Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Seconds run down, the clock hands move, spinning slowly, near imperceptibly if you don’t sit and stare at them. Damian does, he watches now as time begins to run out and the only noise is the tic toc and the gears churning slowly behind its face. 

He stares at it so intently, you'd think he was waiting for it to be set aflame by his gaze. You’d be incorrect, afterall, it was the other superson with heat vision, not him. Still, his gaze doesn’t falter. He’s waiting. Waiting for the clock to strike twelve, and then, finally, it does.

And like that, Damian’s birthday ends.

It ends without a single member of his family having remembered it. It ends with him alone, in an empty manor, suspended from Robin for the week, breathing in the dust of an oft untouched wing where no one would find him. That is, if anyone would even try to.

Damian keeps staring at the clock, ignoring the phone he’d turned face down two hours prior. Originally he’d done it to stop checking it, to stop searching for a Happy Birthday! from Steph, or an emoji of a cake from Cass, or even a short for his age joke from Jason.

It’s alright, Damian consoles himself. Without Richard to remind everyone (a Titans mission, run well over a month long), or Alfred to organise it (vacation, his first in years), it makes sense that the day would pass by unrecognised. Father is too busy to celebrate, he hasn’t been at Damian’s other birthdays either, aside from the one Damian had been kidnapped at, and then, he’d only arrived for the kidnapping part. 

Tim…..well Tim wasn’t obligated to celebrate Damian being alive. Surely they’re on the best terms they’d ever been at, but Damian still knew when Timothy would rather anyone but Damian be near him. He could still see the minute tenses when Timothy was uncomfortable with Damian near.

Reasonably, Damian accepted that those flinches were his fault, and on occasion he reacted to Tim the same way. 

Eventually, when watching the minute hand rotate from three to five to nine and then the hour hand take up that one position, Damian pulls himself off the floor and away from the wall adjacent to the clock he’d been watching. He wanders around the manor, a ghost just browsing, lightly touching things as he goes by and leaving marks in the faint dust cover. 

It’s fine, it’s fine. He tells himself that as he stops by Timothy’s empty room and peers into the mess before swiping a pillow, and then going past his own, stopping to collect Alfred and Titus before moving on. Briefly he detours into Richard’s for a sweater that would swamp him, and ends up outside of Jason’s. Except, and Jason would tell you himself, it’s not his room, so Damian supposes that means if it’s not his, then it must be a guest room, and if it’s a guest room, there is no reason Damian shouldn’t be allowed to use it. 

With his pilfered items and pets, Damian bunkers down into the bed, putting the pillow at the top, and Richard’s sweater on over his head. He pulls the covers up to his chin and breathes in deeply. He keeps breathing in, aiming for steady measured breaths even as they shudder in his lungs and his chest tightens. He ignores the tears on his face and the weakness Damian’s thus far displayed. 

At least, no one is here to see him. 

Damian startles out his melancholy when a point of pressure puts all its weight on his leg. He winces minutely as more pressure points are added, and Alfred staggers trying to walk across him. His cat presumes loaf position on Damian’s curled up side, purring softly, with Titus taking that as his queue to get on the bed and plunk himself over Damian’s feet.

His heart lightens a little under the heavy affection of his loyal companions, and eventually Damian is able to reassure himself that he is not unloved, long enough to fall asleep. 

The next day, Damian wakes to an empty house. Both father and Timothy have been and gone in the hours Damian had been asleep, off to Wayne enterprises without a word or a note.

Damian resolutely does not find a problem in this. Instead, he uses this luck to replace the items he borrowed in the rooms of their rightful owners, and after sufficient searching found a lint roller to remove the dog fur from Jason’s—the guest room’s—bed spread.

Once everything was right where it should be, Damian found himself once more standing in the stillness of Wayne manor. His phone was equally still, just as silent, entirely bereft of activity. He contemplates it, contemplates just walking out the house without it, contemplates calling for Jon and asking Superboy to take him out of this city.

Then he realises he is being dramatic, because it is fine, and he is fine, and there is no need to bother any of his friends, Jon or Collin or Maps or Maya with his presence. If anyone needed company, Damian decided, it was not him. But….perhaps Batcow would like for him to visit, and then since he’d be down there already, Damian could train, for lack of anything else to do.

Nodding to himself, Damian went off to do just that.

He spends time with his cow, trains for a number of hours, and then when his muscles are aching sufficiently, he climbs the stairs back up into the manor and does the assigned school work he’d collected in advance for the next two weeks. 

Dinner is a brief affair. Timothy and father arrive home, takeout is placed on the table, father and Timothy are both finished their entire plates before Damian has managed half of his. Then they’re both off, down to the cave to continue working on cases.

Damian looks down at his plate, his throat suddenly feeling very full, and the food he has in his mouth becoming incredibly hard to swallow. He chokes it down, but after it slides down his throat leaving a tell tale sign of greasy residue, he loses all his appetite. Damian carefully sets down his fork, removes the napkin from his lap, and stands. He returns the uneaten half of his meal to the take out container it had come in and then walks into the kitchen to place it into the fridge. 

Perhaps if Damian regained his appetite he’d eat it. That’s what he told himself as he did this, but truthfully, he’d be throwing it away or feeding it to Titus if he knew where the dog was. As it is, Damian suspects the tupperware will sit in the fridge until it goes bad or Alfred returns and throws it away.

Either is likely. Possibly both. Whatever the case, Damian wouldn’t be returning for it, even as he pretends otherwise. 

Looking around the empty kitchen, untouched without Alfred to man it as one of the few capable members of the family who could cook, Damian couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

Betrayed too, maybe. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. Why should his birthday be celebrated? It was only a day. An unimportant one, clearly, the world had other priorities. His family had other priorities. Damian never ranked very high among them unless he was causing problems, and everyone made sure to tell Damian they didn’t have time for him on top of their other things. 

Tim got upset when he had to leave work to pick up Damian because he got into a fight with a classmate. Jason sneered at Damian for getting an injury on patrol and making Jason abandon the surveillance he’d been doing to assist him. Stephanie told him repeatedly she didn’t have time to hear about his problems when she was busy with her college course load, and seeing as she was in college eight months of the year, Damian assumed that she essentially meant she didn’t have time for him, period. 

He knew they loved him though. Tim congratulated him for standing up for the student being bullied. Jason stitched up his wound and didn’t tell father. Stephanie was happy to go on patrol with him and laugh when he told her stories about Jon, Collin, and Maya.

Dick loves him, without a doubt. If he weren’t off-world he’d be telling Damian himself. Father……father loves Damian too. It’s much quieter, a much more seldom expressed love, but still there. 

Still, Damian stands in the empty kitchen and can’t help the feeling in his chest. This doesn’t feel like love, he thinks, and it’s the thought that startles him from this purgatory he found himself in. Damian shakes himself and leaves the room behind him. He doesn’t bother with the whole routine of the night prior. Instead he climbs into bed despite the relatively early hour, and he lies still with his eyes closed until he falls asleep.

That was the first day after the birthday that wasn’t.

The second passes much in the same way. 

On the third, Damian gets over himself. He trains, he goes to school, he scowls at his teachers, and tries to survive the rest of January without Alfred’s cooking. Father unbenches Damian, and Timothy even asks Damian to close a case with him. Richard comes back from the mission, and Alfred returns as well. Jason, Steph, and Cass all re-emerge from the woodwork with Alfred’s return, and get to most of the cookies he bakes before anyone else can. 

And then it’s February. 

Chapter Text

All at once, Damian is faced with the non-issue he had already gotten over. Leaping gracefully to sit on the counter, Cass watches as Stephanie enters to flounce about the kitchen with a beaming smile on her face. Damian observes them both from his seat at the island getting distracted but friendly hellos from them as they continue their conversation. 

It only takes him a second to realise that this discussion about shopping isn’t about clothes or make-up or textbooks or dorm room necessities, like the last few had been. They’re debating what to buy Alfred, or even if they should buy Alfred something when a handmade item might be more appreciated. Stephanie remarks on how the two had already decided what to gift Jason, but Alfred was trickier. They talk and talk, or Stephanie does, and Cass cuts in sometimes with a few words, but she signs most of what she wants to say. 

She’s already gotten gifts for both Alfred and Jason, Damian learns. Even with his head bowed, it’s easy to watch them out of the corner of his eyes, easy to become absorbed in their conversation and not on his drawing of the starling that had been hopping on the windowsill of the kitchen before their conversation had gotten too loud and something else had enticed the bird away. 

Moments ago, Damian had been so, so proud of his drawing. He’d already been thinking of colours to bring it to life, the best way to capture the way the light had dappled across the bird’s feathers through the leaves of the great oak in the yard. 

Now though, even in his mind’s eyes, everything he’s done and everything he’s planning just looks drab. The almost complete sketch, shading still missing in parts of the background and little details Damian’s had planned to add in the foreground no longer seem worth it. 

Alfred will appreciate any gift you give him, Cass signs with deft fingers. He’ll be happy that you’re able to take time away from school and visit for his birthday. 

Abruptly, Damian slips off his chair, abandoning his page and his pencils and just exciting the kitchen without a backward glance. He isn’t sure if either Steph or Cass notice, isn’t sure what they think of him if they did or if he even cares. His stomach is in knots and his hands feel clammy, shaky and unsteady, almost like his skin has been stretched over his bones incorrectly. 

It’s an effort to just keep walking and walking until he’s in his room, pressing the door closed firmly behind him and locking it. It’s a relief to make his way to his desk and drop into his seat lacking any of his usual grace. 

Each breath he breathes is strained, too hard for what was a simple, brisk walk through the manor. It feels more like he’s run a marathon than anything, and he has to put his hands over his ears and press his forehead into the cool, smooth wood of his desk, to pause, to breathe as Richard taught him. He repeats each breath on a count of four, in and out and in and out until the ugly, angry (hurt, sad, lonely, aching) feeling in his chest passes. Until it no longer feels like a fight to simply take in air.

It is fine, he thinks to himself. It doesn’t bother me at all, he insists, arguing with no one. With no voice that said he does. 

No voice except his own, because it’s a lie. It’s a lie and he knows it’s a lie, but it is one he will maintain until he can’t anymore or until it is true. Regardless, his goal is to function and he shall force himself to do so if necessary. And it is necessary. A soldier who is incapable of function has no value, without value Damian would rank even less a priority than he clearly already is, and it is with that (terrifying, dreadful, painful, excruciating) thought in mind that Damian picks himself back up and straightens his spine. 

He plasters back on his blankest expression, lays both of his hands flat against his desk and presses down, imagining doing the same to the emotions that would make him dysfunctional, and tries to think this through, logically. 

He starts with the most prominent issue.

Cassandra and Stephanie were discussing gifts for Alfred and Jason. Gifts for their respective birthdays, although separated by only a day. This fact had made what would be seperate celebrations become a joint event, a party for them both with the entire family in attendance. 

Damian had been present every year they had it. 

His absence would be noted. 

The tips of his fingers curl, clench, pressing into the wood and whitening from the strain until Damian forcibly undigs them from where they try to burrow and chip and break what is unbreakable with his bare hands. He forces himself to admit that his lack of presence at the event might not be unnoticed and he’s not sure if it’s a lie that he chooses to believe it would be, or naivety. Maybe they’d notice, maybe they wouldn’t. 

(He thinks the lack of surety hurts more than if he just knew.) 

Whatever the case, and irregardless of it, with this ugly anger in his chest, Damian can guarantee that even with the best of intent, he would not be able to attend the party—not until it went away. To do so before it did?

On a good day, Damian is not exactly party company and Damian knows himself well enough to know he would not have a good day to be any kind of company appreciated at Alfred or Jason’s joint birthday. Even Damian was not so cruel to subject them (his family) to himself when he would only ruin everything.

His eyes trace the woodgrains on his desk, going over the scratches he’d left with his blades on a number of occasions, mostly from sharpening them, though a few of the deeper ones were from Jason using Damian’s knives to play imaginary drums. He drags a nail down one of the ridges, sighing deeply and wipes a hand over his face. Despite himself, he isn’t too surprised when it comes away damp, even if he is ashamed. Grabbing a tissue, Damian blots at his face until the dampness goes away, shaking his head at himself in disgust. He should be above crying, and Mother would have him punished if she were here. 

(She never forgot any of his birthdays, but then again, his were often celebrated with an even deadlier challenge than the year prior and a duel. Besides, how do you forget the day you hatched your son from the tube you grew him in?)

(No matter how wrong it is, he yearns for her voice in his ear. The simple Happy Birthday, Habibi. Always whispered. Always followed by a chaste kiss she’d press to his cheek.)

(Affection was rare in the league. His mother’s rarer. He shouldn’t yearn for her twisted love, but it’s better than nothing. It’s better than this.)

Damian wipes at his face harder, shaking his head in disagreement even as something molten hot simmers beneath his skin. This is not what he’s supposed to be doing with his time. Tears were for a weaker being, and Damian could not afford to be weak. He had to be better and he needed to get himself under control. No rage, no crying, no outbursts.

No birthdays, that bitter part of himself suggests. He almost dismisses the thought without even a moment of consideration, but for some reason it sticks and he pauses, rolling the idea over in his mind. 

No birthdays. Not a single one of his families’. Not Jason and Alfred’s. Not Barbara’s Richard’s, Steph’s, Cass’s, Tim’s, or Father’s. He wouldn’t go. He’d find some mission or assignment or reason and if he couldn’t—he’d disappear as he’d been trained to do. He was fully capable of perfectly staging a year full of carefully timed disappearances to not attend a single birthday. To make it seem believable and plausible. 

No birthdays, he repeats, and it sounds too appealing to be possible. To even pull off. 

Could he do that? Who could stop him if he did do it? It was technically a solution to his current issue. Until he manages to tame the anger, it made the most sense to just— 

Not be there. 

It should satisfy that pit in his stomach, the others hadn’t been there for him, it wouldn’t be undeserved if did the same in turn, but even that line of thinking— Damian could admit that it didn’t sit right with him. This wasn’t some revenge plot, Damian has long since moved past trying to hurt his family intentionally. 

He wouldn’t do what was done to him, even if he could.

Doubt creeps into his mind at that. Wouldn’t it…..wouldn’t it bother the others as much as it did him, if he wasn’t there?

Cassandra’s words to Stephanie come back to him. He’ll be happy that you’re able to take time off from school and visit for his birthday.  

Guilt takes over doubt, because he knows even if they won’t all care (Jason and Tim, maybe even Stephanie, too), then Alfred would, Richard as well. 

And—

And?

And. 

While he loathes to admit it, Damian cares.

As much as he wishes he didn’t, as much as it eats at him, he cares about them . He cares so much it burns. And yet, he can’t get it out of his mind. 

He keeps thinking about it, he thinks about it when he has no reason to be thinking about it. Stephanie bought cupcakes and she said I saved you a red velvet one, because she knows they’re his favourite and Damian had almost smiled but then he looked down at the sweet in his hand and wondered why that hadn’t happened on his birthday. 

Or he’ll be sitting with Richard on a rooftop and he’ll say I’ll always be here for you, Robin, and Damian will want to believe him—except he wasn’t there. Not for Damian’s birthday, not for a whole nine weeks, and Damian needed him. Wanted him. Missed him. (Begged for him. Cried for him. Lost hope in him.) 

How is he supposed to believe it when he knows it’s not true?

It happened other times, too. Jason and he had gone undercover and Jason had said, this is my brother’s kid, he’s thirteen, I’m just the fun uncle. The girl he’d been talking to had sighed sweetly and cooed, said Damian looked so mature for his age and that hadn’t queued the short jokes Damian had expected. Instead, later, Jason remarked that he’d have to start ageing Damian up on missions instead of down. Next time you can be fifteen, he’d said.

Damian is fifteen.

He turned fifteen and no one was there. He turned fifteen and no one knows, and the truth is he wouldn’t have minded if no one got him a gift as long as someone cared to be there, as long as someone cared to remember (as long as someone cared about him). 

Bile burns his throat and the churning pool inside him swells with something foul when he thinks about how much Cass and Stephanie cared about Alfred and Jason’s birthday. Something angry (bitter, sad, hurt, desperate, lonely, broken) that asks Why not me? in return and wants a reason for why, why he’s so far down everyone’s list of priorities he doesn’t register that solidifies his decision.

No birthdays.

The instant relief is almost overwhelming, but even as much relief as the idea brings, it doesn’t sit right with him. He drags his nails over the scratches in the wood again. Again and again until he’s broken three nails and knows if he continues he’s at risk of making himself bleed. The ambivalence to that makes him press his palms flat again and still his fingers. 

Damian would not attend any of his families’ birthdays, problem solved, but that does not absolve him of his guilt, a problem he hadn’t expected to contend with. He wouldn’t do what was done to him, even if he could. He wants to be this bigger person that Grayson has so often described. He did not want his family to feel uncared for, and if his absence truly was noted and missed, he would not have them doubt his care for them. 

(Even if he doubted theirs in return. Feelings are a weakness, mother has always said. Now he understands why.)

Damian casts his eyes around the room and reflexively, the fall on his pets, Alfred, Titus, and then inexplicably, Zitka the plush elephant. They were all gifts to him. From Alfred, Father, and Richard respectively. Gifts that had at one time or another proved that Damian was cared for. That his family thought of him. Loved him. Wished to share parts of their lives with him. Wished to bring him happiness and see him smile. 

Gifts that Damian kept close because it reminded him of those times, long ago though they now may be. 

The realisation that Damian simply needed to find suitable gifts that prove he cares to be a substitute to his actual, physical presence is sudden and then a rather obvious conclusion. He shakes his head at himself for being so emotional that he missed something so clear, and then, with a sheet of paper, a pencil, and a goal, Damian gets to work.  

Chapter Text

Jon kicks his heels, legs swinging as his face twists in the over dramatic, excessively expressive way of his. It reminds Damian of the boy he used to be, the ten—and then eleven year old that had been his friend before the unthinkable happened and three weeks became synonymous with six years. The eighteen year old perching on the back railing of Gotham Secondary Academy’s bleachers in front of him isn’t who Damian pictures when he thinks Jon, and perhaps that’s terrible of him. He’s had a year to adjust to this strange version of his friend. This adult version, but it’s not the same. It hasn’t been the same, no matter how much they’ve tried. 

Case in point, this Jon would look at him with some kind of pity, disappointment even, if he told him about the birthday that wasn’t, the resulting plan that spawned from it. His Jon, (not that Jon was ever his, but the Jon as Damian knew him) would be angry, so angry on Damian’s behalf. He’d do anything to make it right because of how outrageous it is that anyone dared to forget his best friend on his birthday, let alone his entire family. 

His Jon wouldn’t have stood for it, his Jon wouldn’t have hesitated to join Damian on a mission, this one though…He’s looking at Damian with disappointment right now, and while it is mercifully without the pity, it’s even heavier on the disappointment. 

(Still, Damian prefers it to the pity.)

“You’re going on a mission today? And you’re expecting it to last at least a week if not longer?” Jon asks again, to clarify, the same disappointment weighing on every word. Damian grits his teeth again. “Yes, Kent. Do you need to get your super hearing checked?”

Jon shakes his head, not rising to the bait. The old Jon, (or the young one, Damian supposes) would have said something snarky back. Even if it was something lame like At least I have superhearing, he would have fought with Damian until they tired themselves out and started laughing. Or Jon would laugh, Damian would smother the smiles he’d deny ever having. That was before. 

“You realise that means you’re going to miss Alfred and Jason’s birthday, right?” Jon asks. Of course he knows. His entire family was invited. 

