a/n: Okay, so the most important thing that you should know is that I'm incorporating the Young Justice cartoon into canon here. Well, the first season. The second one sucked. But anyway, for those that haven't seen Young Justice, the important thing is that Zatanna and Dick worked together as young teens, and this Zatanna is very different from the one portrayed in the comics. She and Bruce never had a thing, and she has an amazing bromance with Dick.

More notes at the end! Read on!

12. Las Vegas

This, Dick could freely admit, had not been his best idea.

In the two hours since the show, Dick had stopped two sexual assaults, prevented five muggings, visited five casinos, and had only found one of his missing brothers. Zatanna was at his side, looking appropriately worried when he caught glimpses of her. The façade was convincing, but he knew her well enough to know when she was laughing at him.

"This isn't funny," Dick stressed, wincing at the bitchy tone that slipped out. Zatanna gave what was definitely a snort, but easily kept up with his frantic pace.

"I beg to differ, Boy Wonder," she responded, giving up all pretenses of worry. She glanced back at Tim, who was several paces behind them and swaying a little in his attempts to keep up. "You better watch it, or you're going to lose another brother."

Dick growled low in his throat, then backtracked hurriedly to grab Tim's arm and hustle him along. The younger man gave his brother a dopey smile, and the sight of it served to infuriate Dick further.

"This has Jason written all over it," he muttered to himself.

"Always knew I liked that kid," Zatanna agreed. She raised her hands in mock defeat when Dick glared at her. "Stand down, dude. I'm sure everyone's fine."

"Murf," Tim stated solemnly.

It had started out as an attempt at brotherly bonding. By now, Dick should've realized that those never go well. Still, Vegas would be a nice change from the oppressive darkness of Gotham, even if it was all due to fake glitz and glamor, and Zatanna's invite to one of her magic shows had been the perfect reason to go. It had been way too long since Dick had seen his friend, and the nostalgia of their old team was enough to make him forget about all the ways this trip could possibly go wrong. Now, at half past two in the morning with nothing but an intoxicated brother and about forty more venues to check, Dick realized his mistake.

"Dick, relax. You're missing a highly trained assassin child and a highly feared drug lord. What could they possibly stumble into without being able to get back out again?"

"You're not seeing the problem here!" Dick stressed. Zatanna raised an eyebrow at him, silently telling him to turn it down a notch or twenty, but he was much too far gone to care. "Damian has a fake I.D."

At this, Zatanna stopped. She looked at Dick in a way that was part horror and part wonder, and Dick thought, finally, that she must have grasped the situation.

Then she snorted. Then giggled. Then dissolved into long, loud belly laughs that she never would have let loose around him when she was fourteen years old. She laughed for so long that she sagged against Tim—who then sagged against the nearest wall—and had to swipe at the tears spilling down her cheeks. Dick stood his ground, lips pursed, hands on his hips. He didn't see how this was funny. At all.

"Y-you've turned into a momma bear!" the magician howled at him, then dissolved into hysterics again. Tim giggled along, though it didn't seem like he knew exactly why he was laughing.

"Zatanna." Dick was fairly sure that his blood pressure had reached a new high. He was too young for this shit.

"I'm sorry," she choked out. She took a few deep breaths, erratic giggles escaping every so often, before she looked back at him. Her smile was still blinding, but he was willing to overlook it if it meant they could get back to what they were doing before—searching for his missing brothers.

"Oh, come on. You have to find this a little funny." Dick's flat look told her that he really, really didn't. It did nothing to dampen Zatanna's amusement. "Sure, Dick, let's send the kid off to execute vigilante justice—in Gotham, might I add—but God forbid we set him loose in Vegas with a fake I.D."

"He's with Jason." Dick looked half-wild, obviously worried. He reached up to tug at his hair, but then stopped and thought better of it. No matter what happened, the man couldn't sacrifice his beautiful hair. Zatanna let out another quiet snort, and he returned to glaring at her. "Jason hardly finds Damian tolerable on a good day! Think of what he'll try to do now that we've snuck him into the self-proclaimed city of sin! How are you not worried?"

"I'm not worried because I live here, you dork. Plus, I remember Jason. He's not that—well, okay, he is that bad, but seriously. We're in Vegas. These employees can spot a minor or a bar fight a mile away, so the chances of Damian getting into trouble are minimal." Zatanna flicked her hair back, illustrating how completely calm she was. Tim leaned forward to sniff at it. "Honestly, you should be more worried about Tim. We've gone twenty minutes and you haven't even realized he's been roofied."

