable. Nothing that would even be allowed in the palace proper, but perhaps might sell for a couple coins to the right merchant. He sneers at them, but puts them in the sack anyway; Jason probably knows better than him what commoners consider to be 'valuable.'

Jason takes less time than he did, and the clothes fit him significantly better. He's chosen lighter colored ones, almost tan, and he scowls at the choice only because he had none, not with the man being so much wider in the shoulders than him. His clothes are black, which makes him believe that he may be pilfering the commoner's 'finest' clothes, considering the smaller size and impractical color. Black clothing is hardly conducive to the desert outside of these walls. The tan clothing on Jason however, is. It will blend in nicely against the sand too, whereas he will stick out like a sore thumb.

The sleeves on Jason's top are long enough to cover the metal restraints on his upper arms, but the cut of it is too low to hide the one at his throat. He'll still need a cloak for that, or at least some sort of headscarf to serve the same purpose. Most of their people have adopted a style of clothing more along the lines of the Eastern part of the Kingdom, where there are woods and real grass, but enough cling to the older, looser clothing that they may be able to make do with simple scarves as 'protection' against the sand without anyone questioning it. It should hide all they need it to.

"If there is anything of fine enough material in there, we could make scarves instead. They will be simpler than cloaks, and lighter as well."

"Not as good when night comes around," Jason points out, and he narrows his eyes.

"I do not intend on still being out in the sands come night, do you? We can buy or steal cloaks from somewhere when we reach the next town; as you are so insistent on pointing out, we do not have the time to waste on searching for them now. Headscarves will be faster and serve our purpose just as well."

"I'll take a look." Jason turns back around, heading right back into the bedroom, and then calls, "So where are we heading?"

There's the sound of rustling fabric, then ripping fabric, as he decides how much to say. Well, it is not as if Jason's blackmail can get much worse than threatening his mother's life. "To my father," he answers, as he pushes the last of the supplies into the sack and then begins to tie it. "I have nowhere else to go." It's a more painful truth than he was intending to reveal, but it is too late to take the words back now.

"You know where he is?" Jason asks, reappearing with two long pieces of cloth; both a dark brown and of decently fine material. "Pretty sure the leader of a rebellion usually isn't an easy guy to find."

"I know how to find him," he says shortly, meeting Jason's gaze in challenge. There's a moment of silence, and then Jason hands him one of the 'scarves' and shrugs.

"Alright." Jason also seems to know how to tie a headscarf, and he watches for a moment before moving to put on his own. "Once you find him? What happens then?"

He stays silent for another few moments, again considering how much is safe to admit to, before he decides that Jason — although not trustworthy, precisely — has not shown any desire to actually harm him. Yet. Self-serving, certainly, and he's most definitely someone to be wary of given his apparent skill set and knowledge of things he by all rights should not know, but he will hardly get far by shutting out the one ally he currently has in this world. (Though he bridles at the use of the word 'ally;' Jason is irritating and frustrating and he would never have chosen to be allied with him.)

"I will offer the information I possess. I am no longer an al Ghul, and I doubt that I will be allowed to live if I am ever caught again, so the only course of action that makes sense is to join my father's rebellion and attempt to create a world I can once again exist in without being hunted down." He raises his chin a few inches, letting his hands fall away from tying the scarf as he meets Jason's gaze. "The royalty in me does not come solely from my mother's side; I will be a prince again should my father take the empire. That will be good enough."

"Got a bit of ambition there?" Jason mocks, and then snorts. "Alright, fine. Sounds like a plan."

The scarf is pulled down for now, exposing Jason's face from his eyes to just below his mouth, but obscuring everything about him that makes him notable. The folds cover the collar at his throat, as well as the streak of white in his hair. As for him, he has it pulled up over his nose, so just his eyes are visible. His face is known.

