Chapter Text
Living with the Wayne flight was easily one of the most strange experiences of Damian’s short life.
Nothing that he knew from the League applied. All rules were broken.
Rule: Train your hardest at all times and every day.
The Waynes never spilled blood during their training though.
They trained hard, no doubt, but never to the point of injury.
Whenever Todd and Grayson trained together, it inevitably devolved into the wrestling Damian had seen that first day. It would have been so easy for the action to become aggressive, but it always reassembled more of the roughhousing of puppies than a true duel. Todd and Grayson would throw themselves at each other, batting wings and rising on their hind legs to lock claws in a test of strength. Todd was larger, but Grayson was quicker and more experienced and the tussles were quite evenly matched between them.
Occasionally, Drake (Damian thought it was ridiculous for the Goldenfang to have the last name of Drake ) joined them, though they were markedly more careful when they sparred with him.
The Goldenfang breed was naturally smaller than both the Phoenix and the Thermotect and his delicate frills could easily get torn. In addition, the breed relied on their highly potent venom as their main weapon— a weapon Drake thankfully didn’t use against his flightmates.
The older drakes took that into consideration when they wrestled with Drake. They were gentler, careful not to rip his flowy veils, but also making sure he never felt lesser even though he was smaller.
His mother would have called it cowardice. Weakness. A failure in ruthlessness.
But Damian… he couldn’t help but think it was nice not to constantly fear his older flightmates.
It would shame his mother and especially his grandfather, but he couldn’t help but want the same care to be shown to him.
(And the preening session after the wrestling, the times when the drakes coiled around the Goldenfang, caring for him like he was one of them even though he lacked feathers. The gentle licks, the warm chuckles, the laughter between purrs as they all made sure they were taken care of… Damian couldn’t help but want that too.)
Rule: Never show your human form to anyone. It is weak and a pitiful ability to harbor in dragon blood.
The Waynes broke this rule easily and casually as if it was never a rule at all.
They switched between their forms with a careless air that boggled Damian’s mind.
They were human to eat, to sleep, to go about their daily business.
They hugged each other. They leaned into each other’s skin. They relaxed around their siblings, not caring whether they had skin or scales, and didn’t seem to think twice about touch.
At this point, Damian had seen all combinations of humans with dragons.
Dick, as a human, practically buried in Jason’s feathers.
Jason, as a human, in the middle of the curl of Drake’s golden, willowy body, reading and relaxing against the dragon’s scales.
Tim, as a human, balanced on Father’s nose so he could jump off and into their backyard lake.
Even Alfred, his father’s father and the true patriarch of the flight, could be found in both human and dragon form. He was a smaller Welsh breed, wingless and long-bodied. He was roughly the same size as Drake and it was not uncommon to see both the dragons padding down the halls with a smaller human between them.
They were all comfortable with each other in a way that Damian had never seen before.
Which led to the grievous and most terrible rule that the Waynes broke.
Rule: Never let anyone on your back. To be rode is to become a simple animal.
“Sparkles! Where are you?” A feminine voice that Damian had never heard echoed through the Manor’s halls. He instantly tensed up as a stranger apparently crossed through their home that was supposed to be safe.
He remembered the last time a stranger had come into his supposedly safe home. He remembered Grayson tearing it to shreds and taking Damian’s thin sense of security with it.
Grayson had more than made up his terrifying entrance and now Damian felt safer with him than he ever had felt with his grandfather. But the initial fear was still there and sank fangs into his heart.
Damian scrambled to his legs, fighting to get all four feet under him.
Should he go to defend his home? He was still a dragonet, but maybe he could take a fully-grown human. Should he tell father? Father surely wouldn’t let this random woman into the house.
There was the clack of claws on marble flooring and Damian felt slightly better.
The quickness of the pace, meant it was Drake rushing towards the front of the house. Father must have sent him to deal with this threat.
“Steph!” he cheered and Damian heard the claws scrape to a halt. “I didn’t know you were coming over today!”
