Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dead people are infinities of maybes. --Clark Kent

“Mother.”

“Yes?”

“Will you tell me about my father?”

“Your father is a great man, little Bat. Would you like to be great, some day?”

“Yes. I will be like my father.”

“No, my son. You will be even greater.”

Damian is eight years old the first time he is left for dead. Two months ago he beat his mother in combat and learned the name of his father; two months ago he proved that was no longer a child, that he was worthy of the knowledge of what he would someday become. Two months ago Damian turned eight years old; he is not even a decade in this world when he learns that he is alone.

What happens is this: three figures, a mother, her son, and the body of a boy. A forth comes, sees the body and the small figure standing over it, and throws a blade. (This was the first time the boy killed someone his own age. He was confused, and distracted, and this is what cost him the most.) The mother sees the blade, and - she could have stopped it. This is the important part: she could have stepped in the way, and taken the knife for her son.

She didn’t.

Instead the knife hits the boy in his side, the mother kills the intruder, and then she leaves. She looks once at her son and she leaves, stepping over the three bodies and pulling her knife from the intruder. She says: “Mustn’t let a good knife go to waste.”

Damian is eight years old when his mother doesn’t save him, doesn’t wait for him, doesn’t care if he lives or dies. When he must pull the knife from his side and hold his life between his too-small hands and know that no one is coming to save him.

(He lives. He keeps his life inside him, he covers his injury and forces himself to heal, and he keeps close the knife that tried to kill him.)

Even now, fifteen years later, the scar is still there.

In a different life, in a different world, he learns that this need not be true. He learns that there are people who will protect him, people who will shelter him, that he need not be alone.

This is not that world.

The bird on the ground is dead, iridescent feathers splayed and bent around the torn wing. There was another carcass too, brown, but the wolf got that one before it ran off; Damian watches it disappear around the sparse hedge before he turns, kneeling to examine the thing.

He should have let the wolf have it. It wouldn’t have gone to waste then.

But he thought he heard something, and as he tilts his head, listening through the wind whistling across the plateau, he hears it again. A noise, lots of little noises, crying out. He turns, pinpointing the sound, and when he gingerly lists the rocks out of the way he finds a down-filled nest, four chicks nestled inside.

They go silent. For a while, Damian just sits there.

Then, one by one, he lifts them carefully into his pocket. He untangles as much of the down as he can and takes that too, then lifts the dead bird and places it in the empty nest, covering it once more with a small mound of rocks.

Safely back in his private quarters, Damian makes a nest out of an old shirt (mended, stained, too small for him anyway) and gently tucks the baby birds inside. This he hides beneath his dresser, making an approximation of the underground nest in which they were found.

“You must be quiet,” he tells them softly, when one makes an inquiring peep. “There are wolves here.”

For nearly two weeks he feeds them. For twelve days he wakes an hour early to find grubs in the gardens, to smuggle strips of meat from his evening meal into his room and give them to the fledgling birds. Small fingers dispense meal after meal, bopping the little heads whenever they begin to complain too loudly. “Quiet!” Damian hisses, his heart pounding with the giddy thrill of a secret.

And then one morning he wakes, and returns from his foraging trip to find his mother waiting for him with the small nest on her lap. “Sit beside me, little Bat,” she says, and Damian walks silently to his bed and sits beside, back straight, dirty hands folded in his lap.

“You found these?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“How long have you hidden them from me?”

For just a moment, Damian wonders if he could lie. “Twelve days.”

Talia sighs. “You are lucky your grandfather is not the one who discovered you,” she tells him gently. “He would punish you.” She takes the nest, the little birds silent inside, and shifts it onto his lap. “You know what you must do.”

Damian knows. They begin peeping again, the little noises he has begun to associate with their hunger; one by one he takes them, and crushes their skulls between his fingers.

“Eleven is too old to succumb to such puerile whimsies,” Talia says. She stands, a hand resting briefly on his head. “Be sure it does not happen again.”

And Damian is left alone with his dirt-covered hands and his pockets full of worms and the mess in his lap, feeling the emptiness in his chest settle into a throbbing ache. He needs to clean up. He needs to dispose the evidence of his weakness and he needs to wash himself clean in preparation for today’s training; his grandfather will be there, watching. And Damian cannot disappoint him.

He discards the remains in the narrow river running beside his mother’s house, emptying his pockets and rinsing his hands in the glacial water. Then he stands and returns to his quarters, and he promises himself: Never again.

Damian thinks that his mother must have loved him, once. When he searches his memories, he knows that he loved her; when he tries to remember the last words she spoke to him, all he can remember is the sound of her voice in song. In fact, her voice is his earliest memory; a lullaby, singing him to sleep.

He remembers her holding him. He remembers her hand on his back as he knelt before his grandfather; he remembers fingers running through his hair, the way she held him in her lap as he witnessed his first execution.

“One, two, three, flip,” she murmurs, hair tickling his cheek as she teaches him how to sharpen a blade. “Three, two, one, flip.”

Especially in his early years, he remembers her guiding him, teaching him, showing him the way. “Stand now,” her voice whispers, “Fight now. Head down, now.” He remembers her teaching him how to survive, and he knows that at the time he was sure it was love.

Perhaps it was. He doesn’t know.

What he remembers too, though, is loneliness. It’s a feeling that persists, even after all this time; even after years apart, he still wakes sometimes with the desperate need to hear her voice. He lies on his narrow bed, breath slow and painfully even as the memory of her voice washes over him, a lullaby assuring him of her presence in his life. Reminding him, starkly, of her absence.

“Mother,” Damian remembers asking. “Am I the only child here?”

“You are my only son,” Talia tells him, her gown gilt in gold, her hair shining in the firelight. Her fingers, knotting his own tunic about his waist, flicker like flame. “I have no need for another.”

That night, he witnessed his grandfather perform an execution. “His foremost advisor,” Talia told him, her voice cool with disdain. “Remember, little Bat; not even your friends can be trusted.”

While his grandfather had dictated the path of his life, his mother had been the one to guide him along it. “Fight me,” she told him, “for if you lose I will not kill you.” (If he lost to one of his grandfather’s men, he would be killed without question.) “Kneel before you grandfather,” Talia warned him: “Yield, head down, obey.”

“Do not cross my father,” she told him, every night, “for if you do he will kill you.”

At the time, Damian had been grateful. Looking back now, all he feels is numb.

Love, isolation, the threat of violence.

“Was any of it real?” Damian asks, the night that he leaves. He stands in his mother’s chambers, his clothes stained with dirt and blood. His fingers, though empty, hang ready at his side. “Or was it all a manipulation?”

He tries to remember. He closes his eyes during those long sleepless nights, and he tries to remember what she answered, if she answered at all.

All he can recall is a lullaby, singing him to sleep.

If asked, Damian would say that the turning point came shortly after his sixteenth birthday. For no particular reason, it occurred as he was leaving the League’s base in Siberia; he simply walked out of the compound and realized that he was done.

Of course, it took longer for others to come to the same realization. It took Ra’s al Ghul, the Demon’s Head, seven entire days.

Ever since he was little, Damian has kept his emotions in his stomach. Each was given an equally sized vessel upon its conception, each vessel stored neatly to maximize his emotional capacity. When he was younger, his emotions were simpler. He remembers happiness being among them. He remembers, briefly, wonder.

As he matures, so do his emotions. Sometimes they grow at uneven rates; he thinks that happiness must be starved, for it seems to grow smaller with each passing year. Or perhaps he simply gave it the wrong name, misunderstood the definition. He remembers at some point deciding that he didn’t need separate compartments for happiness and amusement. They were close enough; they merged to make more room for disgust.

He thinks he must have been around four years old when he learned how to hide his emotions. Although learned, perhaps, is not quite the right word: realized the need, then. He remembers watching his mother train a new recruitment cycle; watching as she culled their ranks ruthlessly, remembers feeling the warm droplets of blood spattering his cheek. He felt fear then, briefly, the basis for shock and horror: he remembers quickly taking those emotions, horror already small and fragile, and hiding them neatly behind contempt and pride. The fear subsided, when the smaller emotions were safe.

And so it goes. Occasionally he remembers to examine his emotional inventory, to pick up the starved emotions and contemplate them, reaching tentatively for something closer to a memory. More often, though, those emotions which are kept safely and neatly sheltered within his stomach simply fade away, overgrown and consumed or discarded to make room for more important, more mature emotions such as ambition, ruthlessness, and apathy.