“I do.” Damian acknowledges. He doesn’t bother looking contrite, that is after all, the entire point of the mission, but it just makes Jon’s disappointment in Damian grow. It doesn’t hurt as much as it would if Jon actually knew the reason for Damian’s impromptu mission, but it still hurts. 

“And you want me to come with you?” Jon checks again. 

Damian’s scowl deepens. “Kent—”

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop asking things I already know the answers to.” Jon replies, mimicking—mocking—Damian’s inflection when he says that. 

(If anything, that hurts the most.)

“Look, I get this is some super, time pressing and important issue, but I already have plans, Damian, and this sounds like something you honestly don’t need me for?” Jon replies, and Damian loathes the entire sentence, but if anything, he loathes the way Jon asks it instead of says it the most. Like he wants Damian to confirm he doesn’t really need Jon to relieve him of this request. To absolve him of guilt when Jon finally says the no he’s been building up to. 

Damian won’t give it to him. “You have plans?” He sneers, and the minute flinch he gets in turn has regret flooding his body. Not just for those three simple words, but for even asking, for even believing for just one second that Jon would always be there for him like they’d once promised as stupid, naive children. 

Priorities change, they always change, and Damian seems to just keep. Falling. Lower. 

He’s no one’s priority. 

Jon scratches the back of his neck awkwardly, shrugging. “It’s….it’s Valentine's Day tomorrow, Damian. I promised Jay we’d go on a proper date. No super heroics to interfere.” 

Damian carefully bites down as hard as possible on his tongue to refrain from making even a single comment, schooling his face into perfect blankness. Jon isn’t looking at him, but Damian can’t look away. It’s painfully silent and after a moment Damian gives a curt nod and swallows around the blood in his mouth. 

He has his answer. He already knew it. He doesn’t need to make more of a fool out of himself than he’s already made. 

“I see. I hope you two have a pleasant date.” Damian says. Jon looks up, eyes wide. “Wait, Dames—”

Of all the times to be the other superson, he hates it right now the most. Jon could fly away from this conversation just like he flew here for it. Damian can only walk forward, sidestepping the hand that reaches out for him and determinedly descending the creaky metal stairs. 

“Damian, wait! Come on, just hold off the mission for a few days—” 

So Damian has to listen to more of his family’s planning? He didn’t realise how much of an ordeal organising a party was until he couldn’t avoid it. It’s unbelievably humiliating to be put in your place again and again, to have your supposed loved ones hammer in just how little you mean until you can’t breathe. He can’t take it anymore. 

He can’t feel lower than he already feels.

(Somehow, Jon has managed to make him reach new depths.)

So no, no Damian won’t be holding off the mission. He’s leaving, and everyone else can fuck off. He’s taken the high road once already, he doesn’t need to do it again. 

“Damian!” Jon shouts, and it almost sounds angry. 

Good, Damian thinks viciously, because Damian is angry too. And he’s so tired of coming in last or not at all. 

“You were correct. I don’t need you, Superman.” Damian spits. Jon stops dead in his tracks and Damian just keeps walking, walking away from him, from Jon, from the realisation that there are no supersons and there never will be again. 

Jonathan is Superman now.

And Damian is just Robin. 

In a family of people who used to be Robin, that's honestly not saying much. 

Jon doesn’t call out for him again, but that one, angry cry of his name rings in Damian’s head as the bright, clear day, a rarity in Gotham, mocks Damian all the way off the field. Off school property entirely. It mocks him as he walks into the city and loses himself in the crowd of people. It mocks him even as he ducks into an alley, collapsing against the wall and covering his ears with his hands, trying to drown it all out even as the sun shines down on him through the narrow gap between the buildings. 

He forces himself to breathe—he’s been doing that a lot lately—until his thundering heart is steady enough that Damian can open his eyes again and uncover his ears. His eyes fixate on the endless blue sky above him, and he mourns. He mourns for what he’s lost and is still losing and ruining everyday himself. He mourns, and for the first time, he really lets it all hurt. 

It gathers in his chest and strangles his lungs, becoming a vise that results in hitched breaths and damp cheeks. It swells and ebbs like the tide, washing over him in steady waves and Damian lets it. Even out here where it isn’t safe and his mother would call him foolish and his siblings would regard him in horror, Damian let’s it hurt.

And he doesn’t know how long he stands there, staring up at nothing in particular. It’s long enough for clouds to float across the sky and break up the endless. Long enough for his tears to slow and then dry entirely. Long enough for Damian to find the strength in his body to straighten his spine once more and hold his head up high. 

It’s long enough that when he gets home Pennyworth reminds him that he must be informed when Damian has chess club after school so that he isn’t left waiting for Damian until he concludes his services aren’t needed. 

Damian doesn’t correct him. Doesn’t say he lost his best friend. Doesn’t say he walked over an hour to get home. Doesn’t say he hasn’t been in chess club since the last time he’d been in school, before the Lazarus tournament over a year ago. 

He just accepts the cup of tea Alfred has waiting for him, the two, usually forbidden pre-dinner cookies that Alfred slips him, and thanks him before making his way up to his bedroom. 

His heart is doing that funny, racing far too fast thing, and guilt makes it hard to drink the tea, but Damian finishes it anyway. 

He hopes the gift he leaves for them, Alfred and Jason both, will make up for his leaving. He hopes Alfred won’t be too upset, and even with the guilt clogging his throat, Damian sets down the empty tea cup, picks up his to-go bag, and leaves the envelope marked with his brother and grandfather’s name—his gift to them—on his desk. 

Then he opens his window, hoisting himself onto the sill. He considers the ground for a moment before letting himself fall. It’s not a long fall, but for a moment he feels free, right up until he lands silently on the damp grass below, absorbing the momentum with a roll that ends with him on a knee and wetness seeping into his clothes. Damian doesn’t pay it any mind, casting one last look to the sky, to the sun already on its routine descent into the horizon. 

Damian wishes it farewell, for now.

He won’t be coming back before it had done that at least another seven times. 

Chapter Text

On the night of his disappearance, so to speak, Damian had removed every tracker from his person. He never even bothered to grab his phone. No contact whatsoever. It would make him harder to trace, certainly, but when he had made it perfectly clear he wouldn’t be found, and that he had left of his own volition and would be returning, his family wouldn’t be the most concerned. 

Damian choosing to disappear for some reason or another wasn’t the most uncommon. It wasn’t particularly condoned, either. But from what he understood, his family chose to allow him his space when he so needed it. They figured he would come back when he was ready, and to just let Damian be. 

For many of his families peculiarities, of this one Damian is grateful. It means in the five days he’d already been gone, no one had been on his tail, or tried to find some way to contact him, no one was hounding him to return. 

(A part of him is sure they all think he’ll return for tomorrow, but if Alfred has already found the envelope, he at least knows that won’t be the case)

This is all to say, when on the sixth day Damian opens up his slim wayne-tech laptop which he keeps particularly for missions like this, and bounces the signal off of a number of satellites to make his point of origin harder to trace, he knows he is being over the top. 

Still, he takes great pains to hide his digital footprint from even Oracle (not that she’d be looking) to open up the juvenile application. It takes a few seconds to load, but once it does, Damian is perfectly capable of scrolling and clicking his way through the updates his family has posted to Instagram. 

They’re censored of course. They wouldn’t be posting anything potentially sensitive to a social media website when they all have considerable renown in the media itself, but there are plenty of pictures even still. A video, too. 

Damian inserts his headphone cable into the appropriate port, slipping the things over his ears after a quick glance around the cafe who’s wifi he’s stealing. His hand returns to the mouse and the arrow on screen hovers over the play button. Hesitation has him wondering whether he should start with it or leave it for last, but after a moment he’s unable to help himself and his right pointer finger clicks down before he’s able to truly reconsider. 

“Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Alfred and Jay, happy birthday to you!” A chorus of voices sing in joyous cacophony, no harmony among them as they’re all slightly off tune, off pace and rhythm, but together, somehow, they still manage to sound pleasant. Theres laughter mixed in with the song when they’re collectively terrible and the ‘and Jay’ is belated or too short or awkwardly added on, Jason’s laugh the loudest of them all, then. 

Around the table, the owners of the voices sit around the people they're singing about in question. Richard, Stephanie, Cassandra and Timothy stand behind where Alfred and Jason are seated. Bruce is to Alfred’s left, all three generations of Kent’s and Lane-Kents are beside Bruce, and on Jason’s right are the Harpers, Roy and Lian, as well as Barbara.  Before the birthday boys is a grandiose cake, decorated much more suited to Alfred’s tastes one might be more inclined to suspect, than Jason’s. 

As the singing ends, the cheering starts, a few whoops of excitement and even clapping. Everyone is wearing big smiles, Jason has his arm around Alfred’s shoulders, Bruce’s hand covering the place where Jason’s hand and Alfred’s shoulder overlap. Richard is leaning on Jason’s outstretched arm, with the girls pressed in tight against him and Stephanie’s arm hooked around Tim’s neck to pull him closer as they pose for pictures. Ma Kent begins to sing the ‘how old are you now tune’, carrying it in quite well, and Jason’s laugh just gets louder as Alfred shoots his signature ‘Don’t you dare’ look of reproach at her and it’s returned with a bright and open country smile. 

Somehow, they are corralled into blowing out the candles together, and the cheering begins anew once they’re all out. The video cuts out just as Clark bumps against the table and knocks over whatever was holding up the phone to film. 

The replay button appears as the blur of the last frame stills and Damian blinks for what feels like the first time in hours. There is the familiar tang of copper pennies on his tongue again, and it takes him a moment he’s bitten right into his lip and hasn’t felt it. 

Then again, how could he feel anything so inconsequential when it felt as if his heart were seizing in its cavity. The so-called strings of his heart ache like they’ve been torn asunder. He knows it’s not possible, the chordae tendineae are physically fine, unlike the time Damian had actually been pierced through the heart, but this—

It feels so similar that Damian has to press his hand to the knot of scar tissue over his heart and ensure it hasn’t reopened and isn’t spilling his life blood across the tiled mosaic of the cafe’s floor.

His heart still pounds beneath his fist, but the pain is so acute Damian is having trouble seeing. His vision is blurry, hazy, and he wishes he could blame it on tears, but no wetness is seeping down his cheeks. 

Something is wrong with him, genuinely. He has to be dying. Nothing can hurt this much without a physical cause, Damian doesn’t believe it. The panic that races through him is nothing compared to the gaping wound Damian is sure he has, even if he can’t feel it, find it, see it. 

It’s enough to get him on his feet, and then just as quickly to his knees when his legs can’t hold him. A few patrons cry out in concern when they see him collapse, but their hands on him just make it worse. He rises again, snatching his laptop and fleeing from them as fast as he can. Defenceless when he should not be. When even with his bare hands Damian should be capable of taking down thirty armed men or more. 

These people, these civilians, are armed only with well meaning concern for him when they urge him to sit back down and drink water which one of the staff has procured in between the blinks of Damian’s eyes. It’s all too much, Damian can’t escape the care of these people who are worried for a stranger. So worried. Damian tries to answer their questions, but no words make it out. Everything is silent, soundless, he swallows any sound before it can escape and the screams and sobs and cries build up inside him, with no outlet. 

They’re trapped, just as he is, in his body, in this cafe half way across the world. His family celebrating without him (because Damian chose this, he chose this, he doesn’t get to be upset about it now). 

(He didn’t choose to be forgotten.)

A cold cup of water is pressed into his hands and as Damian drinks, the concerned patrons begin to back off, and Damian manages to assure the lingering elderly couple that he really is alright when his words start working again. 

Then he’s left alone, and Damian finally releases the white knuckled grip he has on his laptop. He sets it down again and opens it back up, brings up the page he’d been on, the  blurred still of the video and the replay button over top, bidding Damian to play it again. The other updates waiting for Damian to click on them and view what he’s missed. 

Staring at the still, knowing that their are more pictures waiting for someone to click through them, Damian realises that he was wrong. 

There are always lower depths for him to fall to.

Heart in his throat, Damian bites into the already broken skin of his lip, tastes that salty tang of his own blood, and then carefully, deliberately, without looking at any of the other posts, Damian deletes his account and removes any trace of himself from the social media site. 

After it’s done, he shuts down his laptop and closes it. He tucks it under his arm, stands up from his table, and pausing only to thank the couple for their earlier concern, Damian walks out the door and lets numbness become him. 

(He never does see the love, fondness, and longing Jason and Alfred wear when they open his gift. He doesn’t know how much they appreciate the thought and effort Damian put into organizing reservations and theater tickets for the both of them to enjoy together. He doesn’t know how much they—the entire family—had missed him when he wasn’t there. He doesn’t know that they would have preferred him to any gift.)

(He doesn’t know, and no one will tell him.)

(And Damian concludes his plan has thus far, been a success.)

Chapter Text

No one really says a word about Damian not attending Alfred and Jason’s birthday. When he returns, he’s reprimanded by his father for leaving without his trackers once again, his siblings makes references to things over their comms on patrol that Damian wasn’t actually present for and so could not comment on, and Alfred makes Damian his favourite amaretti cookies which he takes to mean his gift was appreciated. 

No one mentions the fact that all of Damian’s social media, from Instagram to Twitter to the budding tumblr account for his art, are wiped off the face of the earth. 

He thinks that’s about par for the course. 

And, all in all, Damian is as simultaneously overwhelmingly relieved as he is equally empty. There’s a pit in him that gets more hallowed out day by day as he returns to school and goes through the motions of everything, all the while dodging calls from Jon and avoiding his siblings. 

Both of which are too easy for him to do. Jon texts and calls, but for a man who can fly, a man who could stop bullets with his skin, an immovable and stubborn man, all it takes for Damian to ignore him is simply letting his calls go to voicemail and his texts to remain unread. For his siblings? Well, Richard lives in another city, Jason and Tim have both moved out of the manor. Cassandra is abroad once more. Stephanie in University. 

It isn’t hard to be alone when he already was. This is just everything returning to normal. Damian’s normal. 

(Normal didn’t used to feel like this, did it?)

They’re busy, he tells himself. They’re all busy. That’s it. Father runs a company and Alfred takes care of an entire manor on top of managing a group of vigilantes. When Damian isn’t making trouble, he isn’t a priority. Everyone has their own lives and they’re busy. He knows this. 

He also knows he eats alone twice as often as he eats with company. He knows his animal companions hear more of Damian’s voice than his classmates and his family alike do. He knows it isn’t healthy to spend so much time in his own head falling deeper into this spiral of misery. He knows it isn’t healthy that he only ever leaves the manor for school and patrol. 

The only solution he comes up with isn’t overly healthy, either, but Damian resolves to get himself out of the house more, out of his head. And he finds himself at a mall. 

Damian understands conceptually that malls are adressed to those who can pay for the goods within them, and targeted at enticing that particular audience. Damian, a teenager with wealth beyond his needs, should be particularly enticed by the ongoings around him, whether it be the smell of foodstuffs from the food court, or the numerous clothing stores he wanders past which sell anything from alternative clothing, street wear, and things that are on trend or hoping to be, all of which should appeal to a person of his age. 

Instead, Damian feels entirely out of his depth. 

He didn’t even come here for himself. He was hoping to find a suitable gift, or an idea of such a thing for Gordon, who’s birthday would be taking place towards the end of March. That gave Damian a narrowing timeline in which to work, seeing as a number of days had already passed since the start of the month and he was no closer to thinking of an idea now as he had been then, when he marked down her name and date of birth on his list and began cataloging things he knew she enjoyed. 

It was a startlingly incomplete catalogue, and rather basic in many respects. Too basic for finding a truly meaningful gift. Tech for starters, was useless. She could contrive of things outside of any other’s capabilities, and normal, female appropriate gifts were lacking. Gordon deserved much better than perfume or chocolate. She was Oracle, after all. Even if she didn’t particularly like Damian, which is both a byproduct of being one of the fissures in Gordon’s and Richard’s relationship when he joined the family years prior, as well as Damian just being generally unlikable, she had saved his and the lives of his family too many times to count. 

She was part of the family, and she deserved to be shown the respect due. 

If only Damian understood how to do that for her. 

Damian allows his shoulders to droop just the slightest as he takes a seat as far away from the miasma of smells that is the food court when after over an hour of wandering has yielded nothing but dissapointment. 

(He tries not to focus on the idea that he might be the dissapointment.)

In his mind, he runs through his ideas again. He finds the same lacking options. Ideas either too similar to the gift he’d already given Alfred and Jason, thus making it impersonal and repetitive, the technology idea which Damian once again disdains over, and the list of feminine typical items which a simple google search provided him. In short, nothing. 

If this were a safe place, without so many people, noises that echoed and bounced strangely off the walls, he’d be tempted to lean his head back and close his eyes. There’s a part of him that just feels so inexplicably tired. Damian has always been older beyond his years, but this wasn’t age, at least he didn’t think so. 

Something heavier sat there. Something that instead of balancing out the growing pit in his chest made him feel even more off balance. It made Damian want to do things like cry in alley ways and lie down in public places where anyone could attack him. It told him of how tired he was, reminded him how empty the manor would be should he go home. Sleep. It encourages. Sleep. It would be so easy to sleep, Damian thinks. 

He opens his eyes and tries to remember when he closed them. He wonders if he should put on his rebreather and ensure that no villain was contaminating the air with something that spoke to Damian of desires he had no desire for, but a quick scan of his surroundings tells Damian all he needs to know. 

It’s just him. It’s always just him. 

Slowly, with some convincing, Damian makes his body cooperate, and he stands. He deems his mission a failure, and resolves to try something else later. At home maybe, now that he’s reminded himself why he doesn’t leave the manor. 

(Not at all because he has no places to go, and no one to go with.)

Damian drags himself back home, and it isn’t a surprise when that voice in his head was right. It’s as empty as it always is. Just Damian and a house and the clocks tick-ticking away. Unthinkingly, Damian makes his way to the old grandfather clock. Not the entrance to the cave, but the one he’d counted down the hours on, last time. 

He finds himself studying its old clock face. It’s ornate of course. An antique most definitely, worth more than Damian cares to think about, and despite being so valuable, it sits away, with no one to admire its beauty or appreciate its craftsmanship. What was once a masterful tool is shamed by the dust the sticks to the glass chest letting Damian peer into hollow body, it’s heart rhythmically swinging back and forth, forgotten by all but time itself. 

Damian’s eyes follow it, fixate on it, until he cannot stand it anymore, and he’s opening the door and reaching inside the chest of this grandfather clock to grasp its heart and still it. 

Kill it. 

The ticking sounds no more as the gears stop turning and the silence rings louder than its heart did. Damian lets it go and closes the door, staring at the frozen hands on the clock face. 

Is it just him, or does it look betrayed? 

Damian shakes his head, turns around, and leaves the wing like he had that night, making his way through the house back to the family wing. He walks past Jason’s room, then Richard’s. Both haven’t been used in weeks but Alfred still cleans them. He stops in front of his own room, and he almost opens the door, but instead he walks a bit farther, to Timothy’s. 

He walks in without hesitation, and just as soon realizes his mistake when the room is not empty. 

“Drake?” He hears himself ask.

Timothy spins around in his desk chair, startled, and settles once he sees Damian. 

“Oh,” Tim sighs. “Hey, brat.” Tim turns back around to his desk, asking over his shoulder, “So, what’s up?” 

I didn’t know you were home. Damian almost says, but bites his tongue and doesn’t answer. Instead, “What are you doing?” He questions, peering around Timothy’s chair. Tim glances back at Damian before shrugging. 