He didn’t sound angry. He didn’t even sound the least bit threatened just… happy? For a human?
Damian crept towards the front hall and silently poked his snout between the staircase baluster to watch the Goldenfang and the intruder.
Drake was practically prancing around her, his tail wagging like a stupid dog as he blabbered. The glimmer of the delicate fins waved in the Manor light, casting gold-tinted reflections on the flooring and walls. He knew that sometimes Goldenfangs used the reflection of they to confuse and mesmerise prey.
This definitely wasn’t that, though.
It was just some useless sparkles.
And the human wasn’t intimidated at all. She just stood there with a smile on her face as Drake excitedly danced around her. When he leaned in to nuzzle her side with his snout (that was a dragon behaviour), she just smiled larger and scratched over his eyebrow ridge and down behind his ear.
Shame welled up in Damian’s stomach when Drake just leaned into the touch more and his hind leg thumped against the tile.
How dare he let a human treat him like that?
Did he have no pride at all?
“Steph?”
Damian perked. That was Grayson’s voice. Surely he would put a stop to this disgusting show of servile behavior.
He was in his human form and didn’t even blink twice at Drake nuzzling into Steph’s hands like a puppy.
He did smirk though.
And Damian waited for the Thermotect to burst forth. For skin to slide into scales and freeze this pathetic human into a block of ice. To show her the true power of dragons and how terrifying they can be.
“Are you here for what I think you’re here for?” Grayson said, his eyes growing sharp.
The human’s smile shifted into something… not dangerous… Damian would almost call it competitive, though he had no idea why.
“Yeah,” she said, stroking down Drake’s head as she spoke. Suddenly the Goldenfang, a terrifying breed for how quickly they could turn deadly, looked more like a cat than a dragon. “I’m always ready to kick Jason and Tim’s asses.”
The drake in her arm squawked and pulled his head away. Grayson had his chest puffed with pride.
“You guys won once last time” the Goldenfang shot back, affronted. His form shivered and shifted and suddenly there was a black-haired teenager standing in front of the intruder. “And that was only because you and Dick set up the course against us.”
Steph smirked. “That sounds like something only losers would say.”
Drake placed his hands on his hips as his eyes narrowed dangerously. Damian could see the fierceness of his dragon form through them.
“Fine. We will settle this today. I’m getting Jason.”
Drake shot back into the Manor’s halls, calling for the Phoenix.
Damian didn’t know what was happening. He had thought that Drake had appreciated the human’s presence and now he was challenging her to some kind of duel. A duel that involved Grayson and Todd?
The human and Grayson were murmuring furiously together like they were generals in a war room.
“The Ridge Trek?”
“No, Jason and Tim have been training on that one. Maybe Dragon’s Teeth Crags?”
“Didn’t Bruce close that off?”
“Yeah, because a storm had caused some avalanches and he and Alfred needed to check it out. Alfie said that it’s good to go as long as we avoid the Western branch.”
“Great,” Steph smiled like a fox. “Jason hates the Crags.”
Dragon’s Teeth Crags? Damian had heard his siblings mention that area before and he knew it was a series of spindly mountains towards the southern half of Father’s territory. He didn’t know why a duel would take place there.
“Ah, so this was why I heard Jason start shouting about ‘audacity.’”
Damian startled, flinched back from the baluster. Even in his human form, Father was silent and as intimidating as a coming storm.
The dragonet bowed to his flightleader, not sure how to respond. “Yes, they are apparently are prepping for a duel.”
Father shook his head and his expression settled into a soft, affectionate smile as Todd burst into the entry hall with Drake trailing behind him. They were all human and Father didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.
“They aren’t dueling,” he said, his eyes trailing the group as they headed back out the front door. “They are preparing for a race.”
A race?
“Would you like to see it? It’s quite a sight.”
Damian hesitated but his curiosity was peaked. He nodded and his father began guiding him down the stairs. The stairs were built for humans and managing them with four legs was always difficult, but father hadn’t given him explicit permission to shift into a human.