Yes still, some remain. Despite Damian’s best efforts to keep them safe, the rolling queasiness of fear will still suddenly raise its head when confronted with a threat, and he has to swiftly and frantically sort through the vessels in his stomach to find the one that is in danger, the one that dared to peak out from behind the curtain.

Sadness seems to be the last such hanger-on. Every night as he meditates in his cell, Damian tries to figure out why it still occupies so much space. He is a successful heir, a prodigy in every sense of the word. He will one day inherit his father’s legacy and his mother’s place at his grandfather’s side. One day, Damian knows, he stands to inherit the world. There is no place for sadness in that life.

Still, it lingers.

He rises in the ranks with a deadly grace. He takes his mother’s place in training the new recruits, killing even more swiftly than she and allowing only the most skilled to survive the massacre. He leads missions, offers token suggestions when his grandfather asks his advisement, and slowly but surely he settles into his place at Ra’s al Ghul’s side.

And then, one day, the sadness is gone. One day he walks out of the League’s headquarters in Siberia and faces the blinding snow, and when he thinks to check on his sadness he feels a spark of something else instead. It’s enough to make him stop in his tracks, to turn without a word to stare in confusion at the solid doors behind him.

The wind which blows through the snow-covered trees is cold and biting, trying its utmost to worm in through his layers of thermal clothing. The new emotion inside him seems to like this; it reaches out, something which seems both hot and cold at the same time. It burns.

Later, Damian will name it anger. Later he will wonder how something so strong could be born of something so weak, and later still he will come to call it something else entirely, a terrible thing which somehow contains them both. But now, standing in the dark trees of the Siberian winter, all Damian knows is that he no longer has anything to hide. The last of his childhood weaknesses are gone, and Damian need no longer be afraid.

It takes Ra’s a week to notice.

Damian shoves the assassin to his knees before his grandfather’s throne. The man lists sideways, his eyes half-closed, and Damian grabs his shorn hair, twisting to bring him upright.

“Grandfather,” he greets, voice cool and smooth as steel. “This filth attempted my murder.”

Ra’s looks at the man. His eyes are a brilliant green, his face a mask of displeasure. “It failed.”

Damian scoffs. “It never stood a chance,” he retorts, and when Ra’s lifts his head at his tone, when he turns his glare on Damian, Damian meets his stare willfully. “Grandfather,” he says icily. “What are your orders?”

“Kill it,” Ra’s says, turning away. Damian’s blade sings through the air, and the assassin’s head falls to the ground.

The fifth time an assassin comes for him, Damian brings the woman straight to Ra’s’ quarters. He pushes her down to the floor, blood flowing from her eyes and ears and mouth to stain the pristine white carpet red.

“Grandfather,” Damian says, “I do believe that someone wants me dead.”

The eighth attempt is the last. Ten of the best assassins in the world ambush Damian just outside of Nanda Parbat, an unfair fight at the best of times. The white sun pierces the thin air, the only witness to a massacre.

That night, Damian disappears. He leaves no note, takes nothing with him but his best knives and his sword. He slips into the darkness, at home in the high mountain shadows, and vanishes without a trace.

This is what he knows: Ra’s al Ghul wants him dead. If he is no longer afraid, he can no longer be used; and he is enough like his mother for this to be a threat. On his sixteenth birthday Damian asked when he might expect to take on his father’s duties, and Ra’s said nothing; Damian met his grandfather’s eyes and realized that he was never meant to take the Demon’s throne at all; that in his grandfather’s eyes he was a weapon, a tool, and would never be anything more.

For years Damian travels the world as a ghost. He lives an invisible life, unnoticed, head down and eyes sharp as he prepares to take what he is due. He is the Demon’s Heir, after all; he was raised for greatness, and he is no longer afraid to claim it. Long ago he learned that what would not be given must instead be taken, by force if need be. And as he travels, as he watches and learns outside of his grandfather’s influence, outside of his mother’s manipulation, he realizes that it was never power that he coveted after all. He will be great someday, yes; but Damian knows that greatness is not always determined by the amount of power one holds in one’s hands. Look at his grandfather, after all; look at his father.

What Damian covets is not power, but revenge.

So years pass, and there is nothing. Years pass and Ra’s and Talia begin to believe, briefly, that the weapon they had forged was grown dull.

Then, one day, Ra’s al Ghul wakes to the tall figure of his grandson standing at the foot of his bed. He is no longer the boy who left; his height is nearly greater than Ra’s’ own, his lean frame made large by the cloak he keeps wrapped about him. His eyes, the same shade as Talia’s (the same color that Ra’s’ had been, once upon a time), betray nothing as they search the Demon’s face.

Whether he finds what he is looking for, neither of them could say; Damian turns on his heel and leaves, without looking back.

An hour later, a series of explosions ripple around the globe. The League of Assassins falls, and Damian turns his sights on Gotham City.

Chapter Text

The first thing Tim makes note of upon meeting Bruce Wayne’s biological son are the man’s eyes. Hazel, long lashes, the same shape as Bruce’s. Cold, and unforgiving. Tim is almost impressed; he thinks that if he were wearing his mask, he might invite this man to spar.

As it is, he has to settle for small talk. “Wow it’s miserable out,” he laughs, taking the seat next to the stranger at the bar without a word of permission. “Raining cats and dogs, and we’re barely into hurricane season yet!”

“Tt,” the man says. He glances out the window at the deluge currently slamming in sheets against the window before turning back to his meal, eyes drifting up to the TV.

“I’m Tim,” Tim says, refusing to be discouraged. “Wayne. I go to college here, because I'm ‘not allowed to participate in nepotism’.” He lifts his fingers in an air quote, rolling his eyes for punctuation.

“Damian,” the man replies, his gaze coming down at last to rest fully on Tim. “I’m researching vigilantes, and figured Gotham would be a good place to start.”

So here’s the thing. Tim already knows that this man is Damian al Ghul. In fact, he knows quite a lot about Damian that he probably shouldn’t, but that he’s definitely glad that he does. Such as:

He knows that Damian is the son of Talia al Ghul and Bruce Wayne. He knows that Bruce is unaware of the boy’s existence; that Talia never told him that she became pregnant, and that she carried the baby to term. He knows that over the past years rumors have arisen of a new Demon, the Demon’s Heir; a monster of such prodigious skill that many are becoming cautious, wary, afraid. He knows that there has never been any concrete evidence of such an heir until now; he knows that any person raised from childhood in the League of Assassins must be a very good assassin indeed.

He also knows that, one month ago, the League of Assassins was leveled without warning. He was on a rare patrol with Batman and Robin when Bruce received the call, stopping abruptly on the edge of the roof and pulling an old burner phone from his belt.

That phone call had ended patrol for the night. Bruce had been silent, looming, and both Jason and Tim had tiptoed around him in the cave, Tim only summoning the courage to ask him about the call the next morning during breakfast. And even then, Bruce had been reluctant.

“That was Minhkhoa Khan,” he had eventually admitted, voice quiet so that Tim had to lean forward to hear. “You would know him better as Ghostmaker. He called to inform me that the League of Assassins is no more; that Ra’s and Talia are dead, and all their bases lie in ruin.”

“Who did it?” Tim asked, equally quiet.

“A rumor,” Bruce replied. “The Demon’s Heir.”

Which had led Tim down a rabbit hole of investigation when he should have been focusing on his school work instead, spending entire days ensconced in his dorm room and only leaving for sporadic meals and the occasional bathroom break. It had taken awhile, but eventually he had made it here: to the school bar and the stranger with familiar eyes: Damian al Ghul.

“I like to consider myself something of an expert on Batman,” Tim says, producing a fake ID and ordering himself a drink. "What sort of information are you looking for?”

Damian, it turns out, already knows quite a bit about Batman. They spend an entire hour debating the ethics of Batman’s no-kill rule, and while Tim knows that Damian is an assassin and has one-hundred-percent killed people before, he stills seems willing to debate it with Tim, and Tim finds a strange giddiness rise up in him (although this could just be the drink). Damian is fun, in a sarcastic way that not-so-subtly reminds Tim of Bruce, and sometimes Tim has to remind himself that he’s on a case, and Damian is a suspect.