“Something fun. Had some free time.” He replies. He rolls his chair a bit to the side and motions Damian closer. Hesitantly, Damian nears him, his eyes scanning the stack of photos and the ones already laid out neatly, taking in the albums waiting with empty sleeves to be filled. 

Tim watches Damian study his set up, and his hand jerks to stop Damian from touching, he imagines, but Timothy reigns it in when carefully, Damian selects one of the laid out photos to get a closer look at it. 

It’s father as Batman, mid leap and taken from below. Partially in shadow, Father really does look more bat than man. More villain than hero, like so many news reporters slander him as. Still, even wrapped in black and shadowed by the night, the detail in the image, the unnatural white of the cowl’s eyes, just enough of a sheen across the glossy black of the chest, make this image one of the most crisp photos taken of Batman that Damian has ever seen. 

He sets it down on its place and reaches for another. Red Hood, this time. He’s with a child whose face is pressed into his neck, but even with both of their faces in some way obscured—Jason’s behind his mask—Damian can see in the desperate way they’re holding on to each other that they are impossibly grateful for the other. The child grateful for being saved, Jason grateful that he was able to save them. 

It’s sweet, a tender moment that while not rare—was not something easy to witness with one’s own eyes, let alone capture through a lense.  

Damian reaches for another and finds it’s a photo of Nightwing—performing for an invisible crowd. Spoiler mid kick. Black Bat cradling a chick fallen from its nest. After them Damian picks up one of Wonder Girl and Timothy’s Superboy, and then another of Impulse.

He sets all these down again in their place, scanning for someone he does not see. 

Timothy. He’s nowhere to be found in the many photos spread out. 

And that’s when Damian really understands what he’s missed. 

“You took all of these.” He murmurs. 

Tim nods, eyes scanning at the couple dozen photos. He might have been about to say something when Damian surprises even himself. “They’re wonderful.” He tells him. Damian may not take photographs himself, but in composition, as an art form, Damian can appreciate the skill. 

“Oh.” Tim replies, dumbfounded. Damian looks away from him and this time begins to go through the stack. There’s many more of Timothy’s friends, Bernard as well. More of their siblings and father and Alfred. Even some of the rogues. Damian marvels at each one, noticing as they get slightly older as he makes his way through the stack. He’s nearly reached the bottom when he stops on one and stares at it, intently. 

It’s a stunning photo in both the dynamic pose, the vibrancy of the colour, and the sheer weightless feeling one gets from staring at it. Barbara Gordon as Batgirl. Damian can imagine what he would do if he switched the medium of this photo. Is already creating a palette of colours in his mind and sketching the pose on a canvas. 

Tim is staring at Damian, has been this entire time, and finally Damian lifts his head. 

“May I borrow this one?” Damian asks, turning the stack. Tim nods, silently, barely even glancing at it, but there’s a look on his face that Damian cannot decipher and truly doesn’t bother trying to. It turns out, he may be able to gift Gordon something meaningful afterall. 

His mind is still far away as begins to slip the photo off the stack, but the one under it makes him pause again. It’s shaky, not the best lighting, nor candid like the others, and off centre, but finally there he is.

Timothy Drake in the Robin costume grins widely up the camera—or most likely the person holding it. Damian doesn’t hesitate as he discretely slides Barbara’s photo back over top of it, before he’s putting the stack back down back where it’s supposed to be. As he pulls away with her photo in his hand, it’s easy to ensure the one of Timothy is pressed flush against it, hidden behind it. 

“Thank you.” Damian murmurs, turning around with his spoils, ready to leave when Timothy stops him with a hand. For a second he thinks he’s been caught—and disappointingly quickly too—but Timothy’s hand is not holding him to hurt. It’s gentle enough that Damian stops and looks back over his shoulder at him. 

“Yes?” He says after a moment, when Tim still doesn’t speak. 

“I—“ Tim scans his face, and then his photos like he’s looking for something that isn’t there, but they’re all in their right place aside from the ones in Damian’s hands. “I—uh, just,” Tim stutters. 

He looks increasingly distressed as he stares at the photos and Damian sighs. “I shall return the photo in pristine condition.” He promises, solemnly. “You need not act like I ruin everything I touch. I will only require it temporarily.”

Timothy shakes his head, “That’s—That’s not it, Dames, I know you wouldn’t ruin it I just,” His eyes are stuck on the photo spread on his desk and Damian still cannot tell what he’s looking for, but he’s itching to leave now that he has a plan and Timothy is being strange. “The photos and their subject matter are important to you. I, of all people, understand that.” Damian murmurs. It just makes Tim look even more stricken. 

Carefully, Damian ducks out of Timothy’s reach, the hand that was still on him falling away as he makes his way out.

He isn’t sure if he does hear Timothy call for him again, he thought he might have, but like Jon, he doesn’t come after Damian. The distance he has to travel isn’t far, either, and in no time Damian ends up in his room, photos held carefully to his chest. Alfred mews when he hears Damian enter, and it’s almost like he’s asking where Damian has been.

Damian glances down at the photos again and decides they must be put somewhere very safe, out of the reach of his well meaning but rambunctious animal companions. After that is done, for only a handful of seconds does he consider doing his homework, but Alfred meows again, then yawns, and Damian finds himself agreeing with the sentiment. It’s but a moment to change out of his street clothes before he crawls into bed, exhausted, and finally, finally gets to sleep—fleeing from the thoughts that won’t leave him be.

(Of course Damian noticed there were no pictures of him. That was fairly easy to deduce.)

(It doesn’t take away from the beauty of the photos, or Timothy’s skill.)

(It just confirms what he already knows.)

(Photos hold important things.)

(And Damian Wayne is unimportant.)

Chapter Text

It's easier to escape Barbara’s birthday celebrations than it was Alfred’s and Jason’s, and Damian is smarter about it too, this time. He plans a mission beforehand, that by all means, should be completed before the date in question. He has father approve it. He has his many, many trackers on his person. He swears to call for backup should he need it. He packs a spare comm under the watchful eye of his eldest brother. He follows the mission plan to perfection. 

And then, the day before the mission is supposed to end, Damian sabotages it. 

Well, not quite. If he were being truthful, he sabotaged it before he ever even left. It simply just culminates on the second last day, right on schedule. 

That's how he ends up spending Barbara’s birthday kidnapped. 

Damian opens his bleary eyes, blinking away the enforced sleep of a sedative drug. The taste on his tongue is stale, and it confirms that Damian has been unconscious for a number of hours. Less than a day, he's near certain, but somewhere around the eight to sixteen hour mark. It must have been a fairly strong sedative, or it had been reapplied for it to have such a long lasting effect on him. 

He listens for a moment, searching for the sound of another’s breathing, but seeing as he’d already opened his eyes, if someone were in here–he suspects a cell or closet of some kind–watching him, they'd be well aware of the fact that Damian is already awake. 

Still, he listens and deems either that he is alone, or someone has timed their breathing to his to make theirs go unnoticed. Not impossible, but rather difficult and not altogether very useful, and thus, unlikely. 

Damian sits up, his body groaning in protest as he moves of his own volition for the first time in hours. His costume is largely intact, but everything useful has been removed from his person. Trackers, comms, help beacon, utility belt, gloves, gauntlets, knives, batarangs—they even took his boots and cape.

The R on his suit is missing as well, even though it, unlike Timothy’s, was not a shuriken. 

Whoever had taken that had done so pointedly. 

Damian sighs, and his body reminds him of its other functions, which haven't been attended to for as many hours as he'd been unconscious. His stomach growls, and his bladder makes shifting uncomfortable, but these things are not pressing, yet. Besides, Damian has been trained to withstand starvation, and the unpleasantries that come with being held captive. The only true concern would be getting water. One can survive weeks without food. One cannot survive more than a handful of days without water.

And for all his training, Damian is still only human. 

Pushing the thought aside, Damian scans his surroundings and finds that he’d not been correct in his first estimation.

This is no closet or makeshift cell. 

He's on the carpeted floor of a hotel room. A rather nice one, at that. 

And before he can be more worried about that, the door to the hotel room opens, and in walks an unexpected complication. 

“Deathstroke.” Damian scowls, on his feet in a moment. This was not part of his plan. 

His scowl is met with an eye roll. “So I see you’re finally awake, Kid.”

Damian’s hand instinctively reaches for his blades, but Deathstroke tsks at him. “Not so fast there, kiddo. You think I’d leave you armed? Come on, you know better than that.”

Of course Damian knew better. He’d already done an inventory of himself, but it was instinctive to reach for a weapon with an enemy nearby—and no matter their complicated history or Slade’s reluctant fondness for children, Slade was very much an enemy. 

One much, much more dangerous than Damian accounted for when he arranged this, even if he was currently dressed as a civilian. Damian knew he could practically hide an arsenal on his person—and this being the States, a gun as long as he appeared to have the proper concealed carry licence for whatever fake identity he was using. 

For all Damian knew, Wintergreen could have arranged for legitimate weapons licences for Slade’s numerous alibis. It wouldn’t be too difficult for Wintergreen to manage. 

The idea of being unarmed against Slade has unease setting in for the first time. He may be unbound and well trained, but he’s at every disadvantage. 

Regret is not something Damian is used to feeling, but he feels it now. 

If I had been stronger, he thinks, bitterly. If I could just get over myself—

“What do you want?” Damian asks, cutting through the noise in his head that says he's failed, again. The voice that tells him he should be better than this. He focuses instead on Deathstroke. The mercenary isn’t one to listen to himself talk, but that doesn’t mean he can’t play word games like the best of them, and Damian doesn't know what to make of the patronising tone he's using. 

He reminds himself that his mother would never doubt Deathstroke’s prowess, and Damian cannot either. Especially not now.

“You’re not going to thank me for rescuing you from those original Superman supremacists?” Deathstroke questions, and again, the tone is at odds with the intent, all too focused look in Slade’s eyes. 

“A thank you implies a debt.” Damian returns evenly. An al Ghul always pays their debts, or else forfeit their honour, and above all, their name. Damian, who has been disowned fourfold, has no claim to his name, and as a dead boy resurrected—slain in what was a “fair” one-on-one fight—has no honour to claim, either. 

Even still, he would never say thank you to Slade. “I owe you nothing.” Damian spits. 

Grandfather would have him whipped for that. Mother would strike him, herself. Father would make Damian give up Robin—the one thing he has left to fight for.  

Slade just laughs. 

Damian loathes him. 

“What do you want.” Damian repeats himself, all inflection gone now. He had this under control, the so-called original superman supremacists were largely harmless. They’d attempted to get their hands on Jay Nakamura, or rather, Gossamer, a few weeks prior in the hopes of attracting Jon’s attention. Kidnapping Superman’s boyfriend in an effort meant to “persuade” him to step down and return the role to his father might have worked if they hadn't underestimated their target. 

Unfortunately for them, they couldn't even lay hands on Nakamura. Literally. 

Luckily for them, Robin was much more tangible, and while no one should ever underestimate him, it just so happened that Damian was looking to get kidnapped. 

Besides, no one knew Robin and Superman were on the outs. Jonath— No one would have been at risk besides Damian. It was a smart plan. A good plan. An easy, simple, plan.

But plan, meet Deathstroke the Terminator. 

Damian wears his rage plain on his face, in the harsh lines of his body. Slade isn’t cowed, and why would he be? Damian is shorter than every other boy his age (he blames it on his death—or, deaths, actually) and clearly the easy target he deliberately made of himself. 

It's pathetic. 

( He's pathetic.)

Slade crosses his arms, leaning back against the one door in and out of the room. Damian tries not to think about the first time they’d shared a hotel room because Damian had run away from home. From his father. From the family that wasn't his family. 

Maybe his mother had lied then, maybe Bruce really was his father, but that doesn't stop the words of a Tim who’d once loathed him from ringing in his ears. 

I know who your mom is. I know who your grandfather is. I know who your real dad is. 

Which tells me everything I need to know about you.

Even if Damian’s father isn't Slade, the similarities are uncanny, aren't they? In another life he could have been Slade’s son. In another life it really could be Slade whom he called father.

But in this life they aren't anything. They don't owe each other anything. There is no reason for Slade to say what he does next.

“I want you to tell me why you had yourself kidnapped.”

There is no reason for him to sound like he cares.

“No.”

Slade sighs, but he just adjusts his stance against the door, getting more comfortable. “Well I guess neither of us are leaving.” He replies, easily. 

Damian whips around, makes his way to the windows, and Slade snorts. He already knows it's futile as he tries each one. They're too high up for windows that will open. Too high up for Damian to escape without any equipment.

A part of him insists that Jonathan is an option. All Damian has to do is call his name. Jonathan knows the sound of his voice. If he called, Jonathan could follow. He could find Damian. He could bring Damian home. 

Damian doesn't want to go home. 

(He doesn't want to know if Jon will ignore his call the way Damian has been ignoring his.)

Damian walks through the hotel room—rooms. There's one for a bedroom, more wall to ceiling windows there, a queen size bed, empty dresser drawers, and an empty bedside table save for one pocket size bible. Damian snorts. 

The bathroom isn't much better in the way of weapons. He might be able to use the chord of the hair dryer for strangulation, or use it to break the mirror for a large shard of glass he can shove in Slade’s other eye, but overall, these aren't exactly quality weapons. 

Besides, it isn't worth it. The hassle or the fight. 

How, even after sleeping for so many hours, is he still tired? 

Damian looks at himself, his reflection in the mirror, and doesn't like what he sees. That isn't really too surprising though. He stopped looking in mirrors years ago for a reason. It's easier to forget who his parents are when he doesn't have to see the proof on his face, in his skin, his eyes, his jawline, nose, cheekbones, scowl. 

The bags under his eyes look deeper than usual. His hair has gotten long enough that it's starting to fall softly around his face instead of standing up. 

He should probably get it cut, but even loathing her, a part of him doesn't mind looking like her. Wants to look like her, even knowing how much harder it will make it to have father look at him. 

Damian turns on his heel and reenters the living room. While he could make Slade regret this, whatever this is, he decides he'd much rather curl up on the couch, tucking his cold, bare feet beneath him. He doesn’t look at Slade. Doesn’t look at anything, really.

That gets Slade’s attention. 

“Oh, now I’m fucking certain something is wrong. Fess up, kid. Did you kill someone? Break one of daddy’s precious rules?”

It would have been genuinely easier if he had. Damian has killed before. Has kept killing. Sure, he stops. He always stops for his father, but inevitably he gives in again. Morgan Ducard. Brother Blood. His numerous kills—permanent or otherwise—in the Lazarus Tournament. 

Damian laughs, bitterly, hugging his knees to his chest, curling in on himself even more. Imagine the gall he has to wonder why he isn’t a priority, to get upset over the fact Robin keeps being taken away from him, when he can’t even follow his father’s most basic rule. 

“No.” Damian replies, belatedly , scornfully. Yes, a death at his hands really would have been easier. It’s happened before, he knows how to get from the aftermath back to some semblance of good standing. In this Damian has been lost, alone, doing his best and evidently, still failing. 

If Slade managed to figure out Damian arranged his own kidnapping, would Father? Oracle? Tim?

Regardless of whether they do or do not, there’s no way he’s being allowed out on patrol again, anytime soon after this. Getting kidnapped by a cult and then taking down the cult you’re kidnapped by is impressive if it’s a surprise, and deliberate if it’s planned. Father will know he planned to take down the cult all along in the latter scenario, and he would have been angered, certainly, but he’d have a hard time arguing with Damian’s methods when they worked. 

If they’d worked. 

He would have seen it as Damian protecting Jonathan, the fact that it happened to be over Barbara’s birthday? A matter of poor timing. Father knows all about missions taking him away from his family. 

But no, no. 

Instead, Damian has been kidnapped twice over, the second time by Slade Wilson who’s….what? Trying to parent him? Damian doesn’t know. It’s confusing and he’d rather go home and suffer the humiliation of being the failed, forgotten, murderous Robin than sit here being poorly parented by an assassin with too much time on his hands. 

Except, that’s a lie. 

Or he’d have already tried to leave, right? He wouldn’t be sitting on this couch like a child. He would have broken that mirror and launched himself at Slade like the demon out of hell his brothers claim he is. 

Instead, he’s so starved for affection he’s actively letting a mercenary try to antagonize answers out of him out of concern. It’s ridiculous. Clownery. He should end this farce, demand his weapons back (or at least his socks) and leave with his dignity intact. 

He doesn’t. 

He doesn’t do any of that. 

Not even when Slade steps away from the door, out of the room entirely. Not even when he hears the tap turn on in the washroom. Not even when Slade returns holding a paper cup filled with water, holding it out to him. 

Damian stares at it flatly, before reaching out to take it. His eyes bore into the cup, but he still keeps track of Slade with his peripheral view, and he feels more than see when Slade sinks into the couch, on the opposite end. 

“It’s safe to drink, this isn’t Gotham’s tap water.” Slade says. 

Damian doesn’t point out Slade himself could have tampered with it. He decides he doesn’t care too much. He desperately needs to brush his teeth and his throat is dry as the deserts he once trained in. And really, Slade had already had Damian in his possession for some number of hours while he’d been unconscious. 

There are easier ways to hurt him. 

Damian takes a sip. When he doesn’t immediately start choking, wheezing, or suffer any heart palpitations, he takes a longer sip. 

Eventually the water is gone, and he has an empty cup. 

If this were a glass he could break it, try to do what assassins do with sharp things and enemies less than a foot away. 

But it’s only paper, and it’s a little wet, and not going right be overly helpful unless Damian feels like trying to shove it down Slade’s throat. 

Damian sets it down to his right, puts his head on his knees, and takes as deep a breath as he can manage in that position. 

“It’s stupid.” He says, finally. Nonsensically. “I’m weak.” He whispers. Why is he speaking at all? “Mother would be ashamed.” He admits. And it sucks all the air out of his lungs so that he doesn’t have to worry about shutting up.

Slade does not say words in response. He moves like a predator, slowly, carefully, trying not to startle their prey as he moves from his spot on the couch. Damian keeps his eyes on him, tracking, frozen, watching as he crosses the short distance and kneels in front of Damian’s curled up form. 

This is weird. He thinks. 

“Your mother isn’t here right now. I’m pretty sure if anyone in your family had their way, she’d never come near you again.” Slade offers, gruffly. Damian blinks, his eyes are wet, but there aren’t any tears. He prefers it that way. He’s sick of crying. 

“I’m not so sure.” Damian murmurs, it’s mostly to himself, but Slade is so close that there’s no way he doesn’t hear it. Damian looks into his eye, blue, but not like his father’s eyes. Slade’s is colder, sharper, meant to be as cutting as the blades he wields. 

Father’s eyes are harder and softer, except Damian can’t remember the last time he’s felt his father’s gaze hold him in softness. 

Slade’s eye isn’t cutting now. If anything, it’s soft. 

(The sort of softness Damian doesn’t dare ask for.)

(The sort he wouldn’t get, even if he did.)

How can Slade manage it when his own father can’t? Is he really, really that despicable that only strangers and killers can care about him? 

“They forgot my birthday.” Damian says of his own free will. He lets himself be fooled by the kindness in the eye of a killer. If only because it is familiar. 

(He ignores the part of him that asks if they forgot or didn’t care.)

“They?” Slade asks, gently. Too gently. Too soft.

(Whywhywhy)

It hurts to speak. 

“Everyone.” 

Slade is silent. Damian closes his eyes, not sure if he’d rather the man’s pity or utter indifference. If he’d rather be mocked or scorned.

He gets neither—none of those things. 