Jason's hands fall to the belt he's still wearing, and there's a bit of reluctance as he unbuckles the sheathed sword from the rest of it and carefully sets it on the table. Though he does not enjoy the thought of leaving behind their largest weapon, he sees the reasoning. Two traveling commoners with a knife each is acceptable; a commoner with a sword is something to be wary and suspicious of. Most commoners can't afford swords, let alone swords of the quality that the palace's guards have.

"Let's head out," Jason says, taking the sack and pulling it over one shoulder. He's certain it's heavy, but the weight doesn't seem to bother him at all. "You good?" He dips his head in confirmation, and Jason nods back. "Good. Look, I know you're a prideful little shit, apparently, but if you need to stop just say something, alright?"

He bares his teeth, opens his mouth to say something scathing because he is hardly helpless or useless and he will not allow anyone to think he is. But Jason adds, "They're nasty injuries," before he can, in a quieter voice and with a nearly disturbing level of sincerity. "It's a hell of a thing that you've made it this far, with how fresh those are. Most people couldn't."

He pauses, trying to find the mocking or sarcastic edge to any of it, but he simply cannot. So he asks, "And if I had collapsed in the tunnels? What would have happened then?"

The sack gets shouldered a little more securely, and then Jason says, "I guess you'll never know," and walks past him, nothing in his expression to betray what that's supposed to mean.

He follows automatically, even as he tries to understand the strange burst of sincerity and… almost compassion that Jason just displayed. He did not believe that the backlash was capable of either, given his murder of the guards and the ease with which he did it. Compassionate people don't kill as efficiently as Jason did, at least not without showing some sign of it bothering them. Those fools were always weeded out of his grand— Ra's' guards. His former family never had any use for soldiers who might hesitate in their duties.

Jason's pace stays slow enough that he can keep even without too much effort, and it only takes him a few minutes to realize that Jason knows precisely where they're going. There's no hesitation when it comes to the streets he turns down, and all of it leads unerringly towards the closest gate in the city's walls. If they were on more common, thoroughfare roads he wouldn't even have noticed, but there are residential areas and don't have the most intuitive paths to leave them; most people don't know the back neighborhoods of this city unless they live in it or they — like he did — memorized the layout.

"Did you live here?" he asks. "Before you were imprisoned."

"No," is the almost immediate answer. "I was born pretty far East of here, but I traveled a fair amount."

He studies the profile of Jason's face, looking for genetic markers and only able to confirm what the backlash is saying. The pale skin and shape of his eyes says Eastern, not more local like his own tinted skin, and though it's not necessarily uncommon for people to relocate, it isn't his first assumption. 'Traveling,' however, would not be enough to explain Jason's familiarity with the back streets of a city this large.

"You're very familiar with the layout of the city," he points out, studying Jason's expression for any tells. He doesn't get anything.

"Yeah, guess I am."

It drags an irritated click of his tongue from him, and he resists the urge to cross his arms, pulling his gaze away from his infuriatingly mysterious companion and back onto the roads. He has never met someone so utterly impenetrable. Jason's personality is easy enough to read, and understand, but the rest of him is irritatingly shrouded in mystery. Intense combat skills — there are not many who can stand up to trained, magic-wielding guards with only physical skill — competent lockpicking, and a seemingly vast store of knowledge he should not possess (his father's identity, the layout of the city, and how to tie a headscarf when he is by admission not local). All things individually explainable, but together…

"Try to look a little less murderous, hm?" He turns his head to look again, and Jason meets his gaze with a raised eyebrow. "We still have to actually get past the guards, and we're not going to if you look like you're contemplating killing everything within a hundred feet. Try and maybe talk to me too? It's going to look weird if we're the only pair on the road not actually speaking to each other."

"And what would you suggest we talk about?" he demands, even as he tries to smooth out his expression some. He has been trained how to behave in front of a court his entire life, surely he can manage to be cool even in the face of one immensely irritating backlash.

"Well, ideally something that people can overhear and not think we're exactly what we are." Jason's tone is dry, but it's true enough. "Make up a story or something."

"Why don't you talk?" he counters, pointedly. "You are the one with your mouth exposed, so it would look better if you were to do most of the talking and I simply commented or answered occasionally. That way it can be seen that we are talking even from a distance."