“Want to give me a tour of Gotham?” Damian asks, when he notices Tim checking his watch. “Later, maybe tomorrow evening. You seem to know your way around, I’d appreciate the insider information.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tim replies, because, actually, he would. It will be a good opportunity to observe Damian in the familiar darkness of the Gotham shadows, and there’s a not-so-small voice in the back of Tim’s head whispering that it will be fun. Timothy Drake - Wayne, he reminds himself - showing Bruce Wayne’s son around Gotham City.

So they exchange phone numbers, and Tim pays for Damian’s drinks, and when he gets back to his dorm he sends a quick message to Jason with a thumbs up and the cliff-notes of his meeting with Damian.

Does he look like Bruce? Jason wants to know.

Yes, Tim replies. But he looks like Talia too.

The next night, Tim cites his homework as an excuse from patrol and sends Jason a brief itinerary of where he’s planning to take Damian. Then he straps his civilian Batbelt (Dick’s word, not his, that kid is incorrigible and Tim is apparently a pushover) under his jacket and tucks his collapsible staff into an accessible pocket; he’s meeting up with a League Assassins, after all. Better to be prepared for anything.

Tim became Batboy when he was thirteen years old. “Because you can’t stop me,” he informed Batman, when he was confronted about it half an hour into the escapade, “so you might as well teach me how to do it well.”

Batman had refused, Tim had argued, Batman had put his foot down, and Tim had broken out the blackmail.

“I know your secret identity,” Tim had pointed out stubbornly, his chin tilted up to stare the Batman down from beneath his own hand-sewn cowl. “And if you don’t let me help, I’ll tell Lieutenant Gordon.”

It wasn’t until months later that Tim learned this had been a poor threat; Gordon had already known that Batman was Bruce Wayne for years.

Regardless, Tim had become Batboy to Bruce’s Batman. Then he caught a street urchin jacking Batman’s tires, and for a while there was Batboy and Robin. Then he was told he needed a college degree before he was qualified to take over Wayne Enterprises, and then came the summer of the Flying Graysons, when he stood beside Bruce in a too-hot tent and watched the aerialists fall. And then a month later Jason called to tell him about the newest addition to the Wayne household, the tiny little circus kid who had almost murdered a mob boss.

So.

The point of all this is that Tim always wanted a family. At thirteen years of age he knew and accepted that his parents were neglectful; he understood that this boredom he felt, this itch to just get out of the house and do something, was in fact just a fancy way of saying he was lonely. He manipulated Bruce into fostering (and later adopting) him, he bullied Jason into staying, and when Dick arrived on their doorstep Tim did everything in his power to make sure the kid knew that this could be home.

And now there is Damian. Damian al Ghul, who is only a few years older than Tim, who has already wiped out the entire League of Assassins.

Why? Tim wants to ask him. What are you doing here, what do you want? But he also wants to ask him How long have you known that you had another family, and why didn’t you come home sooner?

So he packs his trusty taser and his collapsible staff and a belt full of batarangs, and he tells Jason where he’s going and when he expects to be back. Because Tim is lonely, but he isn’t stupid, and he’s worked beside Batman long enough to know that crime comes easy and choosing good can be hard.

He wants to know if he can trust Damian. He has too much to lose to trust too easily.

“Bit of a bombshell, huh.”

“Hn.”

Tim leans over the stone rail of the balcony, fists in his stomach as he peers down at the ground two stories below. It’s raining again, like actually properly raining: not a drizzle, not a downpour, just that nice soaker you get in between. Bruce is out here having a crisis on the balcony, and Tim is keeping him company.

“It makes sense now, why you keep adopting us. You must have secretly known you had a biological kid, and you’ve been compensating all along.”

Bruce is silent. Tim pushes himself upright with a small groan.

“Sorry. That was a bad joke.” He glances at his adoptive father, rain-soaked hair falling into his face. He can feel the weight of it settling on his shoulders, cool rain-water just beginning to penetrate to his skin.

“Seriously, B. You couldn’t have known. If you had, you would have done something about it.”

Bruce’s eyes dart to him, looking him up and down. Tim grimaces, and Bruce frowns. “You should go inside,” he says. “You’re getting wet.”

“Pot, kettle,” Tim replies, arching an eyebrow. He gestures mockingly at the door. “After you.”

Bruce continues to frown, but doesn’t move. Eventually he returns to his contemplation of the scenery. “And you’ve been meeting with him,” he says.

“Yep. A few times now, I’ve been showing him around the city. I haven’t told him outright about our night lives, but I’m like ninety-seven percent sure he knows. He’s been asking about you.”

“Knowing Talia and Ra’s, he was raised by the League of Assassins,” Bruce murmurs. “He will have been trained with them from a very young age, will have mastered their techniques and their way of life. If the rumors are to be believed, he is more skilled even than the Demon himself.”

The rain continues to fall from the sky. It seeps into the ground, into Tim’s clothing, slides down the cold stone of Wayne Manor and across Tim’s skin.

“He has your eyes, you know.”

“Tim,” Bruce says. “Be careful.”

“This is a dangerous city,” Damian comments, as they walk along the waterfront. It’s twilight, just past sunset; it’ll be full dark in half an hour, although you would never know with the light pollution. The shadows are what sell it; despite the orange fluorescence and constant whine of electric bulbs in need of an upgrade, the shadows can always tell you the darkness of the night.

“Sure is,” Tim agrees. “That’s why Batman does what he does. He’s trying to make it better.”

“And Batboy and Robin,” Damian asks. “What about them?”

“Well, Batboy’s not as active as he used to be,” Tim replies. He’s now ninety-nine percent sure that Damian knows exactly who he is, and who his secret identity is, but as long as Damian keeps up the ruse then Tim will play along. “Robin is almost always with Batman, though.”

Tim points out landmarks around the city. They walk for hours, city blocks falling away beneath their feet as Tim expertly guides Damian in spiraling lines to keep him away from Batman and Robin’s patrol route. Damian listens when Tim talks, asks questions, occasionally offers an offhand joke; and Tim thinks, maybe. Maybe, if this is really who Damian is, he can make this work.

It’s not that Tim wasn’t expecting the tables to flip. He just really, really didn’t want them to.

“Stay out of the old Moritz factory, okay?” he tells Jason. He’d followed Damian last night after they parted ways, slinking behind him until they wound up at an old manufacturing plant near the docks, and Damian had slipped inside and not come back out. “Just until we figure out what he wants.”

“Get off,” Jason mutters, his voice slightly muffled. Then he speaks again, more clearly. “Yeah, sure, okay. No Moritz factory. Are you coming home this weekend?”

“Maybe Sunday,” Tim replies. He hears a slight thump over the receiver. “How’s Dick settling in - driving you up the wall yet?”

“Oh my god, he’s driving Alfred up the wall! Did Bruce tell you he broke that chandelier in the foyer? Yeah, squirt, I’m talking about you. No, eff, I’m talkin’a Tim -”

There’s a brief scuffle on the other end of the line, which Tim patiently waits out, and then Jason returns with a huff. “You are coming over, right?” And then, with a slightly more wistful tone: “Are you gonna join patrol as well?”

“Maybe,” Tim repeats. “I’ll definitely be there for dinner though, okay? Oh, and I’m meeting up with Damian again tonight; I’ll send you the coordinates. Tell everyone I say hi?”

“’Kay,” Jason agrees. “See you.”

Now, something you have to understand about Tim is that he has a very good memory, until he doesn’t. For example: if you ask him to recite the periodic table of elements, he will rattle it off without a hitch, along with all of the common isotopes and the years in which they were discovered. But if you ask him where his left sock went when he was wearing it just an hour ago, he won’t have the first idea where to look. If he remembers to remember something, he will. If he doesn’t, it’s gone like smoke in the wind.

So because he’s thinking about Jason and Dick, and the crystal chandelier, and because he’s trying to decide if he should talk to Damian about Bruce before or after this coming Sunday, he doesn’t remember to bring his emergency beacon. Usually he doesn’t have to; it’s tucked into his watch, and he always wears his watch. Except he took a shower this morning because he didn’t take one last night because he was furiously writing a ten page paper that was due in the morning. And then he forgot to put it back on because he hadn’t had his coffee yet, and then he was out the door before he realized his mistake. And now it’s too late, he’s meeting Damian in five minutes, but it’ll be fine, right? Maybe he’ll try to slip Bruce into conversation; maybe he’ll ask Damian if he wants to come to dinner.

And that’s when the tables turn.

There’s a breeze on top of the old rotten bridge. Technically, it’s under construction. Technically it will be drivable within the year, but the city has been promising such a feat for almost a decade, and so far nothing has been accomplished. The Skeleton Bridge, people call it, because against the overcast sky it looks like a behemoth stranded and left to rot.