What he gets is a pair of arms wrapping around him. What he gets is a hug. What he gets he has no more of an idea what to do with than anything else that’s happened to him, recently. 

He wasn’t built for this. He wasn’t built for things like family, or love, or feelings, or emotions, or any number of the things people expected him to know what to do with when he was put in his father’s possession. 

He was built to be a weapon. A shell. A tool. An instrument one could play to suit their own needs. 

He was built with a purpose, and then declared unworthy, and forced into a new place where he had no purpose and no skills relevant to this new place. 

He changed. He changed himself to fit this new place (and still failed, more often than not). He made himself learn how to be part of a family. He made himself vulnerable so he could learn empathy. He made himself open to the idea that love could equal, could trump, blood. 

He broke himself for them. He broke himself for nothing. 

“Let it out, kid.” Slade murmurs. 

Damian doesn’t know how. It’s all trapped inside and he’s imploding, and when it ends, when it stops, he’s not sure there’ll be anything left. 

(If there should be anything left)

(Or if anyone will miss him when he blows)

But that’s for then, and this is now.

And for now, he lets himself sink into the embrace of a killer (and hates how it feels like home)

Chapter Text

In all, Damian had been kidnapped for less than a day. 

Of his own volition, he stays for over two, almost three, weeks. 

They shouldn’t get along as well as they do, but that doesn’t seem to stop them from falling into easy habits as they hop from city to city. They go to a diner for breakfast. They eat. Slade points out a car. Damian breaks in and hot wires the car. Slade pays for their food. Damian hops into the passenger seat. Slade gets in the driver seat. They head to the next city. 

Damian points out a hotel which won’t have bed bugs. Slade rents a room. Damian takes first watch. Slade calls him stubborn. Damian goes to bed at one. Slade leaves at two. Damian listens to him leave. Slade returns by three. Damian wakes him up the next morning and never says a thing about the bodies they leave in their wake. 

Maybe that’s wrong.  

After all, he doesn’t know if Slade’s targets deserve it—father would argue never, would shout that they did not have the right to play judge, jury, and executioner—but when Slade sneaks out at night to complete a hit, Damian simply rolls over, brings the blankets up to his face, and tries to fall back asleep. 

The truth is, Father isn’t here right now. 

And Damian has taken it upon himself to not care. 

He’s not breaking any rules. He’s not even Robin right now, his symbol lost somewhere sometime in Damian’s unconscious hours. Without it, without the overbearing and somehow still impossibly absent weight of his family’s attention and judgement, Damian has felt lighter than he has in months. 

Maybe years. 

(Not caring is so much easier than caring.) 

(But Damian still cares. He still cares so much.)

(Barbara’s painting is life and movement and memory. It is respect, honour and care. It had been placed with her other gifts, wrapped and tagged with her name, but not his. He did not, would not, sign it.)

(Everyone will know it’s his, though. Timothy would tell them, even if they couldn’t figure it out for themselves.)

(And in turn, when Timothy goes looking for Barbara’s photograph, he’ll find it beside his own, unknowingly stolen, next to a card sized, painted portrait of the very same image. Centred, clear where the original is blurred.)

(Also unsigned.)

(That is the plight of caring.) 

Neither of them are much for conversation—a side effect of being alone more often than not that Damian suspects is something they’re both quite used to—the silences are long, but companionable. They aren’t the empty silences of an empty house, or the still silences that come with the company of the dead.

Damian finds he much prefers silence when someone is by his side. 

Even if that someone is Slade. 

In the in-between time, time not spent in a car, in a hotel, on a hit they pretend Damian doesn’t know about, they fill the time in other ways. Especially when Damian gets antsy, when he can’t sit in the car for a single second longer, Slade takes the initiative to pull off the road, into an open field, a stretch of grass or dirt or sand, even a small clearing in the seemingly endless woods. He’ll gets out of the car, Damian will follow suit. They’ll shed the outwear layers they don’t want to ruin, and then they’ll fight. 

Every dirty trick, every cheap shot, every hard hitting move that would have gotten him deemed too dangerous to trust with something as simple as sparring and benched for at home, they utilise to their advantage. Nothing lethal, of course, but otherwise—It’s dirty, bloody, and violent. It’s sly grins and cunning eyes and freedom. 

They aren’t equals by any means. Slade is double his size, stronger and more experienced, and he wins more often than not, but Damian gets better each fight. Each highway turn-off, each punch and bruise. He finds himself laughing, unexpectedly, when he pulls a fast one on Slade that brings the mercenary to his knees. Damian dances away from the return hit, grinning widely as the familiar salty tang of blood that's filled his mouth.

He can live with another split lip, as many as it takes, to see that expression of disbelief on Slade’s face. 

Damian doesn’t boast—the last time he’d done that Slade had put him on his ass, but he crouches low, ready to run at him again or dodge away, when Slade sits back and calls it. 

“Okay, okay, enough, kid. You get it this time.” Slade concedes, sighing. 

Damian refrains from pointing out he got it last time, too. The look on his face says it all, though. 

“Don’t be a smart ass.” He threatens, finding some denser grass to sit on. Damian goes back to the most recent stolen vehicle and grabs two water bottles from the case in the back before joining him on the ground.

He opens his bottle, taking a sip and swishing the water around his mouth before spitting it out, the water pink with his blood. Slade eyes the wound but doesn’t comment on it. Where his own are already gone or already healing, Damian’s are much longer lasting. They get worse before they get better. He bleeds before he scabs. 

He imagines that were he really Slade’s son like Mother had claimed, he’d have inherited the meta traits that were in part what made Slade so dangerous. The healing ability that Damian so clearly lacks. 

After all, Grant, Joseph, and Rose did. 

Perhaps he should be glad Mother didn’t conceive with Slade, he muses, Damian has enough siblings as it is. 

“I am quite literally a genius.” Damian replies, belatedly. 

Slade shrugs. “In this life, geniuses are a dime a dozen.” 

He scowls at Slade, the twist in his lips making the lower one bleed more and Slade sighs again. “You couldn’t have grabbed some tape to keep the edges together, at least?” 

“We ran out.” Damian mutters, sourly. They’d used up the last of their medical supplies a few hours prior. 

“All of it?”

“You hit me a lot.” He replies, patiently. 

Slade groans. “Way to make me sound abusive, kid, thanks. You realise this is why we can’t go out, right?”

Damian is unsure if he means the visible injuries or Damian’s bluntness, but either way, they both work. “That, and the fact you kidnapped Batman’s son.” 

Slade shrugs. “You stayed.” He counters. 

He did. Damian concedes the point. 

He stayed. He stays, and he’d have stayed longer, if he could. Slade didn’t seem in a hurry to make him leave, at least, and Damian was in no hurry to leave, but, as always, fate comes calling. 

In the ninth major city of their cross country trip, everything comes to an end. 

A spectacularly messy end.

And it isn’t his father, who finds him. His siblings, or Oracle. It’s Superman. 

And it’s an accident.

Slade is too used to their routine. He leaves at the same time, expecting Damian  to stay in bed. He doesn't bother concealing his tracks from anyone more skilled than a low level assassin. He'd be impossible to follow from one of average capabilities, and it is not boastful to Damian to say that he is no plebeian of average capabilities. 

Deathstroke is a shadow, but he doesn't disappear into the dark like father does. The orange half of his costume makes him just the wrong amount of visible in the scant amounts of light, and his sheer size is more inconvenient now than it is when they fight. 

Slade is built for hand to hand, unforgiving lethal combat. Damian is built for slipping in and out of dark places and ending lives in the stillness of the night. They are the weapons they were made to be, and they’re both very good at what they do. 

So, even if Slade were watching for him, Damian would still evade his notice. 

Thus, Slade unwittingly leads and Damian follows. He's always a distance away, but close enough it's a simple matter to slip in after the man when he breaks into the home of his target, silent alarms dismantled with ease and mechanical locks opened with the click of a few buttons. Slade enters like he owns the place, Damian skulks in his shadows. 

Up the stairs, down the hall. Slade has the floor plan memorised, and he slips into the target’s bedroom without a sound. Damian stands at the end of the hall, watching the door. Listening for sounds he won't hear with normal, human ears.

If he was really Slade’s son, he'd be able to hear the target gurgling on their blood as Slade’s knife passes through their throat and they begin to drown in it, unable to take in enough precious air to breathe. 

He doesn't close his eyes, as much as he might want to. He doesn't open the door to confirm that Slade has really done exactly as Damian has pictured. He stands instead, just inside the edge of a path of moonlight, stretching from the window at the end of the hall to ever so slightly illuminate Damian’s face. 

The door opens and Slade emerges, already wiping down his knife and sheathing it. He stills when he catches sight of Damian in the hall.

“Kid.” He rasps. Damian expects anger, maybe even a reprimand, but what he gets is a sigh. “You shouldn’t be here dressed like that.” Slade murmurs. Damian looks down at himself, the entirely black outfit that could pass for civilians, and shrugs. 

“Should I have come as Robin?” He inquires. 

You shouldn't have come at all, probably sits on Slade’s tongue, or perhaps Damian is projecting what his father might say onto the man who is not that to him (not anything, to him), because Slade doesn't say that. He shakes his head.

“You're a real piece of work, kid.” He mutters, and where anyone else would be aggravated, Slade is amused. “Come on, we've been here long enough. You should know better than to linger at the scene of a crime.” He directs. 

Again, Damian follows. 

They exit the house, making their way a few streets over, in the opposite direction of their hotel, entering a small apartment building and then making their way to the roof. Though unsuspecting, this building has just the right vantage point to look through the scope of Slade’s sniper rifle and into the bedroom of the target whose life Slade had just unceremoniously ended while Damian stood by, less than a dozen metres away. 

Damian pulls the trigger of the gun and shatters the window of the target's home. He keeps watch through the scope as lights flicker on in the house, and then step, step, step, down the hall, only fifteen seconds at the pace this other occupant moves until the light flicks on in the bedroom. He looks away before anyone can step into the view of the window and rests on his knees, unsure what to do with this hollow feeling in his chest. 

“You didn't have to do that.” Slade murmurs. 

“Letting them sleep until morning would not have been any kinder.” He disagrees, softly. “The truth, while unpleasant, is more kind than pretty lies.”

Slade hums. “Is that why you followed me?” 

Damian looks down at the gun in his hands, father’s most despised weapon, and considers the words that sit in his mouth. 

(Have you gotten tired of rolling over and pretending not to see?)

Anything he might say, might have thought of saying, never has a chance to come out. 

There’s a blur of blue and red that crashes into Slade, too fast for even him to react. Damian is on his feet in an instant, the gun pointed and aimed before he’s even conscious of the decision. He has it pointed at the back of someone he’d never imagined he’d hold a gun to, and somehow, he still goes unnoticed as that someone else speaks first. 

“You killed that man!” Superman, but Jonathan, shouts. 

Damian marvels at the anger he hasn’t heard in well over a year. The anger of a younger Jonathan Kent, but tinged with his kryptonian father’s moral righteousness. 

“I’ve killed many men.” Slade snorts. Damian presses his lips into a thin line, biting back the urge to say something to stop this. He doesn’t put down the gun—not that it would do any harm to either of them, anyway. 

Jonathan picks up Slade with one hand, holding him high enough against the brick wall that his feet weren’t touching the ground. Damian’s stomach does something strange when he watches his (once) best friend throw around a man he should by no means have the power to do so—not if he were a regular human. 

Then again, Damian is the only regular human here. 

“Why.” Jon demands. It's not a question. Damian doesn’t need to see Slade’s face behind his mask to know he’s amused. 

“I’m a mercenary, super brat.” He replies, wryly. 

Jon growls, but he doesn’t do more damage than he already had forcing Slade against the brick wall which had buckled under them. It had to have hurt, even if Deathstroke hasn’t showed it. No weakness infront of an enemy. 

(Could Damian have forgotten that lesson—or was Slade not an enemy?)

“Why him.” He clarifies. Still not a question. One Damian hasn’t asked, hadn’t wanted to know who or why, and yet he’s standing here, being forced to listen to the answers anyway. 

Except Slade doesn’t reply and Jon growls again. “There wasn’t a hit out on him, who sent you?”

Slade tips his head up, and while it makes him look haughty—Damian knows Slade is looking at him over Jonathan’s head. He motions with his chin for Damian to go, and he could. He should. 

He plants his feet and doesn’t leave. 

Slade sighs, and Damian knows the sigh is meant for him. It’s Slade’s you’re being stubborn, sigh. Resigned to Damian’s willfulness. 

“Not every hit is for a contract, kid.” Slade replies, still in the wry tone that agitates Jon more. 

“So what? This was personal?” Jon asks in disbelief. Slade shrugs in his hold and Jon drops him as he reels away, disgusted. 

“Shouldn’t you be happy? I got rid of a little problem of yours, and you didn’t have to lift a finger.” Slade taunts. 

Jon clenches his fists, reigning himself in even as he shouts again, “You killed him! He might have been an annoyance, but he didn’t have to die for some whim of yours! I was handling it.”

Slade snorts, disdain dripping from his words. “Handling it? Is that what you call letting some fanatics kidnap your boyfriend and your ‘best friend’?” 

Damian and Jon startle in synch. “I—” Jon droops a little, but Damian’s attention isn’t on him. His eyes are on Slade and Slade alone, just as Slade’s eye is on him. The surprise is the only thing that stops him from understanding immediately, but once it passes he does, he does. It clicks. 

Slade had killed the leader of the original Superman supremacists. 

And he did it for Damian. 

(That shouldn’t warm him as much as it does)

“That’s enough, Jonathan.” He murmurs. Jon whips around, and there’s an expression that almost like hope at the sound of his voice, a desperate sort of hope that dies when his eyes fall on Damian’s black clad form. The sniper rifle in his hands. 

“Damian?” 

Chapter Text

That was Damian’s voice. 

Those are Damian’s dangerous green eyes. 

This is Damian in front of him. 

Damian who’s been missing for weeks. 

Damian who’s holding a gun on him.

Damian whose heart beat he didn’t recognize—didn’t even notice. 

(When did he forget it?)

(How could he have forgotten it?)

“No more, Superman.”

Damian sees the flinch, but those blue eyes of his don’t stray from Damian’s hands. They’re fixated on that one point, and Damian can’t do anything about it. Can’t make himself lower the weapon. 

Might as well let Jonathan see the truth now. Damian is what he’s always been. He can’t be changed, and Jonathan has changed too much. Too fast. 

“Damian.” Jon repeats in disbelief. 

Slade gets to his feet and this time Damian tries to communicate that he should leave, but it seems they’re equally stubborn. 

“You’re…here? With him?”

There’s no point denying it. “I am.”

Jon’s feet touch the roof for the first time since he’d flown in, and still, nothing about him is mortal the way Slade or Damian are. 

(How mortally fallible)

It pangs in his chest, the realisation that he never could have hoped to compete. The way Jon’s eyes won’t leave his hands, says all he’ll ever need to know. Damian doesn’t need to look at the S on Jon’s chest that confirms it. Not when he knows he’ll never wear his own father’s symbol. Not when he’ll never be worthy. 

They’re too different, in the way he and Slade are too alike. 

“He’s a monster.” Jon says in disbelief. 

Damian almost drops the gun right there, but hadn’t he already known that? Where Damian is less than, Jon is more. 

“Then I am too.” Damian says. That’s an easy conclusion to come to. After all, if Damian is like Slade, and Slade is a monster, then Damian is one as well. It makes sense.

Jon’s eyes jerk away from the gun. “What?”

Damian looks at Slade, taller than him, stronger than him, and covered in the same scars. Carrying the same weight. He hasn’t made a move to attack, but he wouldn’t. This is Damian’s fight, to win or to lose. 

“We are cut from the same cloth.” Damian says. It’s quiet, but loud enough for kryptonian ears. Loud enough for the ears of a genetically enhanced meta human mercenary, as well. Even if we do not share the same blood, our cloth is of the same weave. Fate and pain has made us what we are. It’s not a message he can convey with his eyes alone, and still Slade nods. 

“You’re nothing like him.” Jon denies. A part of Damian wants to snort at the naivety. 

“How aren’t I like him, Jonathan?” He asks. It’s overly loud in the suddenly noticeable quiet of the night. Even the shot from the rifle he holds hadn’t been that loud. 

Jon panics. “Names!”

Damian scoffs. “He already knows,” He’s not sure if that’s true, honestly, but he’d already said it once. Slade knew who all the Bats were, anyway. Perhaps that didn’t extend to Supers, but what is Slade going to do against Superman, especially when he’s the first Superman’s son?

Slade is the opposite of suicidal, and there’s a reason he’s evaded the Justice League for years. Besides, monster or not, Damian would never let Slade touch him, even if he could do something. 

(A part of him thinks that right now, if he said as much to Jon, he wouldn’t be believed.)

Jon tries to speak and Damian speaks over him, tired of waiting for an answer. “I’m an assassin. He’s an assassin. I grew up in the league, he was part of the league, we’ve both been tricked by my mother, we have the same scars, the same training, the same anger!” The same loneliness. 

“Did you know that for a time, my family believed Slade might actually be my father? It made sense to them. After all, how could this demonic child be the Batman’s child? Batman who is justice, Batman who refuses to kill even when his son is beaten to death by his mortal enemy or skewered on another’s blade.” 

(Could there ever be any doubt that Jonathan is anything but his father’s son?)

“I’ve died!” He yells, and he sounds hysterical even to his own ears because the knowledge haunts him the way it did Jason. Father may have wounded Heretic, but Mother had killed him. Two sons in one night, but at least she had avenged him. Father would never dream of it. Damian knows, he’s seen the simulation recordings. Dick did then, what father couldn’t. 

He tended to. 

Damian sneers. “It makes much more sense that a killer is the son of another killer. It will always make more sense for a monster to be the son of another monster.”  

“You aren’t a monster.” Jon refutes. “You aren’t his.” He says.

“But I could have been!” He shouts. I could have been.

His voice rings in the air, in his lungs, in his head. It reverberates between them. It’s all still for a moment, but then somehow they’re in the air and there’s so much of it—but somehow still, all of it’s been sucked from his lungs. Damian doesn’t struggle, he knows what it’s like to be flown. This isn’t another kidnapping even though it’s well within Jonathan’s ability. In no time he’s being set down, somewhere on a different roof, higher and far away from Slade—the man whose son he could have been. 

He can’t let it go. 

He sees it now, like he’d refused to then. Maybe on the surface Damian is his father’s, but Damian is so much more than what is on the surface and the truth is he could have been. 

He could have been, and he doesn’t think that’s so bad, even if Jon does or everyone else did. Damian presses his hand against the knot of scar tissue over his heart and remembers dying for being his father’s son.

If he had died for Slade, he would have been avenged. Hadn’t he just proved that? 

(Is it so terrible that he wants that?)

“You’re not his.” Jon repeats. Same old story, just a new rooftop, then. 

Damian scoffs. 

Jon wouldn’t know—he hadn’t yet met Damian when he’d died that first time, but even then, even after giving his life for his father’s crusade, it hadn’t been enough to make people believe in him. When the DNA test was found, Father, Pennyworth, Drake, they still looked at Damian and thought maybe, maybe he really isn’t Bruce’s. How could he be, when so much rage simmers under his skin? 

(How could he be, when he has proven he is more than just a demon by blood?)

(How could he be, when he is also a monster?)

How could he be, when he doesn’t have the self control to hold back anymore?