"You don't know Damian," Dick stated, looking around wildly. "He doesn't look like a minor, Zee. And his I.D. should be sound; we paid good money for it, and it passed Bat-inspection."

"You got Batman to investigate his kid's fake I.D.?" Zatanna questioned. Tim's face was now completely submerged in her hair, and she pushed him away gently. When he made a small, hurt noise, she rolled her eyes and began carding her fingers through his dark strands. Dick continued to scan the area for sketchy looking alleyways. There were twelve on this block alone.

"No," Dick snapped. "We gave it to Steph." The implied duh made Zatanna roll her eyes again. Eternal thirteen year olds, that's what they were.

"I don't know these people," Zatanna reminded her friend mildly, putting her hands on her hips. Tim made sound of displeasure, slumping against her shoulder—and having to bend a significant amount to do that, seeing as she was much shorter with him, even in her show stilettos—and nuzzled at her. Her strange look had no effect on him, but he settled when she returned her hand to his hair. "Why'd you get him a fake I.D. anyway? That's basically asking for trouble, Dick."

Dick threw his hands up in the air. It made him look very dramatic.

"It was for your show!"

"It was a magic show!" This bit of information had no effect on the irate man in front of her. Zatanna felt a bit like stomping her foot. "Dick, it's eighteen and up! I'm assuming the kid is at least legal!"

Dick's expression fell. "Yeah, of course he's… Why did Jay say it was twenty one and over?"

Zatanna threw up an arm of her own, her other otherwise occupied.

The realization dawned on them at the same time.

"Son of a—"

"Jason."

Dick jabbed at his phone furiously, calling Jason's cell for the twentieth time in as many minutes. Predictably, he didn't pick up. Zatanna wrapped an arm around Tim, then stomped her way passed Dick.

"If Jason planned this, they probably didn't leave the venue. It's easier to get from the showroom to the bar if you blend in with a group. The crowd that left the show would have been the perfect cover."

The trio backtracked until they were back at their original location, then veered off into the wing of the building that they hadn't even bothered checking before taking off into the night. There was a guard stationed there, as per usual when underage events were held, and he let them pass with a slightly suspicious glance at Tim. The boy gave an ungraceful flop of the wrist before sticking his face back in Zatanna's hair. The guard did not seem reassured in the slightest.

It was easy to find Jason among the crowd. Not because of his edgy style of dress or his iconic strip of white hair, of course; no, they were able to locate Jason by his booming laughter.

He was standing at a table, playing some kind of card game. Upon further inspection, Dick discovered, that no, Jason was standing beside the table, watching some kind of card game. The player was an obviously drunk Damian, splotches of pink bright on his cheeks and hair slightly disheveled. The amount of chips piled beside the child, however, had Dick seething. He marched forward, leaving Zatanna to pull a resistant Tim along after him.

It took Jason a while to acknowledge them. His posture was calm and relaxed, and he sipped at his drink for a moment, watching Damian place his next bet, before turning. He was met with two pairs of furious blue eyes. Then he glanced down to find a pair of vacant ones.

"Whoa," he said, sounding way too sober to be goading Damian into gambling his trust fund away. "What happened to Timmy?"

"Jason," Dick snarled. Jason took a few steps back—not, Zatanna noticed, to put distance between him and his irate brother; no, he wanted to make sure he wasn't disturbing the players—looking entirely too pleased with himself. The only thing that was keeping Dick from decking him was, in Zatanna's opinion, the still suspicious security guard. She looked back and met the man's steely gaze before giving what she hoped was a winning smile, then turned back to the brothers with a smile. So much for getting another gig here. "What the hell do you think you're doing? You can't just sneak him in here, get him drunk off his ass, and then let him gamble away his life savings! What kind of brother are you?"

"The fun kind," Jason answered without remorse. He took another sip of his drink, then held it out of reach when Dick made to slap it out of his hands. "First of all, Dickie-bird, you should get your facts right. I gave him twenty dollars. That—" Jason gestured to the gigantic pile of chips, "—was all him. Kid's like a con-man or something. I'd have done this a lot earlier if I knew he could earn all that."

Dick's anger seemed to flag as Damian added another substantial mound of chips to his gargantuan pile. He glanced back at Jason, contemplating how to continue chastising the man in the face of such results, but the effort was cut short.