Would it make you feel better, if I said it was a pity?

Tim’s fingers tingle in the cool night air. He takes a breath, and forces himself to hold still.

Damian is standing a few feet from him, just out of easy reach. His gaze is fixed on the Gotham skyline; on Wayne Tower, piercing through the center. “I could lie,” he says, a continuation of their conversation gone horribly, horribly wrong. “I could say I’m sorry. I could say: in a different world, we might have been friends. But you value the truth, don’t you.” His gaze swivels, meeting Tim’s briefly before turning away again. “I suppose I should thank you.”

“Thank me for what?” Tim asks warily.

“The Flying Grayson,” Damian replies tonelessly. “I knew about Robin, of course, but this new ... acquisition, was an unknown.”

No. In less than a second Tim has his staff in hand, his fingers already reaching for his phone as his lips pull into a snarl. “Pick on someone your own size, you coward.”

“Ah, some fire at last,” Damian says coolly, his eyes cold and almost disinterested as he regards Tim through his lashes. “I was beginning to wonder at my father’s choice of successor.”

Tim risks breaking his stance to flip Damian off. “It’s called being friendly!”

Damian looks disappointed, almost. He gestures between them, the movement lazy as a snake tasting the air. “Are you going to tell me this hasn’t all been a ruse?”

Tim’s breath freezes in his chest. Yes, he wants to shout. No, it wasn’t like that! “I -”

Damian shifts, transitioning in an instant to something deadly. He doesn’t look like the man Tim has gotten to know over the past week. He doesn’t sound like him either, his vowels smoothed out and his consonants sharp and crisp, where before they had been more rounded. He takes a step forward and Tim, despite himself, steps back. He activates the emergency SOS on his phone (he is totally gonna blame his economics professor if this goes badly, just watch him). “Do you mean to tell me,” Damian says quietly, “that all you wanted was a friend?”

Tim swallows, and shifts into a fighting stance.

Laughter. A short unnatural hah! spat between them, Damian’s head tilting to the side as he regards Tim. “Really?”

Really. “Why are you doing this?”

“Now, isn’t that a question?” Damian’s fingers tap-tap-tap over the knives in his belt before pausing, drawing one from its sheath. He twists it between his fingers, the pale light of the moon reflecting off the slim blade. “Because my family tried to have me killed. Because they wronged me, and I will make it right.” He glances up, eyes flashing beneath his hood. “Why do you fight, Timothy?”

Because his family loves him. Because they care for him, and he will do anything in his power to repay them in kind.

“Killing isn’t the answer,” Tim tries, because why the fuck not. “Revenge won’t make you happy, trust me.”

“Trust you.” Damian says flatly. “I don’t think so.”

Damian moves fast, lunging forward. Tim leaps back, swinging his staff around to defend himself against the vicious attack. They trade blows, blurring staff moving to block the flash of a blade, and Tim’s good, he knows he’s good. He’s trained with Batman after all, he’s had literal years of practice fighting crime in one of America’s most crime-ridden cities. But Damian has done this for decades, and as Tim twists and jumps and blocks and blocks and blocks, he knows. He’s good, but he is also very much outmatched.

He tries anyway. He tries because he has a father and two brothers who are waiting for him to come home, because he has a family, and he won’t let anything or anyone jeopardize that, not while he’s got any say in the matter.

Besides, Tim has been outmatched his entire life. He’s been fighting the odds ever since his parents got on that airplane without him and left a six-year-old to fend for himself. So Tim knows how to survive, he knows how to play the game of life and, more importantly, he knows how to win.

Except he might have gambled too much this time. He might have made a mistake, and it might be fatal this time. The man before him draws a sword from beneath his cloak, and Tim thinks that Jason might have been right to laugh at him when he revealed himself as Batboy. He thinks that perhaps there was a reason Bruce told him to be careful, as his staff splinters and splits in two between his hands. And then before he can move, before he can duck or dive or even jump, the sword plunges into his abdomen and out of his lower back. The hand on his shoulder is the only thing keeping him upright as Tim’s vision tunnels in to his trembling fingers, and the deep red blood welling up under the cool steel between them.

“Timothy.”

Tim looks up, locking desperately onto those cold, unforgiving eyes.

“I’ll tell you a secret, because there is a high chance you won’t survive this.” Damian leans forward and Tim’s vision grays out as the sword shifts, sending a hot flood of pain through his abdomen. Despite this he can still feel Damian’s breath against his ear; he can hear his whispered words: “Happiness must be taken. And I will take mine.”

Damian steps away. He pulls the sword back in one swift movement, his other hand shoving hard as Tim stumbles back and over the edge of the bridge, tumbling down to the black waters of the river far below.

Chapter Text

The day breaks across the river like a pane of glass, light cracking and scattering like shattered ice. It’s rare, that the sun penetrates like this; between the overcast skies, the rain, and the sea fog rolling up the coast it is rare to get a sunny morning at all. And yet here, today, on a day that seems to tremble on the edge of tragedy, look: there is light.

Robin uses a cotton-swab to lift a sample of blood off the sidewalk. He takes a moment to shift, lifting an arm to block the sun; it’s not often he’s outside this time of day. Normally he’s in bed, asleep. Normally he isn’t searching for his brother, who may or may not be dead.

An SOS call, automatic, Gordon had told them, two hours ago. It wasn’t followed up on because - well. His voice had darkened, bitter from a career fighting corruption so deep it seems almost indistinguishable from the foundations of Gotham. GPS showed the signal was swept along the river. Dispatch was recalled, but it might be worth checking out.

Robin perches on a concrete blockade placed crookedly across the Skeleton Bridge, hand-held analyzer in hand. What would Batboy see, if he was here? What would he tell Robin to see?

tic,tic,tic,tic whirs the analyzer. Blinking green: 100%

The blood is Tim’s. Robin opens his comm. “Batman,” he says quietly. The wind whips his cape about him, black lined with forest green tugging against his shoulders, his arms.

“Report,” Batman growls. Robin’s eyes go from the red stain to the river, dark waters tipped with whitecaps far below. He unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

“I found blood. He was here.”

Robin takes pictures while he waits for Batman to arrive. He steps carefully around the scene, sneakers sure and steady on the rough pavement, snapping from this angle, that angle. He mentally measures the spread, calculating the loss and how much it had cost. Wondering.

“He was injured here,” Robin says, when Batman arrives. It’s strange to see the cape and cowl in the light of day, strange in a sort of numb way that says this isn’t right. “He moved towards the edge.” Steady, analytical, calm. Stop embellishing, Tim’s voice whispers in his ear. The facts are all you need. “He fell.”

Batman looks at the stain of blood. His gaze goes down to the river, then up and out to sweep the far banks. Finally it comes back to Robin, and the camera clutched between his hands.

“You’re going home.”

Robin stiffens. “No -”

“Yes,” Batman interrupts. His voice falls, more gentle in the light of dawn than Robin has ever heard from beneath the cowl. “I will continue to search; I’ve already updated Gordon, and his team will be here shortly. And I will find him, but -”

Robin scowls. But what? he wants to shout. But I’m too young, but I can’t handle it, but I’m too involved?

“But you don’t need to see that,” Batman finishes quietly. “Lad, please. Go home.”

It was three weeks into Jason’s stay at the manor when Tim took him by the arm and dragged him out to the backyard.

“Let go of me!” Jason spat. He dug his heels in, twisting and tugging until he was forced to stumble forward, Tim’s grip unyielding on his wrist. “I’ll kill you, let go! I’ll tell Alfred you beat me up, I’ll stick you, I’ll steal - I’ll steal your -”

“Chill,” Tim said irritably, as Jason struggled to come up with something Wayne wouldn’t just be able to replace. He released Jason’s arm and stepped into the shed, emerging a second later with two long poles. He tossed one to Jason, who caught it reflexively. “I’m teaching you how to defend yourself.”

“Why?” Jason asked suspiciously. Tim shifted his stance, and Jason unconsciously mirrored him. August’s dry grass spread beneath his bare feet, and a warm breeze ruffled his curls. Tim flashed him a grin, all teeth.

“So you’ll stop being so damn scared all the time,” he said. “So if you want, you can stay.”

Jason is attacked the moment he steps into Bruce’s study, a small body descending from the ceiling to wrap wiry arms around his face and neck. A second later the kid tumbles to the floor and hops from one foot to the other, peering up at Jason’s face.