“Maybe if he was I’d actually have a father who would look me in the eyes! Or a family that understands what it’s like to be a weapon instead of a child! Maybe I wouldn’t feel like I’m being torn in two every time I have to pick between my parents and their doctrines! Maybe I’d have someone who actually remembers my birthday!”

He—

He hadn’t meant to shout that last one. 

Damian turns away, turns his back on Jon. He can’t run like this. He can’t walk away. Jon took that option from him. Damian has no grapple and no options but a locked door and no pics (foolish). He’s trapped with a person who expects Damian to be someone he is not. Some saint Damian has never been and can never live up to. 

And he supposes that’s fair, because he too is still expecting his best friend—not this stranger wearing an aged version of his face. Not this god who doesn’t even need the power of flight to look down upon him. 

“Damian.”

He already hears it. Of course he does. 

“Damian,”

Damian closes his eyes, reminding himself that he does not need to see it. 

“Damian…”

His throat burns with acid. He can’t stand that tone. He can’t stand his pity. 

“Leave.” Damian whispers. 

“But—”

“Just leave.” Damian says, biting into his split lip and opening it again. “Please, Jonathan. Leave.”

“He’s nothing like you.” Jon whispers. “You aren’t him.”

Damian’s eyes burn and his heart aches and his body riots against Damian’s control. His mind is begging him to turn around, to let Jonathan….what? Convince Damian of his goodness? Take him home to a family who doesn’t see him? That he isn’t part of, even in pictures? No. 

No. Better the unkind truth than the pretty lies of ignorance. 

“I know you don’t believe me,” Jon says, softly. His hand falls on Damian’s shoulder and he doesn’t startle at the touch. The warmth. “You deserve better, Damian.”

“He’s been better.” Damian bites out. It sounds painful even to his own ears. 

The hand on his shoulder tightens. 

“The worst part,” Jonathan says, after a moment. “Is that I believe you.” Damian almost turns around, then, but he can’t tell if he’s crying and he cannot bring himself to check. At the very least, he knows he’s bleeding, but that is a constant in his life. The taste of his own blood is more familiar than the weight of a smile on his own lips.

“I can hear that it’s true…or that you believe it, and I believe you.”

“Even now.” He doesn’t make it a question. He’s not sure how he could. 

“Even now.” Jon agrees, softly. 

Jon believes him, but does Damian believe Jon? (He’s not sure how he could.)

“I can’t fix any of what’s wrong, Damian.” Jon tells him. He laughs, bitterly. Damian almost turns around again, because that sound — It’s one he never thought he’d hear from the boy in blue. “Turns out the only thing I’m super at is being a super terrible person. I’m letting down….everyone, lately. With every decision I make I hurt someone else, and I hurt you, and I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry. I’m sorry? What do those words even mean in their world?

“I don’t need you to be sorry.” 

(I just need you, Damian thinks.)

(Why did you have to leave? Why did you never come back?)

“I know.”

They stand in silence. Not the kind that is comfortable, not the kind they used to share. This one is fragile, tenuous, strained. This one stretches thin and breaks entirely. 

“Why do you always run away, Damian?”

There’s an honest answer here. It sits heavy inside his sternum but never tries to reach his tongue. It sits inside him, bound tight. The truth, the truth, the truth. 

An answer to a question he will not give. He’s already given so much of himself away. To Jon. To his father, to his mother, to Richard. To Drake and Brown and Cain and Tood and Pennyworth and Gordon. To Gotham and a city that will never love him.

He’s given enough, he thinks. 

“Why do you always think you can fix me?” Damian replies, in kind, but his words are never kind, and Jonathan is quiet behind him. Damian wouldn’t even know he was still there were it not for the weight of his hand, and the flutter of his cape, blowing in the wind. 

“I don’t.” Jon says. “You aren’t broken.”

What a lie. 

“I don’t believe you.”

(I don’t believe in you. I can't, not when it will break me more.)

“I know.”

“I let a man die tonight.”

Jon inhales raggedly. “I know.”

Stalemate. Breaking point. Pivotal moment. Whatever now could be, never comes to pass. The door to the roof opens, a gun cocks, uselessly, Slade snarls Get away from my kid, and Jonathan’s hand falls away. 

Somehow, that weight on his shoulders doesn’t get any lighter. 

“Come back, Damian.” He says. It’s not a question. It’s not an order, either. There’s just a pleading in it that makes it a little more than a request. “I miss you.” 

Damian’s heart spasms in his chest, and then Jonathan is gone between one moment and the next. Damian by some strength (or is it cowardice?) never turns around, never turns to look. Slade joins him at the edge, with the way he looks now, one wouldn’t know he just sprinted however many miles to make it to Damian’s side, ready to face down a Super.  

He wouldn’t hurt me. Damian almost tells Slade. It mostly wouldn’t be a lie. The only hurt Jon has ever given him is only on the inside, and it’s mostly only Damian’s fault for getting too attached. 

His mistake. 

“Rough night?” Slade offers, after a handful of moments. Damian almost snorts. 

“I’ve had worse.” He replies. 

Slade shrugs. “Yeah, well. Who hasn’t?”

Damian thinks that’s kind of fair. 

“You seriously split your lip again?” Slade comments when Damian doesn’t. At this rate it’s going to scar, Damian knows. He doesn’t mind that as much as he could. 

“My kid?” Damian murmurs, the corners of his mouth ever so slightly upturned. 

“Smart ass.”

Damian hums in return. After everything, the reply comes easier than it should. “Genius, actually.”

Slade huffs a laugh. “Sure, kid.” It’s as fond as it is amused. Damian’s grin widens and his lip bleeds, and they stand on the edge of the roof, a fall he could never survive. 

He’s never thought of jumping—not without a grapple or a safety net, has never even felt the urge, but maybe he stares too long or maybe Slade can’t help himself. An arm falls across his shoulders and pulls Damian close, tucking him into his side. Damian soaks in the warmth, accepting that perhaps he does deserve the hug of a killer. 

A man who would kill for him. 

A man who has.

Damian closes his eyes. He doesn’t sleep out here, it’s impossible on his feet, out in the open like this, but it’s a near thing. Time twists and turns and the night lasts forever and still ends too soon. Slade holds out his other hand as the dawn beckons, light peeking above the horizon. 

“Keep in contact.” Slade orders. Of course he can tell. Damian wonders if he’s truly so easy to read. Richard would probably say yes. He could always tell—when he was there at least. 

Damian sighs, reaching out to take his symbol from Slade, turning the R over and running his fingers over a new beacon, added in place of his father’s own. “Liar.” Damian comments. 

“You know it, kid.”

Damian slips it into his pocket, and it feels like acceptance. He lingers, but there is no reason to when he’s already decided. Before the sun rises, Damian slips away, just as easily as he slipped his R away, and leaves Slade alone on that roof. 

He has a destination in mind, but it’s not Gotham. Not yet. 

It’s not time. 

He stops by the hotel, dons his suit and his R and he hears it, in his mind. 

(Why do you always run away, Damian?)

And to himself, he gives this.

(Because, Jonathan, he answers, it is easier to leave, than to be left behind.)

The truth. 

Chapter Text

“You know,” Oliver Queen says, turning away from the stove to face him. “That I’ve known that Robin has been crashing here for three days?”

He’s actually been here for a week, but he’s surprised Oliver noticed at all. 

Connor Hawke shovels another spoonful of cereal into his mouth and doesn’t reply.  

“All I’m saying is the kid doesn’t have to skulk around the house. He can join us for dinner instead of preparing an entire meal in the middle of the night. Especially if he’s eating my food anyway.” Oliver says. “I’ve been making extra since I’ve seen him.”

Not that anyone would be able to tell. Oliver has no concept of portion control and says any excess can be put to good use as tomorrow's lunch. That’s not really the part that surprises him. Connor raises a brow. “You saw him?”

“He’s not a ghost.” Oliver replies. 

No, Damian is much better than a ghost. He’s a shadow. “Still.” Connor says. 

Oliver points his wooden spoon at Connor, the enthusiasm in it gets bits of runny, uncooked scrambled eggs on the counter. Oliver tries to look indignant, but after a moment he deflates. “Fine, I haven't seen him, but he is here.” Oliver mutters. 

He’s not wrong. Connor stares at his dad for a moment. “You haven’t told Batman, have you?”

“What? That I got one of his stray Robins roosting in my house?” Oliver shakes his head. “No. Figured there was a reason he’s skulking around here rather than back home. And I,” He says pointedly, loudly for any eavesdropping ears. “Am not getting in the middle of that.”

Connor has another spoonful of cereal, crunching slowly. “He’s vegetarian.” He finally says. 

Oliver stares down at his breakfast spread, scrambled eggs cooked in bacon grease, biscuits made with lard, a small mountain of mini breakfast sausages, blanched swiss chard tossed with crispy fried bacon bits, and frowns. “Huh.” 

“It was a nice thought.” Connor consoles him. Oliver’s frown deepens and he eats his breakfast with a look of consternation on his face, packing up the leftovers before he leaves, with Connor still doing work on his laptop at the counter. 

Damian emerges from the pantry a few minutes later and takes a seat next to Connor. 

“Y'know, I’d ask how, or when, but I’m just going to pretend I didn’t see anything.”

“For all its modern renovations,” Damian points out, “It’s an old house. A rather sizeable, old house. You would be surprised at what you can find spending a few hours inside the walls.”

Connor slowly, slowly shuts his laptop. “Nope. Not…not touching any of what you just said today. Not asking why you were inside the walls at all.” He says with a genial smile on his face. Damian’s tuts at him. 

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

Connor’s smile cracks. “Is….was that intentional?” 

Damian stares at him blankly. “Was what intentional?”

“I swear to god.” Connor mutters. “Your brother is Tim Drake and you’re telling me you’ve never seen—” He cuts himself off with a shake of his head. “Nope. Again, nevermind. New topic. You heard my dad, you can join us for dinner, or, maybe, at the very least, stop hiding inside the walls?”

Damian rolls his shoulders in some kind of overly formal, stiff shrug. “I don’t believe I’ll be here much longer. I appreciate the hospitality, but I will not overstay my welcome.” 

“My dad took four days to even notice you were here. Another three to bring it up.” Connor reminds him. “Look, if you want to leave I won’t stop you, but I’m not kicking you out, so, whatever the case may be, you don’t have to worry about running out of hospitality.”

Damian looks down at the white marble counter wearing a similar face of consternation to Oliver. “Perhaps.” He eventually murmurs. 

He is silent for another few moments and Connor waits him out. Being raised by monks gave him the benefit at the very least, of patience. Damian looks up at him, well over a year older than when they first met, and taller, but still not that much taller. He has matured though. Anyone with eyes can see it. 

“I’ve been away from home for over a month.” Damian says, softly. “And I’m afraid that if….when…I go back, nothing will have changed.” 

“Does it need to be changed?”

Damian places both of his hands on the counter top. Connor watches as his fingers curl, clench, act like they want to dig into the stone with his very finger tips, before flattening out again. Finally, he answers. “Walking inside the walls of your home is not so different from walking through the halls of the manor. There’s less room, perhaps, but they’re equally empty, and the same in that I am the only one who walks through them.” Damian tells him. It’s so calm, so precisely said, that the abstract, abject, unobjectionable terrible truth of that statement takes a moment to set in. 

If there’s one thing Connor can say about Damian it’s that behind this boastful, arrogant persona he usually puts up, there is a much, much more vulnerable person underneath looking for a connection. He doesn’t think Damian’s family is terrible—they’re some of the best heroes in the business. Well known, well liked, and trusted. At one point, Connor and Tim had been on the same team and had actually been pretty good friends. 

They’re not bad people, but then again, Connor’s family isn’t either. 

That didn’t stop him from feeling like he didn’t belong. That didn’t stop Connor from feeling out of step, a level of disconnect where they were all on one plane, he was on another, and every time he reached out—his hand would go right through them. 

But that level of disconnect? Connor doesn’t know if it’s his place to pass judgement, after all, a year ago he was fighting in the same death tournament as Damian, on the wrong side for the wrong people, but uneasiness swirls in his stomach. There’s a reason Damian is hiding out here. There’s a reason Connor never picked up his phone and called Tim when his brother showed up at his doorstep a week ago. 

Maybe he can’t pass judgement, but he’ll trust Damian’s. 

“Can you change it without going back?” Connor asks instead. 

Damian stares at his hands. “No.”

Connor nods. “Then you have a goal to work towards when you’re ready.” He says. Damian’s head pops up in surprise, his face does it’s best not to show it, but there’s just a widening around of his eyes, an ever so slight part in his lips when they’re usually pressed into a firm line or scowl. 

“I already told you, Damian. I’m not going to kick you out.” He says, and he knows he says it too gently because Damian’s lips do form that familiar scowl.

“Even if I deserve it?” He challenges, bitterly. 

“Even then.” Connor shrugs. Damian’s expression twists again, startled and unbalanced. He knocks his shoulder into Damian’s, playing it light, playing it casual, letting Damian recover. “I threw you off a cliff and you still saved my life. I sort of owe you one or two.” He teases. 

They might be different generations hero wise, but they’re alike in….a lot of ways, and while their friendship may have been unexpected, it isn’t unwelcome. Connor doesn’t have to owe him to offer help, but it does give Damian an excuse to accept it. 

“Come on,” Connor decides. “I have some time to kill before my class today. Show me the insides of these walls.” 

Maybe, maybe he could make them a little less lonely. 

Damian doesn’t make dinner that night, despite the small smile Connor managed to tug out of him exploring the walls of his ancestral home. Damian doesn’t make it to dinner the next night, despite the open invitation from the Queen family. He hides himself away instead, and knows Connor sees him in between, but fleetingly. He’s never quite fast enough to avoid detection from him altogether, but Damian is a quiet presence and he appears when he wants to, and Connor lets him exist without interference. 

Admittedly, Damian finds this….nice, he thinks. Connor’s there in a way Damian never has at home. Everyone is so fleeting, and Damian himself knows he’s guilty of it as much as any of his siblings, but being able to choose when to make himself known, and knowing that even if it takes him some time, someone will be there…it’s novel. 

Mother was never that steady. Nor grandfather. Nor Damian’s tutors. 

His pets on the other hand…

(Damian feels a stab of guilt thinking of how long he’s left Alfred, Titus and Batcow without his presence. They’ve gone longer, roughly about a year—the one that Damian was dead.)

(But he’s not dead now, is he?)

The walls don’t make for good companionship in the same way the manor’s empty halls brought no comfort, offered no words of wisdom. People were meant to do those things. 

People didn’t tend to like Damian. 

Animals did. His animals do. He misses them, but they’re at the manor and Damian can’t be. He wants to care for them. Brush out their coats, speak to them, lay next to them. Offer food and treats alike. At least they never forgot Damian, even when he deserved to be forgotten. At least they gave him companionship, when no one else would. 

He can feel himself growing maudlin, beginning to find his thoughts growing to be worse and worse company once again.

Worse than even the walls. 

It didn’t stop with Slade, on some level Damian has been so, so tired of himself for so long, but the pressure can alleviate. He joined Slade at one of his lowest points, and for a while, Damian had been the lightest he can remember being in months. It’s unsurprising to find the burden of his own self setting in so heavily once more.

Being alone isn’t very good for him. 

Being alone with his thoughts is worse. 

It is that which sends him to Connor’s side after a rogue attack on Star city the next afternoon. Damian is in his civies and Connor still in his suit, a lighter green than his fathers and less dramatic. Damian would usually appreciate the athletic style and practicality of it as well as the design itself, especially considering his family tends much more to the dramatics on both sides of the family tree, but he isn’t in the mood as Grayson would say.  

(Do not think of Grayson)

Connor drops onto the locker room style bench beside Damian, humming softly. “Penny for your thoughts?” He asks. Damian blinks at him, gives a soft tt in reply that is too inadequate to properly convey his derision as Connor huffs a laugh in return. 

“Didn’t think so.” He grins, leaning over to knock his shoulder into Damian’s once again, like he had in the kitchen a few mornings prior. Damian thinks it’s his way of being tactile without scaring Damian off. 

(He can admit that he appreciates it.)

“Haven’t seen the legendary Robin in action for a while. You ever going to get back out there?” Connor probes. He’s not overly discreet about it, either. 

(Richard never tended to be, either.)

Damian is on the run, but he could whenever he wants to, theoretically.  It’s a simple thing to avoid detection. He’s trained extensively to melt into the dark, even with his suit, even with his emblem. Robin may be a symbol, but Damian is a shadow born and raised. Or rather, genetically altered and trained. And shadow or not, Damian is still Robin. It’s still his—no one can take it away from him if they can’t find him to say so. 

By all means, Damian could put on his suit and go out, right at this very moment. Truly, it’s only a matter of fit. 

(Is Damian fit to be Robin when he let a man die?)

(Is Damian fit to be Robin when he’s never been the light to Batman’s dark?)

(Is Damian fit to be a hero, a vigilante, when he can’t even save himself?)

“Have you picked a name that is not a hand-me down, yet?” Damian returns. It may be hypocritical considering Robin has been passed on five times. Considering that Damian fought to be Robin (Fought and won and lost father’s trust and almost killed his brother). Considering Damian was given a name he can’t say he’s been terribly deserving of since it was put in his possession. 

On the other hand, Damian was the third Robin to die, the second to do so in the suit itself. So at least he can say he’s upheld one tradition, even if it’s none of the other, more meaningful ones. 

Connor shrugs, easily. He makes everything look so easy. Damian can’t help being a little bitter about it. “Got new digs, at least.”

Damian scoffs. “I did that over a year ago.” He reminds him, watching as Connor slips his quiver off his back and slides out a single green arrow. “You’re no trailblazer.” He adds critically.

It’s not one of the trick ones, Damian can see. Those are marked with special notches and separated so Connor can make selections on the fly. This is a simple one he spins around and in-between his fingers as he replies. “Tell you what,” Connor says, bringing it to a halt to point at Damian. “You get a new name first, and then I’ll follow suit.” The arrow begins to dance through his fingers again. “Seeing as I’m not a trailblazer and all.” Connor adds. 

An old part of Damian, the haughty, I’m the blood son, ten year old version of himself, would attack Connor simply for implying that, let alone outright saying it. The version of Damian now, can’t even work up a bristle. 

It is, admittedly, perhaps, not the worst suggestion. 

(They can’t take Robin away from him, if he takes it away from himself first)

(And if he is already a disappointment, there’s only so much worse this could make it)

(Besides, Damian has long since forgotten the point of being Robin is when all it gets him are scars and shattered, broken pieces)

He takes the arrow from Connor as it rolls over his knuckles, pinching it between two fingers.  

“Maybe.” He murmurs. 

Connor stills in surprise. Damian slips the arrow back into the quiver. He ensures it’s in the correct compartment and ignores the gobsmacked impression Connor wears. It’s not a big deal, really. Robin is meant to be passed on. It probably already should have. Damian has died and then quit it twice over, and yet, it remains with him. 

The only reason he could think of for that is his father’s reluctance to train a replacement. He should, though. Maybe if he could control the next one, he’ll trust them more. 

(Or at all.)

“You could, y'know?” Connor finally recovers from his shock long enough to say. “Make a name for yourself, that is. You could do it.” 

“Of course I could.” Damian agrees. (A part of him never thought he’d have to.)

(After all, what’s the point of all these titles if he never gets to wear them?)

(What’s the point of the blood running through his veins if he will always, inevitably, fall short?)

“But I’ll remind you, when you end up fighting me in the streets, that you were the one who encouraged I change my name.”

Connor looks at Damian. Damian looks at Connor. 

“That’s a joke, right?”