Father waited patiently until Damian reached the bottom of the stairs and took Damian out of the door.
Father walked Damian to a wooden house in the backyard.
He had seen the house before but had never inquired about its purpose. It was huge, painted white on all sides, and had some of the largest doors Damian had ever seen. Most of the time, those doors were closed, but today they had been swung open.
The doors revealed that the house was actually some type of barn, full of tack that was similar to what Damian had seen used on horses. Except that everything in the barn was much too large to be fitted on a horse.
Steph and Tim buzzed around the barn, picking up straps nearly the size of their body and dragged them to the other side. They were bickering, lobbing competitive insults to each other, and trying to make each other trip over the straps.
Father and Damian followed them and came around to the other side. He didn’t know what he had been expecting, but this was worse than he could have ever imagined.
Grayson and Todd were on the other side of the barn, both in their dragon forms. They were striking against each other, Grayson’s blue-black scales and feathers a stark contrast to Todd’s red and golds. An ice dragon and a fire dragon should never get along so well, but here they were laying placidly next to each other while two humans placed leather straps on their bodies.
“Father,” Damian gasped in horror as the female human held a bridle up and Grayson slipped his muzzle into it. “What are they doing?”
The female human was patting the straps, clicking buckles into place while asking Grayson if everything fit correctly. The Thermotect didn’t fight against the binds at all and actually helped as she put tack around his face.
“Everything comfy, Dick?” she said as she finished with the bridle. “Nothing catching or pinching, right?”
The Thermotect hummed and nodded. “Yeah, it’s good. You can go ahead with the saddle now.”
The saddle?
Damian whipped his head up to Father expecting him to stop this degradation of his eldest son, but the man just stood there as the female human ducked back into the barn.
How… how… how was he allowing this?
“Tim,” Todd said with an exasperated huff. The Phoenix drake was already bridled and Drake was trying to fit a saddle behind his head. “You gave me B’s saddle again.”
“Really?” Drake said, stopping mid-motion. He glared at the leather in front of him until he groaned. “God, you’re right.”
“Of course, I’m right,” Jason laughed, his huge sides heaving with the sound. “I’m the one wearing the damn thing.”
Tim scowled as he slipped the saddle off and ran past Father and Damian to disappear inside the barn again.
Father slowly walked between the two drakes, his eyes flicking over the leather that was rapidly being strapped onto them. There was no disapproval or disgust in his gaze.
He motioned Todd’s head down and carefully readjusted one of the buckles around his muzzle.
It was strange to see Father in his human form against Todd’s bulk. Even though as a dragon, he rivaled the Phoenix in size, as a human he wasn’t any larger than the drake’s head.
“What course are you planning on running today?” He asked as he gently petted some of Todd’s facial feathers.
“Tim and I thought maybe on going to—“
“The Crags!” Shouted both Grayson and the female human at the same time.
The Phoenix’s muzzle twisted in distaste and he pulled his head out of Father’s hands to glare at the other pair.
“No. We aren’t going to the stupid Crags,” he growled lowly. The feathers on his crest, puffed with his indignation. “Tim and I were thinking about going to the Beach.”
The Thermotect pouted (an expression that Damian hadn’t even known that a full-grown dragon could do). “I don’t wanna go to the Beach. It’s boring.”
“Well, I don’t wanna go to the Crags. The dust and tiny rocks take at least a week to get out of my feathers.”
Drake came back, holding a different saddle. He lugged it to the Phoenix and waited for Todd to dip his head so he could begin strapping it on again and connecting it to the bridle. Father helped him by buckling the leather under Todd’s throat and making sure it was secure.
There was a shuffle and Damian watched in horror as the human female finished strapping on Grayson’s tack. She pulled a pair of reins back over his head and asked one final time if everything was comfortable.
Upon his approval, she put her foot into a stirrup and hoisted herself up into the saddle.