“So?”

“So what?” Jason snaps. He sidesteps the younger boy, making a beeline for the door.

“So what?” Dick mimics. “So what happened to Tim?”

Jason quickens his pace, stretching his legs so that Dick has to break into a trot to keep up. He doesn’t want to think about Tim. He doesn’t want to think about the blood, 100%, the water, the way Batman’s lips tightened in the pale dawn light. You don’t need to see this, and by the time he’s reached his room he’s nearly running, turning to slam the door in Dick’s face. There’s nothing to see!

“Jason!”

“Go away!”

“I’m telling Alfred!”

Footsteps run away down the hall and Jason throws himself onto his bed, rolling over to stare at the ceiling. He’s tired, he doesn’t think he’s ever been this tired before; it drags him down, it makes him want to curl up, to be forgotten. And yet when he closes his eyes his brain scatters, blood and white-caps and a camera and Tim, jeering at him across the hot summer grass. Is that the best you can do?

Jason rolls over, punching his mattress. It’s not like he hasn’t seen dead bodies before. What, does Bruce think every kid is sheltered from that stuff? He used to race the other kids on his block to loot the dead wino’s shit; he’s found dead bodies before, he’s even seen people shot. He knows how to deal with it, and he even knows it’s different if it’s family; like, come on. Who does Bruce think called the ambulance all those times his mom OD’d? Willis? Come on!

toc toc. “Master Jason?”

Jason rolls over and buries his face under his pillow. He’s asleep. He’s supposed to be asleep, but whenever he closes his eyes -

What’s this?

No.

“Master Jason, may I come in?”

Jason pushes himself up from the bed. He grabs two pillows and his comforter and his phone, and walks into the ensuite bathroom, closing and locking the door behind him. He climbs into the bathtub and spends a few moments arranging the pillows to his liking.

It’s a camera, dummy.

Jason starts flipping through the pictures on his phone. He pulls the comforter over his scabbed knees, the blue light of his phone stark against his face. He doesn’t have as many pictures here. Mostly just things he found interesting in the moment: a duck, a poster about some book club, a blurry photo of the moon. He has to go back to June to find a picture of Tim, and all the way back to February to find one of them together.

But why?

An hour passes before the door clicks, making Jason startle. Dick appears, the sharp smell of pine wafting in after him. Without asking a word of permission he climbs up over the wall of the tub.

“How did you get in here?” Jason asks irritably, poking the younger boy in the ribs. Dick squirms away, shaking pine needles from hair as he worms his way steadily into Jason’s cocoon of blankets.

“Window. Then I picked the lock.”

“And who the hell taught you to do that?”

“Tim. Are you going to kill him?”

“What, for teaching you how to break and enter?”

“Not Tim,” Dick scoffs. He hesitates before he leans forward, cupping a hand to Jason’s ear. “Damian al Ghul,” he whispers.

The name sends a bucket of ice down Jason’s spine. He turns, Dick falling more solidly against him, both of them staring at each other through the dim light filtering into the small bathroom. “No,” Jason says at last, his mouth dry. “No, Dick, I - no one’s going to kill him.”

“Oh,” Dick says. He pulls the comforter up to his chin, now well and truly settled (Jason can feel his ice-cold feet against his shins). “Only, I thought you might.”

Because of that. Because of SOS, and blood, and the - the thing that Bruce doesn’t want him to see. But if that is real, if it’s really true and Batman comes home and Tim doesn’t - Jason doesn’t want to think about that. And he finds that he doesn’t want Dick to think about it, either.

“Hey, Dickie, check this out.”

Jason lifts the phone above his head and snaps a selfie of the two of them together. He brings the phone back down, swiping up so Dick can see all the filters. “This one makes us look like unicorns.”

The camera had been a gift for his thirteenth birthday. “Why?” Jason had asked, more confused than anything, and Tim had pressed the little button with the triangle on it, navigating to a picture of the three of them together: Bruce and Tim and Jason.

“Pictures make things real,” Tim told him. “So if you’re ever scared of losing something, just take a picture; it’ll never go away.”

Jason wakes to a quiet noise, Alfred clucking his tongue as he finds them both curled in Jason’s impromptu nest. His eyes meet Jason’s, and his expression softens.

“What time is it?” Jason murmurs, stifling a yawn. “Is Bruce back - did he -?”

“It is three in the afternoon, Master Jason,” Alfred replies quietly. He leans down, carefully untangling Dick from the sheets and lifting him into his arms. Dick stirs but doesn’t wake, his head falling limply against Alfred’s shoulder. “Master Bruce has not yet returned.”

“Oh,” Jason mumbles. That means - that means he hasn’t found anything yet. That doesn’t mean anything, that doesn’t mean that -

“You should try to eat something,” Alfred tells him as Jason stands, steadying himself on the door frame as he hops out of the tub. “Then you may contact Master Bruce, if you wish; he can give you a full update of the search.”

Jason pads downstairs, reluctantly grabbing a croissant and an orange before making his way down to the Cave. He logs into the comms, and starts peeling his orange. “Batman? This is Robin, checking in. Can I have an update?”

“Robin,” Batman growls a second later. He sounds tired - it’s not like his voice has really changed, it’s just that after two years hearing his voice over the comms, Jason has come to understand the minute inflections in Bruce’s tone. He sounds tired, and he sounds frustrated. “Sweeps have been conducted of both banks. Secondary sweeps are being run as we speak, but I am moving my search inland again. I am coordinating with Catwoman to canvas the Narrows, and we’ll move on to the Bowery next.”

Jason kicks his feet, swiveling in the chair. He pops a slice of orange in his mouth, the flavor bursting across his tongue like fireworks. “I took a nap. I’m eating an orange. I can help.”

“No,” Batman growls, and Jason falls still.

Because here’s the thing. Jason has never actually wanted to kill anyone before. Wanted to hurt them, yes. Wanted to sabotage them, steal from them, make them go the fuck away, but the actual act of killing? He tries to think of how he would do it, and he comes up short.

He knows the theory, of course. Bruce made sure of that, and Jason knows that Bruce knows how to kill and could do it very very easily. But the step from theory to execution is long and dark, and if he’s being honest Jason isn’t sure he can do it.

Nonetheless.

Bruce says no, and Jason isn’t dumb. It’s a different no than last time, not a sheltering-you no. This no is a stay-out-of-my-way no, a refusal in every sense of the word. No, Jason can’t help. This isn’t something Jason can help with.

Jason wonders if Bruce has ever wanted to kill anyone; he wonders if perhaps there is reason for Batman’s cardinal rule after all.

Five long hours of nothing later, Jason steps away from the computer. It’s been nearly twenty hours since anyone heard from Tim. Alfred is seconds away from marching into Gotham and forcing Bruce to come home; Jason is half of the same mind, except.

Tim’s still out there, somewhere. They haven’t found him yet, and he’s injured, and it’s been twenty hours. Jason feels mechanical. Robotic, almost, except for the burning fire growing in his stomach.

He walks to the lockers and starts changing back into his Robin uniform. A few minutes later, a small shadow joins him.

“What are you doing?”

Jason yanks on his gloves, tightening the straps. “I’m going to find al Ghul,” he says. “Don’t tell Bruce.”

Dick kicks Tim’s locker. “Are you going to kill him?”

“No!” Jason snaps. He yanks a bandoleer of batarangs out of his locker and throws it across his shoulder. “Stop asking me that!”

Dick trails him to the motorbikes. He hovers as Jason double and triple checks his gear, making sure he has everything he needs. Smoke bombs, flash grenades, extra grapples. He secures his cape and tugs his helmet over his head before turning to fix Dick with a look. “So you’re not going to say anything. Right?”

Dick shifts. “Bruce is Batman,” he says after a moment. “Bruce doesn’t like killing.”

“For the last time -” Jason breaks off, closing his eyes and taking a calming breath. “Listen, kid. I know. Which is why you can’t tell him. Because right now, if Bruce finds al Ghul, I think he will kill him. Okay? Which is why I have to find him first. So no one kills anyone.”

“But you want to kill him.”

“I want him gone,” Jason says flatly. “I want him to tell me what he did to Tim, and then I want him to never hurt Tim or you or anyone ever again.”

Dick doesn’t say anything else, only watches as Jason revs his engine, and pulls out of the cave.