The look Jason gives him is a little irritated, but it smooths out as they turn a last corner and come out on a main road, where the traffic is immediately heavier and they can blend in with the stream of other people that are leaving the city for the morning. Most will come back when their work is finished for the day, whatever that work may be. Others, like them, are travelers. Both seem to be equally common as far as he can tell, and the clothes they've taken let them nearly disappear in amongst the rest of the commoners. Jason's slightly quicker step puts them directly behind two merchants with horses, and he grudgingly accepts that it's a good call; either the guards will stop the merchants to talk with them and they can slip around during the distraction, or they'll be partially hidden behind the bulk of the horses and less likely to be noticed anyway.

"Alright," Jason says quietly, and then almost immediately starts in louder, halfway through a sentence as if it's an interrupted conversation, not the start of one. "And so this kid, this kid comes crashing through the damn bush and—"

He barely resists whipping his head around to stare at his companion, because Jason's voice has slipped into an almost perfect mimicry of a local accent. It's close enough that the syllables that aren't quite right are easily explained away by his foreign features, but place him firmly as having lived somewhere local for a long time. He forces his shock not to show, keeping his gaze mostly forwards and offering appropriate noises or comments when spaces in the story Jason is telling offer the chance. Accent mimicry; another skill he's going to have to add to the list of strange things his companion knows how to do.

Assassin, or spy, maybe? It seems like a backlash would be a poor choice to train as either of those things, but then again… maybe not. Backlashes rarely stay in one place for long; most towns won't accept one living within their borders for any lengthy period of time. So a backlash would have cause to constantly travel, to wear clothes that would hide their features, and to carry weaponry, all of which are things that spies or assassins would regularly do as well. It's an interesting theory, anyway, even if he is entirely off the mark.

For now, he should simply accept that Jason's skills are useful, and let go of trying to figure out where they come from. He has bigger concerns than the origin of his mystery companion.

He has to fight not to hold his breath as they approach the gate itself, and the guards to either side that are watching the flow of people, but Jason never falters. He doesn't even pay the guards any mind, and he finds himself looking at Jason instead of them, watching the way he speaks and smirks and gestures with the hand not holding the sack over his shoulder. It's fascinating, and it keeps him distracted long enough that when he looks away again, suddenly they're out from underneath the gate, with the desert stretching out before them along with the ground-down path of the main road itself. He blinks, somewhat startled, and Jason takes his arm, pushing him gently towards the outside of the road.

"Traveling commoners walk on the side," Jason says, breaking out of the accent as easily as he slipped into it. "Horses, carts, and nobles get the middle. Remember, let me know if you need to stop for a bit."

"I will not need to stop," he snaps, and then glances around to see if anyone else is close enough to have heard. They aren't. The merchants have pulled away, and the rest of the people around them seem to have all naturally fallen into their own pairs or groups with plenty of space between them.

"Yeah, well, I'd rather stop than have you fall over on me; it'll call less attention." Jason reaches up, pulling the scarf up to hook over his nose, so only those blue-green eyes are visible behind the wrap. "We're not going to make the next town before they realize we're gone, but if we're lucky they'll lock the city down to search it and not send riders out until they're fairly sure you've fled the city."

"We'll need to contend with trackers," he points out. "The royal family employs the best in the kingdom to hunt those it needs to, and—"

"Not going to be a problem," Jason interrupts, and he glances up sharply. Jason shrugs. "I'm bound, and you're sealed. We're not leaving any magical traces to track. They'll have to pull out physical tracking methods to find us, and usually those take longer and are less effective."

"You have experience being hunted?" he asks, and Jason's eyes flare with something like anger as they look down at him.

"What do you think?"

He considers answering, considers rising to the challenge of Jason's tone, but ultimately decides not to. Instead he scowls back, scoffs, and increases his pace a touch to draw away from his 'ally.'

The pain it costs him is entirely worth it.