Chills ran down Damian’s spine as he watched the dragon that had destroyed the League of Assassins, the dragon he knew could be terrifyingly deadly and also incredibly kind, the dragon he had been silently looking up to in his head, was ridden like a horse.
The human settled behind Grayson’s head and picked up the reins in one hand. She didn’t pull on them, and just let them hang loose as Grayson rose to his feet.
“Come on, Scales,” she shouted towards Drake. “Can’t you get your chicken to move any faster?”
Todd growled and the heat of his breath filled the room. “Tim, what’s taking so long? They are mocking us.”
Drake rolled his eyes and pulled on a stirrup. “I’m not rushing through this, Jay. It’s my ass that will go plummeting if something slips or unbuckles.”
“I’d catch you.”
“I know, but I still wouldn’t like it.”
The Phoenix drake huffed and glared at the Thermotect that was prancing in front of him. He remained silent as the Goldenfang finished his double-checking of the tack.
“Okay, Jason,” he said, patting the Phoenix on his neck. “Anything tugging or pinching?”
The Phoenix raised his head and twisted his neck to test the binds. The leather stayed in place and the saddle didn’t move from its position at the top of Todd’s neck.
“No.”
“Anything loose or too tight?”
The Phoenix gave his head a rough shake and the saddle rattled a bit but remained secure.
“You’re all good, short stack. Just get up already.”
Drake rolled his eyes but gave a huge grin as Todd leaned his head down and towards the younger drake.
His movements were practiced as he smoothly swung himself up into the saddle and buckled himself into it. He adjusted a couple of the straps, but soon took Todd’s reins like the other human had done.
He pulled on a pair of goggles and flexed his fingers in the leather gloves he was wearing. He shifted the reins in his hands and leaned down to brace his body.
“You ready, Jay?” he said with a sly grin.
“I was born ready.”
Drake’s grip on the reins tightened and he pressed his heels into the sides of Todd’s neck. The effect was instant and Todd burst forward. He ran out of the barn and towards the Thermotect. Drake made another small movement, a simple press of his legs, and Todd snapped his wings open and launched himself into the sky.
The Phoenix’s laugh rang out as he flew upwards through the sky.
The Thermotect and his rider squawked and scrambled to get up into the air after the Phoenix that was rapidly becoming a distant red dot.
Beside Damian, Father chuckled warmly and walked out to where Todd had been moments before. As he moved, he shifted letting human skin blur into draconic limbs. Arms changed into powerful wings. His delicate human body became something truly awe-inspiring.
When he was fully shifted, he looked back to Damian. “Come here, sweetheart, we need to hurry if we want to keep up with them.”
The small nickname sent a burst of warmth through Damian’s heart and he resisted the hatchling urge to purr at the word.
He swallowed the instinct down and Damian shuffled forward to let the older drake pick him up with his mouth. His father’s teeth pressed into his sides, but they were careful not to dig into his skin. It was nothing like when his Grandfather held him and nearly dug his teeth into Damain’s side so that Damian was helplessly limp in his grasp.
Father never hurt him when he held Damian. He never seemed to get annoyed with it or threateningly pressed his fangs into Damian when Damian moved a muscle.
It was nice to be held without worrying whether he was going to be bit in half.
Damian waited as Father found his footing to lift himself on his hind legs and beat his wings. It only took a moment until he found lift and was flying after his sons.
They flew for about forty-five minutes until the saddled drakes dropped down and Father landed on a nearby rock.
He placed Damian on the ground and settled himself down next to him. He looked vaguely like a cat with his wings tucked in tight and his tail curled around his body. Damian followed suit and placed himself at his father’s side.
He was surprised when the dragon flicked a wing out to tuck Damian under it and press him even closer.
“Have you ever seen a dragon-riding race before?” he asked.
Damian shook his head. He had never seen a dragon ridden, let alone whatever kind of event this seemed to be.
Father hummed and motioned to the saddled drakes and their riders with his snout.