"Grayson!" Damian had seen him. To Dick's surprise, Damian made to leave the table, but then fumbled and turned back, gripping the edge tightly. He looked at the dealer, very seriously, and announced, "I must go now."

The woman, obviously bewildered by the gravity in his tone, nodded back just as seriously.

"Todd!" the teenager called. "Come collect my winnings! I have calculated the amount earned in my head and I will know if you pocket any of it."

Jason rolled his eyes, but to Zatanna's surprise, he moved to collect the pile. The dealer helped divvy the amount up and escorted him to the exchange, glancing back at Damian all the while. Many of the older men and women were looking after the teen with respect as he stumbled his way over to his former mentor.

"You left with the harlot," Damian stated, his words crisp in comparison with his hand-eye coordination. To clarify his statement, the former assassin flapped his hand in Zatanna's direction. "Todd stated that you would prefer to be alone."

Zatanna's jaw dropped as both men looked over at her. First of all, no, Dick and Zatanna were long broken up, and second of all, Damian and Jason were the ones that left. She had a whole three and a half hours of her night devoted to that fact. Adjusting her drugged charge, she schooled her body language and expression into something appropriately haughty.

"I'm going to assume you're talking about Tim."

Dick snorted, then tried to hide it as Tim's face emerged from Zatanna's hair, looking hurt. Damian ignored the comment altogether.

"I won, Grayson. I am superior to all of these mongrels. Are you proud of me?"

Dick gaped at his youngest charge for a moment, mouth working in a way that looked like a fish. Damian kept his eyes locked on the man's face, though his body was slowly drooping towards the right.

"I don't know about you, but I'm kind of impressed," Zatanna told Tim. "He looks like he's smashed, but then he says things like 'mongrels' and I really have to wonder."

"Glargh," Tim agreed. She petted at his hair.

"Damn right."

Dick sighed at the two of them, but his eyes tracked Damian's slow descent. Before the child could stumble, Dick pulled him against him. Damian height made it a little awkward, but Dick wrapped his arms around him to support most of his drunk weight and Damian complied by resting his head in the crook of Dick's neck. Despite the strangeness of the situation, Dick relaxed a bit when he was able to feel that Damian was physically alright.

Then froze as the younger man took a very audible sniff.

"I like cuddles," Damian announces to Dick's shoulder. Zatanna tried very not to laugh. Tim hummed a bit, then brought a hand up to poke at the sparkles on Zatanna's costume. Jason returned with a large bag of bundled up currency.

"I think that's our cue to leave," Dick stated loudly over Damian's mutter over "You're so pretty, Grayson. Why are you so pretty?"

With that, Zatanna pushed Tim to Jason and grabbed several stacks of money.

"Finder's fee," she explained to the very offended looking vigilante. Tim whines came out in long, high-pitched vowels. She grinned at the horrified look on Jason's face. "Pet his hair. It'll calm him right down."

"Holy shit, did Tim get roofied?"

"What?" Dick cried, headless of Damian's full-body flinch. "Timmy is drugged? Zatanna, why didn't you tell me?"

Zatanna heaved a sigh and rolled her eyes heavenward. Eternal thirteen year olds indeed.

First of all, I love YJ Zatanna. Especially because she has such a great relationship dynamic with Dick. I think that they could be the most sarcastic of besties, and I love writing them that way. This dynamic may or may not show up in more of my fics, because this was super fun to write.

I took great pleasure in writing Drugged!Tim and Drunk!Damian, but I feel like Tim needs some context. So basically, Tim sees what Jason's planning to do, and he's like "Nah, I'm not getting blamed for this,' so he leaves and finds a lounge to hang out in. Unfortunately, Tim's the prettiest boy to ever live (not counting the sexy deity that is Dick), so he gets the notice of less than savory people, and they sneakily drug his drink. However, these guys don't know that Tim's been trained by the Bat, and that that training had probably covered how to resist sedatives, so they watch in awe as Tim downs the drink and is completely unaffected. They continue to drug his drinks until Tim gets to the state shown above, and then Dick and Zatanna burst in and accidentally discover him in their wild search. Tim is pulled along without much thought, and the whole evening is a large blur of sweet smelling shampoo and pimp!Damian when Tim wakes up in the morning.

Also, I have never been to Las Vegas and I made all of this up. Hope that you liked it!