Damian shrugs. “I guess we’ll see.”

Can villainy call to him when it’s already in his blood? Damian doesn’t ponder the question. He stands and makes his way back up to Queen manor, leaving Connor staring after him.

“Somehow,” The love of Oliver Queen’s life, Dinah Lance says, “Your vegetarian chilli is not nearly as foul as your normal chilli.” She takes another bite and marvels at the fact that Oliver has made an edible chilli. It’s truly incredible. 

Oliver sits across from her, his spoon is raised in indignation. He isn’t sure if he should be offended by the backhanded compliment or not because all of his chilli is amazing, thank you, but he can’t deny there’s something about this one that is…perhaps, better than his normal chilli. 

Connor doesn’t bother covering a snort, serving himself a bowl. After a moment's contemplation, he opens the cupboards and retrieves another. This bowl he also fills, and brings to the table along with his own. Oliver watches his son, a blond eyebrow raised and the double portion. 

“Is it really that much better?” He asks in disbelief. Connor never eats his chilli, let alone two bowls. 

“Significantly.” Dinah answers for Connor. “But I don’t think that’s the reason.” She adds, as Connor sets the bowls down on the table. One in front of him, one in front of the unoccupied seat beside him. 

Oliver doesn’t look like he’s going to catch on to either of their meanings, or maybe he’s being intentionally obtuse to give him an out. He could take it, but he knows when he’s been seen, and he is no coward. Damian sighs, and steps into the room like he belongs there, moving to take the seat beside Connor. 

It’s only silent for a few, tense moments as everyone watches him out of the corner of their eyes, while pretending this is all quite normal. “Evening.” Oliver greets him in the sudden quiet. Damian meets his eyes, green to green, and so dissimilar to his or his mother’s own that it doesn’t make his chest tighten or his lungs hurt. Damian breathes easily. 

“Queen.” Damian greets. His eyes flick to Dinah. “Lance.”

She gives him a kind smile, much too motherly for comfort, and this time so dissimilar from his own mother’s he’s forced to look away. His gaze falls to the bowl in front of him, vegetarian chilli according to Dinah. Oliver has been cooking vegetarian for every meal since Connor told him only two mornings ago. For a family with no vegetarians in it, Oliver has been meticulous in accommodating a spectre in his house he couldn’t even see. 

Neither Dinah or Connor protested once in the change of menu. Rather, they both took it with ease, seemingly unbothered. Damian isn’t sure how to react to that either. He dips his spoon into the bowl and takes a bite. It is not as good as Alfred’s, but if Damian hadn’t heard the jokes about Oliver’s usual finished product of this dish, he wouldn’t have doubted the man’s proficiency in making it. 

“You like it?” Oliver asks. Damian swallows around the lump in his throat and tries to remember how to make polite conversation. 

“I do.” He says, simply. It is the honest truth. Damian keeps his eyes averted and says after a moment. “You need not accommodate me. I appreciate the gesture, but I understand the hassle of preparing vegetarian meals in a non-vegetarian household.” 

Connor shakes his head. “Trust me, Damian, you did us all a favour saving us from Oliver’s chilli con carne.” And Dinah chimes in after, reassuringly. “Besides, we can all stand to eat a little less meat. I haven’t minded the last few days.”

“Even so,” Damian starts, “I would not be offended if you did return to your regular meals. None of my family eats vegetarian with me, either. I do not expect you to while I am here.” 

The table becomes quiet after he speaks, radiating a mildly uncomfortable silence. That reminds Damian of family dinners at the manor. 

“None of them?” Connor asks, hesitantly. Not Dick or Jason or Tim or Duke or Cass, Steph, Alfred, Bruce, or Babs? “Ever?” 

Damian confirms this with a nod. “I do not require it of them.” 

“Still,” Oliver argues. Dinah puts a hand on his wrist and shakes her head. Damian feels something heavy sink in his stomach as she turns to face him. “You know you’re welcome to stay here however long you’d like, Damian?” It settles and solidifies the longer he stares at her. He knows this feeling well. 

Pity. 

(Even when he wishes fervently not to be, he is an object of pity)

“So I have been informed.” Damian replies, neutrally. 

(He does not deserve to be)

Connor pulls the attention away from him, and the three of them partake in what may pass for one of the most normal family dinners he’d ever attended. It is only made awkward by his silent presence among them, but no one forces him to eat or speak or do more but be there. 

And still, Damian fails at that last one. He only manages to stay seated long enough to eat half his bowl before his body forces him to move, his stomach churning as he rises to his feet. 

The Queen family watches in surprise as he leaves, and he pretends not to see their concerned gazes as he vacates the room. 

Chapter Text

Connor finds Damian in the guest room that he’d been given however many days ago now. He’s sitting cross legged in the bed staring out the window like it might hold the answers he doesn’t have, to questions he doesn’t ask. 

Connor takes a seat beside him, and Damian, after a few moments, slumps to the side, leaning against Connor. He’s strong, and sturdy. He feels reliable enough to hold up Damian, if only for a few moments. Connor lets him. He always just lets Damian do things. 

It’s almost like he’s treating Damian like a stray cat, and he would be offended if he didn’t personally, and only to himself admit that maybe, maybe it was not the most inaccurate comparison. 

Alfred searched out Damian when he wanted the company. He decided when he wanted to curl up in Damian’s lap and take a nap. He only tolerated being pet for so long. 

So, maybe Damian can see the comparison. It isn’t as offensive as it could be. 

“I’m surprised you joined us today.” Connor finally says. Damian hums, and he realises that makes him sound like his father. 

That comparison makes him more offended than he probably should be, particularly for someone who’s been vying for the Batman mantle for so long. 

After a moment he opens his mouth and replies properly. “It’s Richard’s birthday.”

Connor looks down at him in wide eyed surprise. Damian keeps staring out the window. It’s easier not to look at people when you’re saying hard things. It’s easier to focus on the sour budding fruit of the cherry blossom tree outside the window nestled amongst the green leaves than the words coming out of his mouth even as he speaks them. 

“I sent him a gift.” Damian murmurs. He watches a bird swoop down and land on the branch nearest the window, and oddly, rest on its belly. He doesn’t recognize the genus of it. The creeping darkness as the sun retreats below the horizon doesn’t help him identify it any better. 

“It included a number for him to reach me, and a time.” Damian adds, considering the feathered creature perplexing him. 

Connor follows his line of sight and stares at the bird too, a sinking feeling in his stomach that told him he knew where this was going. 

“He didn’t call.” Damian whispers. “I waited. Long past the time. I thought he might—”

But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Damian has been missing for weeks—almost months. Why would he call when Damian has only been missing this long? He’s been gone for longer. 

Damian looks despondently at the bird. It shuffles on the branch and doesn’t worry about the silent phone in his hands that wouldn’t trill, wouldn’t ring, wouldn’t ease the ache in his heart. 

Connor is silent next to him, only the inhales and exhales of his breath make any noise. Damian finds it calming. Finds himself grateful for not hearing the dreaded words. I’m sorry would do nothing. I’m sorry wouldn’t make the phone light up with Richard’s number on the screen.  

He isn’t silent forever, though. Heroes tend to be the chatty types, even if Connor had not used to be. He supposes that it makes sense that would change, particularly when his stepmother is a licensed therapist. 

“It’s a Black Swift.” Connor says. 

Damian for a moment doesn’t know what that means. “The bird.” He says, nodding towards the window. The bird gives a little flutter of his wings like he knows he’s being talked about, shuffling around on his perch again. 

“They’re pretty rare. Not native where you’re from, either.”

Damian considers the tiny thing, because it really is quite small and only made smaller by how it lies. He wonders why it’s come. 

“I did not know that.” Damian replies, after a moment. He doesn’t want to risk taking his eyes off the bird in case it leaves, but he does look up after a moment to find Connor smiling softly. 

“I like birds.” He replies. “They’re pretty cool, sometimes.” He gives Damian a nudge, and Damian rolls his eyes. 

“You are complimenting yourself as much as you believe you’re complimenting me.” He points out. 

Connor frowns.  “I’m an arrow—”

“And you’re also a Hawke.” Damian replies. 

Connor opens his mouth to disagree, but after a moment he concedes the point. “Fine. Maybe, but it was unintentional.” He says. Damian rolls his shoulders, and straightens out, sitting back up properly. Connor lets him and doesn’t mention a thing. 

Damian thinks he’s far too good for someone like himself. Far too good a friend when Damian doesn’t know how to be one in return. 

“Be that as it may,” Damian counters slowly, “It does not change the facts.”

“Which are that birds are cool.” He tacks on. 

“Which are that you think birds are cool.” Damian corrects. 

Connor huffs a laugh. “Yeah, I do. And?” He motions at the Black Swift. “That’s a pretty cool dude right there. He sleeps in the sky! The fact that he even landed is insane.” 

The bird is very, very small. It could fit easily in his palm, Damian is certain. You’re probably safer for in the sky, he thinks at the little thing. And freer, too.  

“Perhaps.” Damian allows. 

The phone is taken from his hands and Damian lets it go with conscious effort. His fingers unclench and sting as blood rushes into them again, flooding his white tipped fingers with a healthy red flush. 

“You are pretty cool too, y'know? You don’t really give yourself enough credit.” 

Connor hasn’t known him long enough to know how wrong he is. Damian dismisses the compliment by sidestepping it entirely. “I believe that word is beginning to lose all meaning,” He remarks with a humour he doesn’t feel. 

Connor sighs dramatically. “Sorry my vocabulary isn’t like yours.” He replies. 

“No one’s is.” Damian murmurs. It used to be one of the things that others had ridiculed him for the last time his father had enrolled him in school. His peers found it to be yet another thing that set Damian apart. Another thing that made Damian a target for words he wasn’t allowed to defend himself against. 

Damian looks up at Connor, away from the bird who stirred envy in him to yet another who inspired a different kind. 

Family dinners weren’t like that in the Wayne household. Maybe they were before him, but they hadn’t been in the time since. 

Or maybe they had, maybe they are when Damian isn’t there. 

The sound of Happy Birthday playing through the speakers of his headphones a world away makes Damian believe he might be more right than he thinks. They’d all looked so happy. 

They all should be happy. Alfred deserves it. Jason deserves it. They all deserve it. 

Who is Damian to keep them from it?

(He wants to go home. He wants to be happy. He wants to be loved.)

(He doesn’t deserve it.)

“It’s late.” Damian says. Connor knows what it means. He tries anyway. 

“Aren’t you a creature of the night?” He asks. Damian stares out into the night and thinks maybe yes, he used to be, but Robin hadn’t graced the night sky in months. He isn’t sure he’s anything, anymore. 

(He’s less and less sure he’s Robin with every passing second)

“Even I have to sleep.” Damian returns, evenly. Connor is forced to admit defeat, and he stands with a sigh. He walks to the door, placing the phone on the nightstand and then loitering by the door for seconds that stretch and warp and force Damian to look up, into the green that’s so much easier, so much nicer than his own. 

“Things are going to work out, Damian.” He says. “I know you don’t believe me, but…” He shrugs. “I’ve still got a bit of optimism in me. I know you’re going to get through this.”

Damian has nothing to say to this, and the door closes behind Connor with a soft click. 

He looks back at the window just in time to see the Black Swift take flight, disappearing into the sky with an ease Damian could only dream of. 

He missed flying. 

He missed flying with Richard. 

He turns out his light and climbs into bed, hoping he doesn’t dream of the skies he can’t touch, the family he can’t reach, letting the tired wash over him until he’s soundly in sleep's embrace. 

Shelly collects her neighbours mail once again, tsk-ing at the overflowing box that hasn't been emptied for a few days. That boy never gave her any warning when he was leaving. She had no idea what he did for work when he wasn’t at the community centre, but she couldn’t imagine what else could call him away so frequently and so suddenly. 

He’d scared the life out of her too, nearly running into her as she stepped out of her door and he was just there, breathing heavily and looking more than a little frazzled. She tried to calm him down, but the boy was frenetic and after putting the key to his apartment and mailbox in her hand with a rushed explanation and a plea to feed and walk his pup, he was gone as fast as he came. 

Shelly brings the mail up to their floor, stopping at her own door to drop off her mail, before walking a door further and letting herself into his apartment. She places the mail on the table, a bright blue envelope with curling handwriting and no return address placed at the very top of the stack. She liked the cheerfulness of the colour, and the care this person had put into addressing their mail. 

She traces the stylized  with a finger before the scampering of paws alerts her to incoming company. 

A grey blur rushes by, barking happily and circling around back to narrowly miss Shelly’s ankles as she stumbles, her gait still a bit off. Shelly shakes her head fondly, grabbing the leash slung over the chair and making her way back to the door. She doesn’t hesitate to nudge a bright blue mask under the couch and remind herself she saw nothing and knows nothing about what her neighbour does for work or outside of it. 

A piercing whistle calls the pup to her, and she can’t help but smile down at her as she clips the leash to her caller. “Good girl, Haley.” She says. She and pup make their exit, Shelly stopping to lock the door behind her, thinking of what cake she should make for Dick’s birthday when he finally comes back. 

She has an odd feeling confetti is most certainly the way to go. 

The world is never nice to Damian. Why would the world of dreams be any nicer?

Everything he didn’t ask for and it is his. The world is blue around him and his fingers have been exchanged for feathers. His body is small and light, there is a weightless to him he’s never known. It’s different from swinging through the skies, or flinging his body through the air reaching for outstretched hands, or falling fast as gravity pulls him down.

Damian didn’t know a weightlessness like this. Gravity was a stranger, and the sky his home. The currents of the winds held him aloft and everything felt so much easier. The heavy weight of his tired body, mind, heart, couldn’t reach him here. He’d left it so far behind that the world was small and Damian large. He did not know what to make of this inversion, but then he wondered why he had to make anything of it. 

He moves his arms which were wings, feels how strong his body despite his hollow, fragile bones. No, a body like this is not meant for the ground, it is not meant for land. He is perfect in the sky, and in the sky he will stay. 

He lets this lie ease him into this new body of his. 

Damian lets himself be a bird, a creature of flight and freedom, endless skies and wings that he could trust to keep him aloft. He lets out a laugh in his dream, and it comes out a trill. He makes a noise of surprise at his own voice and this sound is a chirp. Damian marvels at how strange this is, and he makes more noises simply because he can. 

Other birds join him in the sky as he soars. 

A robin, a blue jay, a robin in an even brighter red. Damian knows his brothers when he sees them. Richard, Jason, and Timothy fly alongside him. They play little bird games and Damian joins them, dipping and diving and racing. 

Damian catches sight of his own wings while they play and finds it curious he is not a robin too, curious but not bothersome, and the others don’t seem to mind. Richard keeps getting closer and closer, trying to brush against Damian, and somehow this becomes tag when Damian tries to escape and Richard chases. The other two join in, and then their four becomes five with the addition of Stephanie who joins their game with little hesitation. 

She joins Richard in chasing Damian, and between the two of them he is soon tagged by his eldest brother. 

Damian chirps in annoyance and the sound of trilling laughter fills his ears and warms his heart. They do not mock him, they’re glad to be with him. Glad to take to the skies by his side. 

Damian loves them. He tries to tell them and all that comes out is chirps. They don’t make a very pretty song so he tries again, but their chirps don’t seem to understand him. They don’t worry, though. They fly by and above and below and chirp back their support. 

He is getting ready to try again when he falters. His wings grow heavy and his feathers feel more like fingers. His bones go solid and his chest is abruptly weighted down. Damian chirps his panic and the others chirp back again in confusion. They don’t understand. 

No, he’s not done yet! He wants to stay in the sky. He doesn’t want to be this heavy, this tired. He doesn’t want to wake up yet. Not when they’re finally here with him. Damian calls for their help but he doesn’t make any noise this time. He’s just falling from the sky as gravity reacquaints itself with him and demands Damian give up the sky and come set his feet back on the ground. 

There isn’t enough in him to struggle, he gives in to gravity and falls and falls and wishes the sky would keep him, for once. 

His eyes close and that’s how he wakes up. His chest feels impossibly heavy. Not just weighted down by everything inside him, but there is something much, much heavier on him. Heavier than even Alfred when he curls up on Damian’s chest and makes himself at home, and it’s keeping him pinned, trapped in place unable to escape. 

Damian’s eyes open and for a moment, he wonders if he’s still asleep, but the weight on his chest is real and grounding and not—not horrible in the way that it could be. 

“Richard?” Damian asks in disbelief. 

Richard’s smile, Richard’s sky blue eyes, Richard himself, looks down at him. 

“Good morning, baby bat.” He murmurs, softly. “I’ve missed you.”  

Chapter Text

“You’re here.” Damian whispers.

“I’m here.” Richard confirms. Damian had not thought it was a question, but maybe Richard knew the way he knew everything Damian meant without saying it, without asking it. 

It is a talent uniquely his. 

“Did you really?” Damian does actually ask, this time. Richard’s eyes soften and he pulls Damian up, against his chest and into a hug. 

“Undoubtedly, baby bat. Of course I missed you. I always miss you.” Richard says, wholeheartedly. That is Richard’s default setting. Damian presses his face into his chest and whispers back. 

“I’ve missed you, too.”

Richard strokes his hair, and Damian, in a talent maybe uniquely his, hears the unasked question that hovers in the air around them. Why didn’t you come home, then?

What could he say to that? That he had neither house nor home but a manor? Empty and lonely and filled with more ghosts than people? That he’s tired of eating by himself, hearing his own voice, and sleeping in a bed that never lets him stop feeling tired?

No, he couldn’t. 

“I am not ready.” He murmurs in answer, instead. Richard’s arms tighten around him, like maybe if he holds on tight enough he can make Damian ready—that, or he can stop Damian from running away again. It hasn’t worked yet, but then again, maybe no one has ever held on long enough. 

“Why didn’t you call?” He wonders. Why did you let me feel so alone? 

Richard pulls back a little, only enough to look at Damian as he frowns, confused. “How was I supposed to call you when you left your phone at home?” He asks. “In pieces.” He adds. 

Damian may have, perhaps, disassembled his phone before leaving, yes, but that is not what he meant and Richard is being obtuse. “My letter.” Damian replies, eyes narrowed back. Richard frowns harder, in more confusion. 

“You didn’t leave a letter, Damian.” He says it in a way that strongly implies he searched everywhere just in case. 

“No but I sent you one.” He argues, the image of the sky blue envelope is crystal clear in his mind. At one point it truly had just been Richard’s birthday gift and nothing else, but then Damian could not resist leaving an actual proper letter and the number by which to reach him. 

Richard’s face clears suddenly and he shakes his head, slowly. “I never got your letter, Damian.” 

“You…but…” His brows furrow and the words refuse to unjumble as everything is suddenly flipped on its axis. It makes his cheeks burn and his eyes hot, and his chest feel tight and funny. He spent an entire day in misery because of a postal error? He truly believed Richard did not care for him simply because he had not received his mail and Damian did as he always does, make things so much more dramatic than they actually are and blow everything out of proportion so that in the end, it is always, very simply, his fault. 

(When isn’t it?) 

“Damian,” Richard says, and it is so much more gentle than Damian deserves, he makes a mess out of everything and this is proof, the same way his bumbled plan lead to him getting kidnapped by Deathstroke and straying farther off the path his father had picked for him than he had since the last time Damian had spiralled—almost two years and one homemade prison ago. 

The very same one Deathstroke himself had walked free of, like Damian’s games really were just child’s play to him. 

Damian isn’t sure that at fifteen, now, he’s much wiser than he was then, at thirteen. 