“I know the League had some restrictions on riders, but normally dragon-riding is a collaborative activity that many young dragons or humans take part in while they are growing up. For the dragon, it is an excellent way to test flight endurance and agility. For the human, it teaches discipline and encourages strategic thinking and effective communication strategies. For both parties, it encourages trust and shows younglings the power of having a partner.
Most dragons and humans typically stop participating in riding events as they grow older unless they have a job related to it or they decide to compete professionally.”
The dragons and their riders seemed to be discussing something on their outcropping. The dragons seemed completely relaxed with their riders, easily balancing the saddles while having a conversation. Their riders were equally relaxed, idly swinging legs and not even holding on to the reins.
It looked more natural than Damian could have ever imagined.
“I’ve encouraged my children to all keep reining because partnership is so important. They enjoy it so much though, I imagine they would ride even without my prompting. Once you get a bit more comfortable, we will start teaching you riding skills.”
Damian blinked, whipping his head up. His father was still looking up and out at the dragons and their riders. His head was tilted up in fierce pride that nearly took Damian’s breath away.
A small, desperate part of him hoped that Father would look at him like that one day.
“We will start you on Tim. He’s smaller and a gentle ride. When you’ve learned the basics, I’ll show you how to rein on a larger breed with Dick or Jason. It will hopefully be Dick, because Jason has a wicked habit of trying to buck me off when I’m on his back. He thinks it’s the height of hilarity to throw me into the air.”
Father’s face crinkled, but Damian couldn’t help snorting at the mental image of Jason cackling as he launched a tiny, human, Bruce into the sky.
“Oh look, they are starting.”
Damian followed his father’s line of sight to the dragons and their riders. Both of the riders were standing in their saddles fiddling with something high up on the dragons’ bridles. Their small clever hands flipped something down and a leather flap fell over the dragons’ eyes.
It would have been impossible for them to see with those flaps over their eyes.
“Father, what are they doing?”
The riders said a final word to each other and took the dragons’ reins in their hands. Jason and Dick were at full attention, responding to every tiny move their riders made. The riders edged their dragons right to the edge of the cliff.
Dick and Jason’s heads were up. Their wings were tense at their sides with feathers ruffling in the wind. Their front claws curled over the rock face.
“Oh, I didn’t mention?”
The riders were counting down and when Tim screamed “GO!”. Both of the drakes launched into the air, their forms exploding with motion. They put complete trust in their riders as they sightless flew into the sky.
“My children run their races blind.”
The dragons fell like rocks until they suddenly pulled out of the dive and the riders raced them through the spindly crags. Both dragons were huge, but they pulled off what should have been impossible tight turns and breathtaking flips.
It would have been impressive with sight, but knowing that they were doing all the tricks blind made them seem like works of art.
Father chuckled, nudging Damian with his snout affectionately. “You be able to do that too someday. Both as a dragon and as a rider.”
Damian knew he should be ashamed, but he couldn’t help the burst of excitement that rose up in his chest.
He could do that.
He could be as skilled as his siblings.
Father believed in him and was going to help him become amazing too.
Damian leaned against his father and took in a deep breath. Slowly he let his body shift and melt into his human form.
The dragon must have noticed the change, but he didn’t push Damian away or growl about how weak his human form was. The Bat just wrapped his wing around him tighter and kept Damian nestled against his scales. His father’s claws were clutching him close, protectively holding him like he was something precious.
“Thank you, Father,” Damian whispered up, not entirely able to voice how much he was thankful for.
But Father didn’t need all the words, he accepted Damian’s words easily and tucked his head up against Damian’s side.
“Of course, Damian,” he assured, his breath ruffling Damian’s hair. “You’re my son. I’ll give you anything you want. The world. The sky. The moon. Just ask and I’ll pull them down for you.”
Damian smiled into the scales and watched the twisting red and blue figures dancing in the sky.
He didn’t need the world or the sky or the moon. This was more than enough and better than Damian had ever expected.