Jason goes to the old Moritz factory. They already searched here, hours ago, but that had been then. Batman had been there, and Jason’s gut is telling him that this time will be different. (It’s also telling him that this is a bad idea, but Jason pointedly ignores that bit.) He’s here to find Tim; he’s here for Damian al Ghul, and he isn’t going to leave without an answer.

“Al Ghul!” Jason shouts, voice echoing around the abandoned factory. “Come out, you coward!”

“Well, well,” a voice murmurs, and Jason spins to face the man stepping out of the shadows behind him. “So this is the Robin, hm? So this is the little bird who has taken my place at my father’s side.” Jason’s eyes burn, his hands burn, all of him - it burns. Is this the last person Tim saw? Is this the last voice he heard, is this the man that - that did it.

“ Greetings, little bird.”

“Tell me what happened,” Jason snarls.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” al Ghul smirks.

“Bullshit! Tell me what you did to Tim!”

“Ahh, you mean that. Yes ... Timothy Wayne.”

The man turns and paces away. Jason spins warily, keeping him in sight at all times. “Yes, I see what you mean now. You want to know what happened?” He turns back to Jason, lips curling into a sneer. “Your brother was weak. A pathetic, cowardly heir undeserving of my father’s attention. His death was child’s play.”

Once, when Jason was very small, the Gotham River froze over. His father took him down to the bank, and together they shuffled across the frozen expanse, Jason clutching tightly to his father’s hand. What he remembers most is the warmth of the strong grip; he remembers the way it had tightened into a bruise as the ice beneath his feet cracked, pulling him away from the end of the world.

The world cracks, but there’s no one to pull him away. Jason grits his teeth against a scream, ruthlessly shoving down the rage like fire within him. “You’re lying,” he manages.

“Perhaps,” al Ghul says. “Perhaps not. Would you like to know his final words?”

No! Because whatever they are they won’t be true, they’ll be a lie just like everything else out of this monster’s mouth. But there’s a small voice in Jason’s head that he can’t quiet, a voice that cries yes. Yes, because if this is the truth then Tim is dead.

“Please,” al Ghul mocks, and for an instant Jason freezes, for a second he can’t breathe because that’s Tim’s voice coming out of the monster’s mouth. “Please, stop,” Tim’s voice pleads, and without warning Jason’s vision goes red, the pent rage howling up like a river breaking its dam. Without a word he launches himself across the room, batarangs already flying through the air as he reaches for more.

“Tt,” Damian tuts. He twists gracefully, wrist snapping out fast to fling a fistful of knives straight at Jason. “Pitiful. Just like your brother.”

And then there’s a sword sweeping around and Jason is forced to leap back, to fire a grapple at the ceiling so that the downward swing doesn’t take off his arm. He lands on a rafter and takes off running, jumping agilely between beams as he charts his course. There. Jason drops a flash grenade and flicks on the shields in his mask.

The grenade erupts, blinding light flashing through the room. Jason takes off running again, chucking two more grenades: another flash followed by smoke - and then he stumbles as they go off, a cold pressure entering beneath his clavicle.

Fuck.

He falls in slow motion. The grenades go off, flash followed by smoke, and Jason tumbles off the beam as he clutches at his shoulder. He catches the rafter by the tips of his fingers, biting his tongue against a scream as his arm pulls against the injury.

“You’re a tricky one, aren’t you.”

Jason looks up to see al Ghul standing on the beam above him. Wasn’t he just - hadn’t he been -

Al Ghul’s heel comes down on his fingers and Jason falls. And he knows how to fall, he knows how to protect himself on the landing; he knows how to twist and how to tense based on the calculated height of the fall. But he’s injured, and he’s angry, and he’s still trying to figure out how he miscalculated so completely, so it takes a moment for his ears to register the snap as he hits the ground wrong. It takes a moment for the pain of the broken leg to register, for his vision to white out as he screams.

He blinks, gasping raggedly as his vision comes back online. Al Ghul is standing before him wreathed in smoke from the grenade, and for one bizarre moment Jason thinks it must be Bruce. “Fuck you,” he whispers. He bites the inside of his cheek: he won’t plead, not to this monster. “Fuck you!”

For a moment al Ghul says nothing. For a moment he just stands there, a dark shadow staring silently as Jason blinks furiously up at him. He almost reaches for another grenade. He almost reaches for a batarang, for anything to impart the depths of his pain on the shadow before him, but before he can al Ghul kneels, and places a hand gently on Jason’s broken leg. Jason goes completely still, his breath an unwilling prisoner in his chest.

“Nothing,” al Ghul says softly, “stands in my way.”

He gives Jason’s leg a squeeze, and Jason loses a minute to blinding pain.

When his vision clears again, al Ghul is gone. Jason’s breath escapes in a ragged burst, tears rushing from his mask as he gasps quietly, scrabbling at the knife embedded in his shoulder. It takes a moment for him to gather himself. It takes a minute before he can lift trembling fingers to activate his emergency beacon.

Chapter Text

When the Bat-computer starts flashing a red alert, Dick goes to get Alfred. He takes him downstairs and points to the flashing red lights, the map with Robin’s location, the blinking communicator. He doesn’t say anything, because Jason told him not to. He doesn’t need to; Alfred pales, and immediately opens the channel. Robin’s voice echoes through the cave, shaky and clear.

Jason is injured, Jason needs help, Jason needs a rescue. Dick does handsprings on the mat, takes a running start to a double backflip off a stalagmite. Al Ghul did it, Damian al Ghul, Talia’s son, Ra’s al Ghul’s grandson. Dick climbs the trophy shelves and balances along the edges, hopping from one to the other with his arms out. Batman found Robin in an old factory; broken leg, broken fingers, knife wound from Damian al Ghul.

“He said - he said he k-killed Tim!” Jason sobs, his voice tiny and mechanical across the cave, and Dick pauses, perched on top of a case holding an old Batman suit. He thinks he might want to cry about that later; he wonders what Batman is thinking right now, and if he’s remembering the same thing Dick is.

You made the right choice, Dick.

Probably not.

But if Batboy is gone and Robin is injured, then that means it’s Dick’s turn to help. He hops down from the glass case and starts poking through the cabinets, lifting a grapple, a small mask, a set of gloves. He considers going to change into his old leotard; he would be able to fight better in that, he thinks.

The phone rings, the one that’s connected to upstairs. Dick trots across the cave to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Hello, love,” a stranger’s voice answers. “Is your dad home?”

Dick grips the phone tight. “I can take a message.”

“I’m calling from Gotham General. We just identified a John Doe admitted earlier today as Timothy Wayne. Can you tell Mister Wayne that Timothy is here?”

Dick turns. “Alfred!” he yells. Alfred turns, his eyes coming to land on Dick standing by the telephone. “Alfred, I found Tim!”

The lighting of the hospital is harsh. Dick doesn’t like it.

Everyone from the manor is here. Jason is downstairs on the kid’s floor with Alfred; Dick is up here with Bruce, standing next to him and staring into the ICU which is where Tim is. It’s hard to see much through the glass, and what he can see of Tim’s face is mostly obscured by tubes and wires, his pale skin nearly translucent. Machinery hums in the background, fans and pumps and the faint beeping and ticking of the monitors, all working to keep Tim alive.

Four times, the doctor had said when Bruce asked for a report. He coded four times during surgery. That means that Tim technically died four times. That means that he’s in a coma, and the doctors aren’t sure if he’ll wake up.

Dick glances up at the large man beside him. Bruce radiates silence, a terrible silence which whispers around Dick like a swarm of locusts. He has dark bags under his eyes, and his skin is nearly as pale as Tim’s.

“Bruce.”

Bruce looks down. “Yes?”

“What happened?”

Bruce looks up again, the smallest frown crossing his face as his brows pinch down. “A sword,” he says at last, voice so low that Dick has to strain to hear it. “A katana, from the shape of the incision. It seems that it went through him before he fell; he must have managed to swim, but inhaled some water. Pneumonia is a serious concern. They had to perform a partial hepatectomy and emergency splenectomy.” Bruce glances down at him again. “Do you know what that means?”

“They had to take out his liver and spleen.”

“Yes,” Bruce says, his eyes going back to Tim. “Good.”

Dick wonders how Tim felt, when the sword ran him through. He wonders how Damian felt, delivering the killing blow.

“Jason said you were going to kill Damian.”