He’s always making the same mistakes. Continuously failing to be the boy, the son, the Robin, they all expect him to be. 

(Damian is tired of their expectations. They’re too heavy.)

(He’s not that strong.)

Damian closes his eyes, not looking at Richard, shying away the pity that trails him everywhere he goes. “How did you find me?” He asks. What he really means is Why did you look for me?

He doesn’t ask it, so Richard answers the one he does. 

In this at least, he is not a mind reader. 

Damian runs away a lot. 

He has a habit of disappearing. 

Anyone who’s known Damian for any duration of time would know these things. They’re not secrets. He vanished for an entire summer, a whole two months, with Jon once when they were younger—and sure they ended up alright, but for those two months Dick had no idea, no way of knowing, if his baby bat would come back to them safe and sound. 

But Damian is independent. And stubborn. Once he gets an idea in his head he has to go through with it. They’re obliged to let him, give him the space and the freedom he needs to grow, even if it means letting him atone for his year of blood without any of them by his side—and Dick may have been undercover then—but when he found out belatedly, after the fact, he still worried immensely. 

That’s the thing, isn’t it? No matter how strong or independent Damian is, Dick is always going to want to watch over him. Damian is his brother. Damian is more than his brother, even if they don’t say it out loud anymore. They’d admitted it once. Dick isn’t sure if Damian’s forgotten but Dick won’t ever. 

Damian is his. 

(His partner, his kid, his Robin.)

(Not the way Batman means it.) 

(The way his mom meant it.) 

When Damian goes missing, Dick’s chest tightens and it stays that way until Damian is in his line of sight again, and everything is alright and air can move through Dick’s lungs unimpeded, without worrying about it getting caught in his throat. 

Damian has been gone for three weeks. 

At first it’s staged as a kidnapping. It turns out that theatre runs in the family, because Dick really does mean staged, a fact they wouldn’t know until three days into his disappearance and Damian’s plan unfolds before them very neatly. 

Alert the Original Superman supremacists to his whereabouts on his solo mission, emphasis on the solo. Make himself into a desirable target after the group’s recent failures to kidnap Gossamer. Destroy his own gear and disable his own trackers to aid the kidnapped in their kidnapping—something they wouldn’t have been able to do without Damian’s help. 

Get kidnapped. 

Take down the group and rid Jon of the people going after him. 

Simple, right? For Damian, it’s child’s play. The initial stages of his plan went flawlessly, and Damian was kidnapped by them—only by the time the rest of the family caught up on day four, they found that Damian hadn’t succeeded in taking down the group at all—largely because of the fact that Damian wasn’t with the group and hadn’t been for more than six hours.  

Someone took him. Someone else. Someone much more skilled than the Original Superman Supremacists at taking and containing vigilantes with league of assassins training. 

And for two and half weeks, despite efforts on all their parts—despite the fact that Dick had been sleeping maybe four hours a day if he was lucky between patrolling his own city and going after lead and lead on Damian, just in case one of them, any of them, might lead him to his little brother—they’d made no progress finding him. 

Dick was getting to the point where Tim was threatening to come to Blüdhaven to tranquillise him into getting some proper sleep, but he couldn’t stop. 

Because he’s strong, independent, and stubborn. He always ends up alright, in the end. He comes home safe and sound. And really, Damian had been only missing for three weeks, right? He’s been gone for longer. 

Except when Dick looks back, he can’t remember the last time he really saw Damian, let alone actually had a proper conversation with him. Or, well he can, actually. And that’s the problem. 

It’s November. Mid November, and the snow hasn’t let up for a few days in either Gotham or Bludhaven. It’s gotten so thick and heavy that those buried waist deep in the slush have been temporarily benched or given other tasks—that means Tim is solving cases in the cave and Damian is curled up against Dick’s side, soaking in his warmth in Dick’s chilly Bludhaven apartment. 

They’re under at least three or four blankets, and Dick knows for certain that Damian is wearing at least two pairs of socks, his nose, despite all that, is a bright, rosy red that Dick has pressed three stealthy kisses to.

(Three kisses that Damian totally saw coming.)

(Three kisses that he allowed, anyway.)

They’re bingeing the fifth season of an animated series one of Dick’s coworkers recommended, a show called Voltron with giant mecha lions and an evil race of aliens that looked a little like purple cat people. Damian heavily side eyed Dick when he said that last part aloud. Otherwise, he looked to be enjoying it when they first started watching it two months ago, if the way Damian’s comments had tapered off the more invested he got into the plot and the characters, although every now and then Damian would press pause to discuss some of his ideas and predictions for where the show was going. 

Pidge was not a girl, Dick didn’t see it at all, but Damian told him to wait and see. 

(Damian was right.)

It’s cosy, and it’s easy, and Dick basks in those things. Usually patrolling this time of year is the worst, and no matter how well his suit is meant to handle the cold, Dick always ends up peeling off his sopping wet Nightwing suit and shoving it straight into the laundry machine. 

(Which is not recommended, no.)

(Don’t tell Bruce. Or Alfred. Or Tim.) 

If Dick had the option, he’d do this every night instead. Not because he’s particularly enthralled by the bright colours and wild happenings of Voltron—though Shiro’s resemblance to Jason is startling and Dick will personally tell him so, in person—but because getting to spend time with Damian is always going to be better than a night spent deep in the black slush of Bludhaven’s streets, no matter what they’re doing. 

Dick’s eyes are beginning to droop, and so, he thinks, are Damian’s. They’re starting to melt into each other’s sides and sleep is beckoning. Damian tells him he isn’t tired when Dick suggests heading to bed, even as he snuggles in closer, refusing to move from his spot. Dick hides his grin by opting to press another kiss to Damian’s nose. 

Damian grumbles but his eyes flutter shut and he can’t work up the effort to scold Dick properly. Dick, for his part, takes this as a win and lets his own eyes close, about ready to fall asleep on the couch with his littlest bat, though not so little anymore.

Then his comm starts ringing with his alarm, and both Damian and him bolt upright at the sound. 

Fuck, Dick swears inside his head. He has a reputation to uphold, afterall. He’s not Jason. 

Damian’s eyes are wide and still, somehow, drooping with his body’s desire for sleep, but he forces himself to get up when Dick does, following Dick into his bedroom where he retrieves his comm and opens up the line. 

In sum, Titans mission, off planet, leave as soon as possible. 

A month, though. Dick is going to be gone an entire month. 

He looks down at Damian, and Damian looks up at him. Of his own volition, Damian's arms wrap around him, and he hugs Dick, tightly, because a month is a long time and he doesn’t want Dick to go as much as he knows Dick needs to. 

(Dick doesn’t want to go, either.)

“Be safe.” Damian orders him. 

“I promise.” Dick swears. Then after a moment he promises again, “Just a month.” 

Damian meets his eyes, meadow green to sky blue, and nods. “I’ll be waiting.” He says. The tips of his ears burn red and belatedly, he motions stiffly to the living room. “To pick up where we left off.” He adds, like Dick won’t know what he really means. 

He grins softly, his own arms tightening around Damian. “You won’t even have time to miss me.” He says. 

(He lies.)

Dick leaves on the mission. He leaves and he’s gone and he comes back and it isn’t a month but more than two and his life is in shambles from being gone so long. 

They don’t pick up where they left off. 

Dick has been so busy—and he understands that that sounds like an excuse—but despite the plans they have in place for when one of them has to leave for such long periods of time, it doesn’t prepare for the reality of actually being gone that long. 

He lost his job—unfortunate but not unexpected. 

He didn’t have enough money in his bank account to pay his cellphone bill on top of his rent, electricity, water, and internet because he lost his job—inconvenient and grating but with a loan from Jason (never Bruce)—he gets that up and running again. 

He cleans his apartment. Empties out his fridge. Throws away his calendar from the year before and forgets to get it replaced. It isn’t a priority. 

Applies and applies and applies until he finally gets another job. 

Chips and chips away at the crime that has festered in his absence until it’s almost back to where it was before Dick left. 

When he finally lifts his head up, it's late March, and he lifts it up just in time to hear that Damian has been kidnapped.

And when his plan is revealed, Dick know he can’t judge cause he was gone over two months himself but this is Damian. And Damian is his. 

(His partner, his kid, his Robin.)

(Not the way Batman means it.) 

(The way his mom meant it.)

He’s driving himself to insanity, might as well drive himself to Arkham at the rate he’s going, but he can’t stop. Now when he looks back and the last time he can remember actually spending time with Damian was well before he left. So what, Dick’s life is in shambles? That happens on a semi-regular basis. His credit score is a definite reflection of how true that is, and all Dick can think is of how long he’s been back, and how he’s seen Damian in passing a scant handful of times, but he doesn’t want to see Damian in passing. He wants more, and maybe that’s selfish, but so was tucking his head down and focusing on himself while he tried to un-shamble his life. 

He’s going to find Damian if it kills him. 

Thankfully, Superman finds Dick first. 

Dick is laying face down on his couch. Not enough to entirely smother himself, but if he tilts his head just so, and closes his eyes… He thinks he could smother himself into unconsciousness. Maybe he’d sleep longer, like that. 

Unlikely, but maybe. 

Something thumps. Dick ignores it. Something thumps harder, two times more. Dick wonders if that’s his head pounding. The thumping gets stronger and more rapid. Dick realises that it’s knocking. The thumping starts again. Dick realises that it’s someone knocking at his door. 

He pushes himself off the couch as the knocking grows more urgent, nearly pushing himself to the floor in the process as it takes a second to straighten his limbs and right himself. By the time he gets to the door he’s sure it’s about to fall off its hinges with how hard the person is knocking, and he isn’t sure who he’s going to open it to find, but it isn’t—

“Jon?” 

Because yeah, it is Jon, even if it isn’t the image of little Jon that Dick still pictures. It doesn’t matter that they’ve gone on missions together now that Jon is older, Dick’s first instinct is still of Damian’s best friend. 

Which isn’t to say that older Jon isn’t Damian’s best friend but—

Well. Dick isn’t sure that he is? It was different and weird when he came back, Damian has told Dick so himself. He’s not sure they ever got over different and weird, or if that just became part of their already unusual friendship. 

(Dick has seen the way Damian looks at Jon.)

(He may not be the best detective in the family, but he knows Damian.) 

(And he knows heartbreak when he sees it.)

“Nightw— I mean, Dick!” Jon replies. Dick startles slightly and refocuses on Jon. 

“What’s up, kiddo?” Dick asks. And that doesn’t feel right? He keeps the face he wants to make to himself, because kiddo used to be acceptable, but Jon is older now, and Dick tries to remember how much he hated being called things like chum and buddy and kiddo at this age. 

(Teenage angst, Dick knew thy well, as well)

Jon doesn’t seem to notice, though, he’s practically vibrating out of his skin. Dick puts a steadying hand on his shoulder and sends him a reassuring smile. “Hey, why don’t you come on in,” especially after that almost slip, “And tell me—”

“I found Damian!” Jon practically shouts, and he’s nervous and guilty all over, but Dick isn’t so much paying attention to that as he is the words Jon had just spoken. 

I found Damian. 

Dick pulls Jon inside, shuts the door, already interrogating him before either of those things can fully occur. “Where is he? When did you see him? Why isn’t he with you? Who has him?”

Jon pales at the onslaught of questions and Dick reminds himself that Jon is eighteen, heavily traumatized even if they all gloss over the handful of years in a volcano, and he has to take these one at a time. 

“Sorry, sorry.” He apologises, even if he isn’t actually that contrite. This is Damian, they’re talking about. Damian. Dick can’t believe it, but god he wants to more than anything. “Just, come sit down, tell me what you know.” He instructs, gently. 

So Jon does. 

In sum, Jon heard a gunshot (he hears them all the time). He heard the footsteps and the scream. He heard because he’d been listening for disturbances. He heard because the Original Superman Supremacists had tried to kidnap Jon’s boyfriend and then did kidnap (and lose) Jon’s best friend. 

(So Jon still thinks that, even if Damian might not.)

(Dick doesn’t know if he should comment any further about difficult relationships.)

(Even if he can speak from experience on the difficulties of loving your best friend.)

Jon shows up and confronts Deathstroke. That gives Dick a moment of pause. Deathstroke is complicated. Deathstroke is a complication in any situation, but where their family is involved—it’s personal. It’s always personal. For Dick and Damian both there’s history there, and it makes Dick’s stomach churn as he braces himself for what follows. 

Damian. With Deathstroke. The words I could have been. Dick’s heart pangs in his chest but he closes his eyes and listens. Damian holding the gun. 

(The victim had their throat slit.) 

(Honestly, Dick isn’t sure he’d have cared if they were shot) 

(Damian is more important than a relapse. Besides, Dick is well familiar with the temptations Deathstroke offers.)

Damian telling Jon to leave. Jon listening. 

“When?” Dick asks, finally. 

Guilt pours out of Jon, overwhelmingly so. “Twenty-six hours ago.” Dick blinks at the preciseness of that answer and firmly decides not to read into what it means that Jonathan had counted the exact time to the hour.

“You gave him a day head start.” Dick speculates, slowly. Jon doesn’t reply but the guilt gets even stronger. “Just in case.” Dick murmurs. Jon squirms under his gaze but Dick isn’t as upset as he could be, should be. 

They’d both be all too ready to forgive Damian. They already are. 

I let a man die tonight.

(Dick did once, too.)

(On a different rooftop. A lifetime ago. He didn’t stop her.)

(He could have.)

“Where is he now?” Dick asks. 

Jon shakes his head. “I can’t…I don’t know…” Jon takes a deep breath and tries again. “I used to have his heartbeat memorised, but it’s been so long and…” He looks down. More guilt. “He’s too good at hiding.” 

Dick isn’t sure anyone had ever memorised his heartbeat before, but he imagines six years away and coming back to your life in shambles (or coming back in shambles to a life that hasn’t changed) puts things like rememorizing a heartbeat on the back burner. 

His heart still hurts for Damian. 

Dick puts his hand on Jon’s. “It’s okay.” He says. 

(He lies.)

“I meant Deathstroke.” Dick clarifies. “Where is he now?”

Damian is hiding because he doesn't want to be found. Damian is running away because he thinks he has to. Dick can't change his mind without his baby in his arms to make it right, and to do that he has to find him. 

Without Jon, that wouldn't be possible. See, while Jon doesn't know where Deathstroke is either, Dick doesn't actually need him to, because Dick knows Deathstroke.

And there's this quirk. 

Because whatever their relationship, however they feel about each other at the moment, whenever there's a hit on Nightwing, almost without fail, Deathstroke will always, always take it. 

Aside from, of course, the one time he did fail and KGBeast shot Dick in the head. 

Since then, however, no one else has been stupid enough to take out a hit on Dick, especially after the entire community saw how Dick’s family made KGBeast's life a living hell.

Never let it be said that Dick isn't stupid. 

If Damian can stage his own kidnapping, why can’t Dick stage his own assassination? It's as easy as anonymously offering a few millions to off Nightwing, and waiting for Deathstroke to take the bait. 

Like Dick predicts, he does, and five days later as he's flying over the rooftops of Boston—because there's no way he could have pulled this off on home turf with Oracle and Batman monitoring Bludhaven and the family's collective paranoia—and maybe briefly stopping for a Cannoli break at one of the most famous shops in the city, Dick feels it when a shadowy figure begins following him. Still keeping enough of a distance, but creeping ever so slowly closer as the game begins. 

This city is foreign ground, so neither of them have the advantage, but Dick wants to be caught, and Slade wants to catch him. 

He stops an hour into their merry chase, keeping his eyes on the lights of the downtown area as heavy boots audibly crunch on the gravely rooftop behind him, going silent as he stalks even closer. Right until a voice is whispering in his ear. 

“Suicidal now, birdy?” 

Dick resists the urge to shiver. He's very close, but Slade has always liked to make the game personal. 

“Even if I were, I wouldn't choose death by angry cyclops.” Dick retorts. He hasn't made a one eyed joke in a while, it felt appropriate. The aggrieved sigh behind him tells Dick that it one hundred percent was. 

“Wanna tell me why you put a hit on your own head, then?” He asks, sounding tired. Dick sympathises. He's running on less than a handful of hours of sleep himself. 

“I'm looking for a little bat.” Dick replies, lightly. “And you know where he is.” 

“And why would I know that?” Slade asks. Dick glances over his shoulder and shoots him an unimpressed look, before turning his gaze back to the city. 

It's pretty peaceful, here. Especially in comparison to Bludhaven.

It remains silent behind him for a handful of moments longer where Slade contemplates denial and outright lying, before he sighs heavily. 

Dick relates to that too. 

“Superbrat?” He mutters up at the sky.

Dick smothers the laugh that wants to escape him. “Pretty sure he goes by Superman now.” He murmurs. “And yes.” 

“Once a brat always a brat.” Slade argues. He's pretty sure the look levelled in his direction is supposed to mean something. Dick blissfully ignores it. 

“And once a bird, always a bird, so tell me where mine has flitted off to.” He replies. 

Slade hums, contemplatively. “Now even if I did have that information, why would I be giving it to you for free?” 

Dick shrugs. “Because you care about Damian, and you know I'm going to fix this, whatever it is?” 

Slade grunts in response. “You assume a lot, little bird, for someone who doesn't even know what's wrong.”

“I don't make assumptions, Slade.” Dick returns evenly, even as the sting from his words burns at something in Dick’s heart. There is something wrong, and Damian didn’t come to any of them about it. Didn’t come to Dick. 

(He wonders how badly he’s failed him.)

(He vows to make it better.)

Dick speaks again before Slade can. “You care about Damian,” He says. “You have for longer than you'd admit to, I'm sure, considering you won't even admit to it now, but you see him as yours, at least a little. You wouldn't have kidnapped him if you didn't, and you wouldn't let him stay with you if you didn't think it could be good for him.” Dick says, pointedly, because despite what people may believe, Slade has a heart. It’s half rotten and heavily scarred, and it’s seldom obvious that he actually cares about his family, his kids, but Dick recognizes that when Slade thinks he’s more prone to hurting someone than protecting them, he stays away to keep them safe. 

The fact that Slade kept Damian close shows him that he knew Damian needed someone, and he chose to be that someone. 

“More assumptions—” Slade tries to deny. 

“You're forgetting that I took care of two of your kids,” and was there for the death of the first, “I know you.” Dick says. “And I know there's a man who you killed for my little bird, and I know how much that's going to fuck him up when Bruce wouldn't do the same for any of us, not even Jason who is quite literally Bruce’s favourite, me who was his first, Damian who is his blood, or Tim who's made himself the most like Bruce. He needs his family, Slade, and right now that's me. So if you care about him, you're going to tell me his exact location, because I know you, and I know you have at least one tracker on him, you overbearing fuck.” Dick scowls. 

That gives Slade a moment of pause, and he considers him. “Like big bird, like little bird.” He murmurs after a moment, more to himself than Dick. “You have the same scowl.” Slade remarks. “Did you know that?”

Dick wonders if it’s true, or if Slade is just being Slade. 

“Same self preservation instincts, too.” Slade adds. Dick scowls harder and Slade sighs again. “Yeah, yeah, don’t get your tights in a twist, birdy. But you owe me.” Slade threatens. 

Dick replies, all smiles. “Sure I do.” 

Chapter Text

Damian runs away a lot. 

He has a habit of disappearing.

He knows he does. He tries to come back when he’s ready. He’s managed it before. After his year of Redemption. After the Lazarus tournament. After Alfred and Jason’s birthday. 

Running away is easy. Coming back is so, so hard. 