Bruce sighs, turning to kneel before Dick. He holds out an arm invitingly and, after a moment of consideration, Dick steps forward. “Killing is never the answer, Dick,” he says gently, as Dick leans into the hug. “You know that.”

Dick does know that. He thinks he might know it better than anyone.

Three months ago, Dick’s parents fell to their deaths. Three months ago Dick’s old life ended with the snap of a wire, and the realization that their deaths had been no accident at all.

Dick had sought revenge. He had broken into the circus security van to comb through the footage from the one grainy camera of everyone who had come to the circus that night. He had made a list of suspects in his ratty ruled notebook, and had used the library computers to check them off one by one. And when he’d found the last name - Anthony Zucco - he had taken a kitchen knife from the group home he was staying at and run away to kill the man who had decided to kill his parents.

And he’d succeeded. Almost.

(Tony Zucco’s breath was short, the jagged sounds filling the small office. He looked like he was trying to say something; plead for his life, maybe, not that Dick could understand him (not that he cared). Most of the guy’s teeth were scattered over the floor anyway.

Dick closed his eyes, the knife gripped tight in his hands. He shifted his stance, and imagined he was back in their little camper, Papa reading him stories while Mama worked on her English, her face lit blue by the light of their small computer.

“Grayson.”

Dick opened his eyes, and saw a monster standing on the other side of the room. Batman, the Dark Knight, the very personification of the vengeance Dick so desperately sought. His grip tightened, and Zucco moaned.

“Are you going to kill him?”

Yes, That was what he was here to do.

“He killed my parents.”

Silence, the type of silence filled with potential, the eye of the storm. He killed my parents hekilledmyparents HEKILLEDMYPARENTS!

Dick lurched forward and slammed the knife down, and he was aiming for the face, he was, but he hit the floor beside it instead. The stainless steel buried itself in the dirty carpet and the black figure leapt forward, heavy cape sweeping up and around to shelter Dick from the world.

I want him dead, Dick had sobbed. I want him to be dead!

You made the right choice, Bruce murmured, and Dick knew that he was right.)

So Dick had succeeded, except he hadn’t. He’d aimed to kill and looked away, and it turned out that that had been a choice after all. He’d stood over the man beaten bloody before him, and realized that taking a life should never need to be an answer.

Two months ago, Dick realized what a life is worth; that killing is always a choice, for better or for worse. And now he looks at Tim, and he watches Jason, and he wonders how old Damian was when he decided there weren’t any other options.

Dick decides that he wants to find out. So when Alfred finally convinces Bruce to lie down, Dick declares a need for the bathroom, and then he walks out of the hospital and into the late Gotham twilight.

Damian finds the littlest Wayne near the hospital. He watches for a while, noting the confident movements as the kid crawls up a fire escape, the little cartwheel he does upon reaching the roof. He watches the kid spin, watches him realize he’s being watched, and meets piercing blue eyes across the expanse of the twilight city.

Damian smiles. The kid hesitates, and gives a small wave.

When Damian lands beside him, the boy takes a small step back. Richard “Dick” Grayson, born and raised in the circus until three months ago. Then he was taken into the ever-expanding Wayne family, likely already being groomed to take up the role of child side-kick. Damian takes a step forward, and Dick hops a step back.

“Are you going to kill me?” Dick asks.

“Yes,” Damian replies. He selects a knife, balancing it on his finger. “Are you going to let me?”

He throws the blade with a flick of his wrist. Dick springs into a flip, tossing himself neatly down onto the fire escape he’d just clambered up. His head pops over the edge of the roof. “Why?”

Damian hums. “Because I am here to remake my father’s legacy. And you are a part of that legacy.”

“He’s not my dad,” the kid points out, pulling himself back onto the roof. Damian tosses two more knives in his direction, testing his abilities; the kid dodges both with ease. “He’s my guardian. You don’t have to kill me.”

“No,” Damian agrees. “I don’t.”

He stops playing easy. He lashing out fast, aiming for the kid’s knee, and Dick twists and leaps to perch on top of a nearby chimney. The look he gives Damian is decidedly calculating before he pulls a grapple from his hoodie and swings off the edge of the building.

Damian chases the kid for a full half an hour. At first he tries to come in close, to corner Dick in a vulnerable position. The kid doesn’t let it happen; he jumps and leaps and flies out of the way, throwing grapple lines and scaling walls and buildings until they’re far across the city and Damian has started to hang back, to observe more closely how this eight-year-old is able to evade him. Eventually they reach the docks and when Damian stays a full building away from where Dick landed, the kid pauses as well.

Perhaps this will work better if Damian approaches Dick the same way he had Tim. Offer a false sense of security until the boy comes in range of a little death. Keeping the kid in the corner of his eye, Damian settles slowly onto his rooftop to wait.

It works, more or less. It takes two hours, but eventually the kid inches his way close enough that they’re both sitting on the same rooftop overlooking the harbor, black waves lapping against the dark horizon.

"Robin."

It's the first word Dick has spoken since Damian started trying to kill him. Damian doesn't move, doesn't acknowledge the eight-year-old perched on the roof beside him. It doesn't seem to matter: the boy continues anyway.

“Jason says it's for Robin Hood, but for me - I'm gonna to be Robin for my mom. Because I was her little Robin." Dick glances at Damian, then follows his gaze out over the harbor. “What would you have been, if you were Batman’s partner?”

It’s irrelevant. Damian palms a blade, side-eyeing Dick. If he pierces the supraspinatus, the boy will never be able to use his arm again.

Dick glances at him, and frowns. “Don’t.”

Despite himself, Damian feels his lips pull up in a smirk. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t throw another knife at me.”

“You have some small skill,” Damian admits, letting the blade fall back into his sleeve. “With the right training, you could be quite good.”

Dick’s feet bounce against the edge of the roof, restless. “I know. I’m going to be Robin someday.”

“Batman’s sidekick.”

“Yeah.”

When Damian was fourteen, he was sent on a mission to assassinate the family of an influential General. It was an undercover mission; he had been signed on as a playmate for the General’s eldest son, someone to keep the boy company and to help watch the younger brother.

Anton, aged twelve. Blake, aged nine.

Damian had tolerated the boys because that was the mission. Both had been simple to the point of idiocy, but he had put aside his personal feelings on the matter and pretended to befriend them both. Anton had taught him how to play American football; Blake had shown him how to draw a cat, and in return Damian had instructed him on how to throw a knife.

The assassinations had taken place a week later, and two days after that Damian was back in Nanda Parbat, forehead pressed to the ground before his grandfather’s feet. The mission had gone well; no one even suspected the League’s involvement, and the General was a broken man. The killings had been easy, child’s play: they blurred together with all the others, becoming one distant memory among so many others.

What Damian remembers most isn’t the targets’ deaths. What he remembers most are Blake’s fingers tapping the blank sheet of paper as he patiently explained the importance of a straight line and a curve; he remembers his own fingers guiding Blake’s wrists, teaching him how to survive.

Damian tosses another knife at Dick, curious. Dick dodges, pauses, then lifts the knife and throws it back.

“You shouldn’t have tried to kill Tim,” Dick informs him.

“And yet,” Damian says, bored. “Here we are.”

“You didn’t kill Jason,” Dick points out.

“I could have. Easily.”

Dick balances on one leg, weight shifting minutely with every breeze that wafts up from the docks. He twists into a flip and finishes with a hand-spring, and when he comes upright he has one of Damian’s fallen knives in his hand. He hesitates, then holds it out. “I don’t think you’re all bad,” he offers. “Show me how to throw it?”

“No.”

Dick’s expression falls slightly. He considers the knife, considers Damian, then lets it slip from his fingers and fall to the ground. Damian watches the blade hit the loose gravel of the rooftop, and feels an unexpected tug in his gut. He doesn’t like it.

“You should come back to the manor.”

At first, Damian doesn’t think he heard Dick right. When the silence stretches on, however, he slowly shakes his head. “No,” he repeats, and it comes out more like a growl.

“You could. I’m pretty sure everyone would hate you, but I wouldn’t. I’d tell them - I’d tell them....”

He trails off. Damian lets him. Finally Dick seems to gather the courage to try again. “Why didn’t you just come to the manor in the first place? Why did you try to kill everyone anyway?”

“Tt.” Damian looks away. “I already told you, little Robin. If you cannot remember -”

“No, that’s not what I meant! I meant - why do you kill people? It’s not a good thing to do.”

Damian sneers. “What do you know of killing?”

Dick takes a smell step forward. He’s close enough now that, if Damian lunged, he could bring him down. The kid clears his throat. “My parents died,” he says, his voice a bit higher than it was a moment ago. “A man called Tony Zucco killed them. I tried to kill him. I was going to do it.”

“You failed,” Damian surmises, voice flat.

Dick shakes his head. “No. I - I won. I didn’t do it because I didn’t want to, not because I couldn’t.”

Damian scoffs. “Killing is not a choice,” he says, “when failure is not an option.”

Dick hops to balance on his other foot, and changes tactics.“What if you could be Bruce’s son?”

“I am his heir,” Damian replies coolly. Dick makes a frustrated noise.

“No! I mean: what if you were brothers with Tim and Jason. What if one day you were my brother too?”

Again Damian is silent, and after a moment Dick huffs.

“You could have come home,” he says. “You could have helped Batman, like Batboy and Robin, and you could have helped me be Robin too. I would have liked that, I think.”

It’s a moot point. Damian doesn’t understand why Dick has brought it up, until the boy concludes sadly: “We’re almost.”

Damian glances at him.

“You’re almost good,” Dick elaborates. “I’m almost good too. Do you think together we could have been great?”

It’s just past midnight when the sea breeze picks up, the waning gibbous breaking dark clouds to cast ghostly shadows across the empty pier. Damian rises, lifting his arms in a stretch. “Well, little Robin?” he says, when he notices Dick watching him. “It’s late. Time to fly back home.”

Dick hesitates. “I’m lost,” he admits after a moment. “Can you show me the way back?”

Looking back, Damian has a hard time understanding what makes him agree. He doesn’t understand how he could have mistaken it for anything other than what it was; a weak manipulation carried out by a boy over a decade his junior. He has a hard time reconciling his actions with the man he knows himself to be, with the tool his mother had crafted.

Still, inexplicably, he stands.

Maybe he wants to know Dick just a little bit longer. Maybe he wants to share a world, briefly, where killing is a choice after all. Maybe he sees an eight-year-old boy with prodigious skill on the edge of a life worth living.

Three blocks before they reach the hospital Damian takes Dick aside, gesturing him into a narrow alley. “You are skilled,” he tells him, remembering the way the kid had dodged every small death thrown his way. “I am my father’s heir; soon I will carry the mantle of the Batman and, if you wish, there is a place for you at my side.”

He crouches down so that they’re eye to eye. He reaches for his knife, the little knife he has kept since he was eight years old, and offers it to Dick.

And then Dick glances at his wrist. At his watch, the sleek little black watch that is the perfect size to conceal a tracking device. And Damian realizes that he has been tricked, that he has been a fool from the start; that Richard Grayson has played him straight into his father’s hands.

“I’m sorry,” Dick says, staring at him with wide eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“You asked me what I wanted,” Damian says, letting his intonation fall away as his arm drops. He does not have long before Batman arrives; surely the man has been searching for his wayward charge since the moment he went missing. His chest is empty, and he aches. “I gave you an answer.”

An eye for an eye, Ra’s murmurs in his ear. A life for a life. And so the world goes round.

“Tim wanted to be your friend,” Dick whispers. “Jason wanted to kill you, for what you did to Tim.”

“And you? What did you want, little Robin?”

“I wanted to know if I needed to hurt you.”

Damian licks his teeth, forcing words up through the emptiness in his chest. “And what did you find?”

Dick glances at him. “Papa always said there were two sides to a story. Bruce says that killing is wrong: why? You want to kill everyone, why? I think there are more. I think you have lots of sides to you, just like me.” And Dick does something then, something that steals Damian’s breath away and makes him cold, cold like he’s never felt before even in the heights of the Himalayas. Dick walks right up to him, fearless, and places one small hand on Damian’s chest.

(For a moment he feels it. For a moment it’s not empty, for just an instant there’s a strange warmth, the beat of something that might once have been.)

“I wanted to know if you were a good person,” Dick says quietly. “Because I’m dangerous like you, and I tried to kill someone too, and I’m sad just like you. But I won’t let you hurt my family.” His hand falls from Damian’s chest and he turns away, his hair falling to obscure his face. “And I don’t hurt good people.”

The silence is suffocating. Damian can’t breathe.

Dick clears his throat. “You should go,” he says. His shoulders are hunched around his ears, his back turned. “Batman’s coming. You should go.”

Without his permission, Damian’s feet move. Without thought he takes one step back, and then another, and then Dick turns towards him, his eyes wide and pleading as he stares across the space between them. And, quite suddenly, Damian wants more than anything -

Do you think we could have been great?

It’s too late. It’s been too late for far too long, and this is something that Dick failed to foresee: Damian is not a good person. He’s never been a good person, he’s never wanted to be. So maybe this is why, when Batman appears in the alley behind Dick, Damian decides to act. Maybe this is why he doesn’t run, and instead spins his knife, shifting the blade to the tips of his fingers (mustn’t let a good knife go to waste, and Damian wants to scream).

Damian sees a small boy before him. He sees a father looming behind the boy, feels the small knife between his fingers, and it feels like there’s an avalanche rushing towards him and he has nowhere to run. He can taste the loneliness in the night; it wells up from his stomach and weeps down from the sky and sticks to his teeth like syrup, all the grief he’s ever buried for that eight-year-old boy left for dead all those years ago.

Damian sees a boy with a shadow looming behind him (he feels small fingers guiding his own across a blank page, delicate skulls pinched between thumb and forefinger) and he thinks: never again.

So he throws the knife, tip over hilt over tip. Deadly aim plus lethal accuracy means a slit carotid, means life lost in seconds, means dead. Means a little boy killed before he can live to grieve, before he can grow to mourn.

Except.

Except in his rational calculation of the murder of a young boy, Damian did not account for love. Don’t blame him; how can he account for something he has never known? Don’t say it was a failure, when the blade does not hit its mark; when it hits instead the shadow, the father who stepped before the blade to save his son.

Chapter Text

Four months later .

“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” Tim says, sliding into the chair across from Damian. “I’d like to try again.”

Damian thinks he was very clear on what he thought of Timothy Wayne. He thinks that Tim must be stupider than he looks, if he’s visiting Damian in Blackgate after Damian failed to assassinate him.

“I killed you,” Damian says coolly.

“You killed my spleen,” Tim corrects flatly. “And then you pushed me into the river.”

“And you call that the wrong foot?”

Tim snorts. “Well it certainly wasn’t the right one.” He reaches up to push his bangs out of his eyes. “Time for take two, I think.”

Damian decides to humor him. “And what do you want this time?”

Tim says nothing for a moment. Then, almost abruptly: “Bruce doesn’t know I’m here.”

Damian narrows his eyes.

“I mean, I’m an adult now, right? I can do what I want, and I don’t have to tell Bruce about it.” His hand falls on the table between them, thin fingers tapping out an unconscious melody. “I think Dick would come see you if he could. You scared him with that knife, though, he told me you tried to kill him. Like, really tried.”

Tim glances at Damian. Damian returns his gaze.

Tim releases a pent breath. “Anyway,” he says. “The way I see it, you failed. And maybe that was an accident, maybe you actually did want to kill us and you just - messed up. But I’ve done research on you. I looked into your history, encrypted as it is, and the thing is, you never miss. So. I don’t need to know why; I don’t think we’re there yet. But, if you want, I would like to try again.”

They sit in silence for a while. Eventually Tim’s fingers fall from the table, slipping into the pouch of his hoodie.

“Why?” Damian asks at last.

Tim shifts at the word, withdrawing his hand from his pocket. “Cards?” he asks, holding a deck in the air. When Damian doesn’t respond, he places it on the table between them.

“Because I always wanted an older brother,” Tim says, cutting the deck and lifting the two halves. He steeples the cards between his fingers, letting them fall in a neat shuffle. Two more shuffles and then he deals, seven to Damian and seven to himself.

Damian mirrors Tim as he lifts the cards before his face. For the first time in a long time, he is unsure.

“But it’s okay if you’re not ready for that,” Tim continues, tongue between his teeth as he arranges his cards. “I mean, I get it; it’s hard to go from being an only child to an older brother overnight. So I thought, why don’t we start by being friends?”

Tim looks up and Damian meets his eyes, and he thinks: maybe. Maybe, because no is such a small word and yes is hardly any better. Maybe, because....

Tim’s eyes crinkle, eyebrows up as he regards Damian over his fan of cards. “Do you have any nines?”