He didn’t realise how much he didn’t want to come back, how much wanted to be found, until he was in Richard’s arms and being told how hard Richard searched to find him. 

You found me. He thinks. I am found. 

“I simply cannot believe you were stupid enough to put a hit on yourself.” Damian whispers in disbelief. He thinks he’s been in disbelief since the moment he woke up. Since his eyes met the sky blue of Richard’s. He cannot quite conceive of just how he’s gone so long without looking into the eyes he used to meet daily. The eyes of his Batman. The eyes of the first man that ever told Damian he was worth something, regardless of whose blood flowed through his veins. 

The eyes of the man Damian died for. 

A death he still does not regret, aside from the haunting fear it instilled in Richard when it came to Damian and his frequent disappearances. 

“Not stupid.” Richard counters, his eyes shining. Love or tears or both. Damian raises a single brow. “Desperate.” Richard amends, but he doesn’t give Damian even a moment to feel guilty about making Richard desperate to find him. “I came to the conclusion I’ve been fucking blind for a while now, and I’m kind of hoping you’ll give me another chance to hopefully stop missing what’s right in front of me.” Richard says, uncouthly. 

Perhaps if Damian were not Damian, and Richard not Richard, Damian would not be able to meet his eyes and allow him that second chance so easily. Maybe others would make Richard fight for it. He forgot Damian’s birthday (he wasn’t even on the planet until weeks later). He left Damian all alone in that massive empty manor when he should know, best of all the rest of them, just how lonely that can be (Gotham was both home and cage to Richard, Damian could not blame him for not visiting as much as he could). 

But then, perhaps that is the simplest truth. Without all the extra words, without the flourish or the flowery prose: Damian cannot blame him. 

He is physically incapable of hating the man who opened his heart and his home and stayed when it really mattered, that first year. Made himself the first and last and only line of defence. A one man guard against the world for Damian, his young, vicious charge unused to all the things he’d suddenly been handed. The things he never asked for but had been given anyway. 

How can he not forgive Richard when they’ve already lost so much time together? Between Damian’s real death and Richard’s faked one, the amnesia and Damian’s inability to stay in one place when he felt like the world was against him. 

Mother would call this weakness, mother would call him a fool. The same mother who would press a chaste kiss on his cheek and no more. Then, it had been enough for what he’d known, but for a man who’d risk his own life to find Damian—and no, he is not fooled by the easy glossing over of the hit Richard put on his own head—it reminds Damian that the same mother who’d whisper happy birthday just so only he could hear, was the one who grew him like a science experiment, and had him slaughtered when that little experiment failed. 

Forgiveness is a complicated thing in Damian’s mind, but not in this. Not for Richard. What is there to forgive when he cannot place blame?

Weakness. Foolishness. Whatever. Damian’s mother isn’t here right now, and Richard? 

Richard is. 

“Please.” Damian says. 

Richard blinks. Confusion, momentarily. Then understanding, his eyes soften, his mouth slants, where he wants to be sad, but he can’t. He can’t let Damian’s see how much that response has pained him, so he stuffs it down and wears a smile instead and resolves himself to be better. 

Damian knows him. He does. Perhaps better than Damian knows his own ephemeral self. 

And it’s easy to forget when they’re apart. It’s easy to let the doubt creep in. It’s easy to let the voices tell Damian he isn’t worth it. Worth anything. It’s easy for the tiredness to creep up on him and hold on tight, getting heavier, leaden, dragging him down, down, down into unexistance’s clawing embrace.

(He doesn’t want to be tired anymore.)

(He doesn’t want to be alone. He wants to fight.)

(If Richard wants another chance—and another, and another—they’re his.)

“I shouldn’t be teaching you bad manners,” Richard murmurs after a moment, pulling Damian in close again and just holding him. Damian’s head tucked up against his neck, his warm breath puffing intermittently over his skin, and Richard’s chin nestled into Damian’s bedhead, wild curls soft and ticklish where they’re squished between Damian’s head and his. “But,” He sighs softly, “You don’t ever have to say please with me.” 

It’s a little naive, Damian thinks, that Richard can promise that so easily. Then again, that is Richard, and Richard is foolish, and he doesn’t care. Damian’s certain that’s why mother doesn’t like him, but perhaps, Damian thinks, that’s why at least in part, that Damian loves him. 

And perhaps a little why he can never blame him. 

Richard is foolish. He makes promises near impossible to keep, but he never, ever stops trying to honour his word—and even if he is foolish, in that at least he is honourable. 

“If you say so.” Damian agrees, belatedly. 

“I do.”

Damian accepts him at his word, and he does not forgive. 

(Because he is foolish, too.)

Oliver is humming to himself as he walks into his kitchen, the sounds of morning coming from all around him. From the birdsong coming through the window, to the sound of three birds eating breakfast at the kitchen island, everything is just about right in the world. 

Except… Oliver’s pretty bird is supposed to be at work. So how are there three birds at his table? He spins slowly around on one heel and counts again. His own baby bird, Batman’s littlest bird and—

Apparently. 

Batman’s biggest bird too.

“Dick?” Oliver asks, plain confusion on his face. “Why are you eating cereal in my house?” 

Dick waves his spoon in the air like he’s waving hello and keeps crunching on his Cocoa Puffs—Oliver doesn’t even own Cocoa Puffs—before his mouth is free to reply properly. “Hey, Ollie!” He greets him, sunnily. It’s practically blinding. Oliver blinks and rubs his eyes, before looking back at Dick and blinking again. 

Connor shakes his head at his dad. “Just go with it.” He advises. 

Oliver casts his eyes around for a moment, before he turns to Damian sitting between them and—Oliver has to blink again. 

Damian is smiling. 

After the disaster that dinner has been the night previous, and the utter gloom that had followed Damian all over the place since the moment Oliver noticed him in his house, he hadn’t seen the kid smile once. 

Now this one was small, sure. Subtle, barely there even, but, after spending almost a week in half glimpses, half catching the ghost haunting his halls—and walls, according to Connor—this smile made something uneasy in Oliver’s chest lighten. 

Because he can’t really go around judging Bruce when Oliver himself has been a subpar dad more times than he wishes he had to admit to. To Roy and Connor, letting them down again and again. He knows he’s fucked up, and he knows he’s still trying to do better and has a long way to go but…

Damian is a good kid. He’s known that since the last crisis with Barbatos and Oliver’s team up with Bruce’s youngest. Oliver can remember feeling as responsible for Damian then as he did this past week. 

Only then, at least Damian had Dick. 

And now? Well, Dick munches on his Cocoa Puffs, somehow simultaneously humming a happy tune. Oliver thinks it’s You are my Sunshine. 

And Damian is smiling. 

Oliver makes the wise decision and chooses to go with it. 

“Nice day, ain’t it?” He asks, no one in particular. Connor grins, Dick beams, and Damian smiles, a small, secret, subtle thing. 

A nice day indeed. 

Connor is hovering. Damian can feel his eyes boring into his back as he packs up the last of his gear, not that it takes terribly long, since Damian’s hasn’t arrived with much to start with. 

Just his Robin suit. The clothes on his back. And a tracker in his R, courtesy of Slade.

He could thank him for that. Even though a thank you implies a debt, and Richard already owes one of those to Slade…Slade gave him what no one else could, at a time Damian needed it most. His companionship, then, Richard, now. 

There is always a chance Slade may lean back in towards his more villainous aims and decide to redeem such a debt when it would hurt the worst, but Damian didn’t truly think he would. At least not when it came to Damian. To Richard. He may be a monster to some, but not it seems, to either of them. 

Damian stops fiddling with his gear after the staring continues and finally glances back over his shoulder. “What.” He asks flatly.

Connor offers a nonchalant shrug. “The offer to stay longer, as long as you need it, is still open, you know?” His eyes fall off of Damian and instead look out his window, the way they had together the night before, which seems so long ago now that Damian cannot believe it truly was the night prior. 

“You don’t have to leave just because he came for you. You’re not obligated to go back, yet.” He adds. “I mean I know you’re happy that he’s here, and dad is cool with it too, so it’s not like a big deal to house him as well as you, either. We have more than enough rooms, after all.” 

Damian listens to the somewhat rambly offer and considers it, well aware of its genuineness, and aware that Richard would acquiesce with Damian’s request should he want the both of them to stay another few day even though it would very likely impose on his life and the Queens’, which all of them would surely deny if he dreamt of mentioning his blatant imposition. 

He understands he is rather lucky to have so many more people in his corner than he’s believed he’s had for so long. He understands he is not as alone as the halls of Wayne Manor may suggest. As the voice croons, hauntingly. 

“You told me,” Damian starts, slowly. “That I would have a goal to work towards when I was ready to go back home.” He glances up and finds Connor’s eyes have returned to him again. 

“You were listening?” Connor asks in return, lightly teasing. 

Damian huffs. “Do not say that as if it is so surprising. I am aware I can be rather…rather full of myself, but I do listen, when you speak.” Damian says. 

Connor smiles, as genuine as his words, as genuine as Richard’s (As genuine as Jon’s used to be). Damian shakes himself, mentally, and focuses his attention back on Connor who’s shrugging easily once more. “I know.” He replies, guilessly. “Nice to hear though.” 

Damian clicks his tongue, and decidedly ignores him. “Change is not accomplishable if I do not return, and if I do not try.” He continues, still paying no heed to Connor’s reply. “I am not quite ready to return quite yet, but,” He rolls his shoulders and also decides to ignore the way it makes the smile on Connor’s face stretch a bit wider. 

“Perhaps it is time I begin making my way back.” Damian admits out loud. Connor’s smile is now a grin. 

“That’s the spirit,” Connor murmurs, approvingly. Damian refuses to let his cheeks flush at the remark.

“Richard will be housing me in the meantime.” He adds, distantly. 

Connor hums. “You should tell him to cook vegetarian food with you. Oliver already has the recipe for his vegetarian chilli written down if you need ideas.” At Damian’s questioning look he shrugs again, easily. “Change needs a place to start, right?” 

There’s a clogging in Damian’s throat as he attempts to reply, something like thank you, only it’s so lodged in there with all the other things Damian isn’t able to say, that his chance to reply comes and goes by the time he can even think of the words. 

“What’s this I hear about vegetarian chilli?” Richard asks, appearing behind Connor in the doorway. His eyes are bright, and they only shine brighter when he takes in Damian packing to return home with him. “I’m not the best in the kitchen, but that sounds pretty good. I wouldn’t mind trying it!” 

Damian’s eyes flick between them, Connor’s upturned lips and Richard’s enthusiasm, before tentatively, Damian’s nods. 

“I would enjoy attempting to cook vegetarian with you, Richard.” Damian says, stiltedly. 

“Then it’s a plan.” Richard agrees. 

Change, Connor mouths out of Richard’s line of sight. 

Damian’s heart feels the stirring of hope. The tentative reclamation of faith once lost. 

Change. Perhaps it need not be something so arduous, or monumental. Perhaps it could be small. Perhaps it could be manageable. 

Damian looks down at the R of his Robin suit and finishes packing. It’s time. 

Chapter Text

“You are not serious.” Damian says, futilely. 

Richard scratches the top of his head, arm flexed at an angle and the other on his hip. “Whatever do you mean?” He asks, innocently. It is mere deception.

 Damian’s eyes flick pointedly between Richard and his old beater of a car, which has been on its last legs for years now. “You know what I mean.” Damian tells him. Richard looks like he’s about to play stupid again, but the stare pouring into the side of his head promises swift retribution if he does.

“Well I can’t just leave it!” He cries after a moment. 

“I am not getting into that thing.” Damian spits out. “It is a death trap.”

“It got me here in one piece.” Richard argues, defending his excuse of a car. “Don’t listen to him, baby girl, you’re still a great vehicle.” 

It has most certainly, never, ever been a great vehicle, and Damian would kill him, but Richard’s death wish is almost certainly going to beat him to it. “There is no way you drove that here from Boston.” Damian refutes, senselessly. His head hurts already, he in no way had enough sanity for this. “We’re in Star City, Washington, Richard. Washington.”

“It was a long drive,” Richard sheepishly admits. 

“Did you sleep at all?” Damian asks, already knowing it is pointless. He knows Richard must have gotten a few scant hours of sleep to make that drive in the time he did. He’s as bad as Timothy sometimes, which makes sense because Timothy had to get it from somewhere, and there are few people he looks up to more than Richard.

For a family that shares next to no blood with each other, they are disappointingly all too similar all too often. 

“Well,” Richard starts. Damian snatches the keys from him before he can say another word. 

“No. Shut up. I’m driving, you can take over after you have slept more than six consecutive hours.” He grits out, marching towards the car he so desperately loathes. Their father is a wealthy man, Richard could live in luxury, but then, he wouldn’t really be Richard if he took the easy route, the easy handouts, and wasn’t a goddamned fool. 

“You don’t even have a licence on you!” Richard shouts after him, wise enough to not try and stop Damian from driving. Damian snorts, anyway. 

“Who says?” He argues. 

“You left all of them at home.” Richard says, which he knows, naturally, because he searched Damian’s room from bottom to top. “And all of the ones in the safe houses were still there too.” Because Richard is a Bat, and a paranoid one at that. He learned from the best, so of course he knows that too.

“Maybe Slade made me one.” Damian suggests. Richard opens his mouth, brows furrowing as he hesitates. 

“….Did he?” 

Damian’s lips tilt up daringly at the edges. “Get in boy wonder, and we’ll see.” 

Richard teeters, considering if he should really let Damian drive, not that Damian is truly giving him the option. Finally, he sighs and caves. “Fine, but we won’t be seeing, because you won’t be getting pulled over.” He threatens, even as he gets into the passenger seat of the car and Damian claims the driver seat, as is rightfully his. 

“At least I won’t fall asleep at the wheel.” Damian mutters. Dick sticks his tongue out at him. 

“I heard that.”

“Good.” Damian replies, curtly. “You were meant to.”

Their impromptu road trip is off to a great start already, Damian thinks. Not even all that sarcastically as he shifts the stick into gear and slowly presses his foot on the gas pedal, the steering wheel thrumming under his hands as the car starts rolling. 

Sure, it’s a terrible car, but, well, at least it’s a car, and Damian is driving it. 

The first leg of the trip is spent with Richard dead to the world, as intended. Seven hours of Damian on the road, tunes playing low and miles passing by as quickly as the hours do. All too soon, the sun starts to set and Richard’s eyes open to the sky turning a pink orange hue that Damian wants to paint. Would paint right at the moment if he had his materials on him, even if it meant he had to pull over onto the side of the road, sit on the hood of Richard’s junker, and work as quickly as he could in the dissipating light, he would.

Richard doesn’t talk for a few, long moments, unusual for him, but he appears to be enjoying himself so Damian doesn't mention it. He lets Richard break the silence two songs later as a new one starts and he begins to hum along with it, until humming turns into whispering the lyrics, and his whispering begins to to get louder until the chorus starts and he’s full on singing. 

Damian could tell him to stop, but truly, as much as they might jest about Richard’s singing voice—it is nice. Familiar. The way he sings the words has Damian paying more attention to them, wanting to understand what about the song appeals to Richard, and why it appeals to Damian in turn. 

(He thinks that he may simply like the song because Richard is singing it.)

(He’s missed him.)

(More than he thought possible.)

“California, rest in peace,” Richard sings louder as the chorus starts anew, still mostly on tune. Damian joins him on the next line, half because he knows it, half because he knows Richard will enjoy it. “Simultaneous release,” their eyes flicker towards each other, and as Damian expected, Richard is beaming at the unexpected sound coming from the left. “California, show your teeth,” The next line is all Richard, but at the end, Damian snarls, all his teeth on full, menacing display. Richard bursts into laughter, even as he tries to sing the next line. It’s in shambles, so Damian picks up the song again when the chorus ends. 

Who knew the other side of you?
Who knew that others died to prove?
Too true to say goodbye to you
Too true to say, say, say

Richard closes his eyes and rests his head against the window, a smile in his lips as he listens and enjoys. He slips back into sleep, unknowingly. 

The next time Richard wakes, is as Damian shuts off the car and opens his door. It’s fully dark outside now, but the interior light above illuminates the car, casting it and Damian in a yellowish hue that contrasts the much harsher white light of the gas station they're parked under. 

“Why’d we stop?” He asks through a yawn. Damian raises an unimpressed eyebrow at his brother, and motions at the dash. 

“You do not have an infinite tank of gas.” 

Dick blinks at him blurrily for a few long moments before mumbling, “Oh,” and nodding as he tries to rub the sleep from his eyes. 

“Money, Richard.” Damian prompts. “I cannot pay for gas on your good looks alone.” 

Richard chokes midway through his second yawn. “Wh—what?!” 

“Your wallet.” Damian sighs. Richard blinks at him, dumbfounded, before beginning to pat down his pockets, and pulling out his wallet to hand over to Damian. 

“You’re so bossy.” Richard pouts. It is not endearing. 

“And you need coffee.” Damian returns, evenly. “Your turn to drive now, brother mine.” 

Richard makes a rather unattractive fish with all his gawping. “Am I still asleep?” He wonders aloud. “Cause this has to be a dream. I am dreaming. There is no way these words are coming out of your mouth.” 

Damian rolls his eyes, all teenage sass that Richard likely hasn’t seen since Timothy was in the Robin suit, maybe even Jason, and climbs out of the car he’d been driving for nearly nine hours straight. That’s long enough to make anyone, even Damian, choose to pass off the task of driving. 

“Tt.” Damian scowls, just because. 

Richard squints at him. “Tts like you, scowls like you, but you don't sound like you.” He says. “What have you done with my Damian?” 

Damian could reply rationally, but then he pauses, considers for a second, and gets a very, very evil idea. He meets Richard’s eyes and puts on a smile that morphs into a grin, ever so slowly. “I ate him,” he replies, full of sincerity as he rolls his eyes back into his head so just the whites are showing. “His soul was quite… delicious.”

“You—” Richard squeaks. Damian lets his eyes roll back to normal, his grin still in place. 

“You always knew your brother was a demon, what difference does this make?” 

If Richard had a cross on him, he’d be clutching it. Unfortunately, the only cross bearing Bat was Jason, who would punch Damian the moment he tried this, Damian is positive. Jason is pretty cowardly when it comes to ghosts and demons, a remnant from the good little catholic boy still inside him. Richard seems to be considering it himself, but it seems his brotherly nature wins out, and he throws his hands up with exasperation, using the move to try and hide how they’re shaking, just a bit. 

“You’re a menace! You just took seven years off of my life, Damian! Seven! I’m a vigilante already, we aren’t forecasted to live that long! I did not have seven years to lose!” He exclaims in his typical dramatic fashion. 

Damian stares him down and Tts again. “If you say so, Richard.”

“Yes!” Richard shouts. “Yes I say so!” He drags his hands over his face, scrubbing hard at his cheeks. “And,” he adds, suddenly. “You are not a demon, so hush you. No more scaring years off my life or name calling. Now excuse me, because I in fact now need a very large coffee, thanks to you.” He shudders, hard, getting out of the car and stomping away, towards the gas station store. 

Damian wonders when he’ll realise that he already gave Damian his wallet. Not for a moment though, does Damian consider calling him back. He’s a detective, after all. 

He’ll figure it out. 

Dick has reached the dregs of his extra large coffee (four cream, four sugar, to Damian’s disgust) just as the sun begins to rise. It’s almost six on the morning, now. He’s been driving for eight hours, ever since he and Damian switched after the gas station debacle, which is what Dick has been calling that entire interaction in his mind. 

Little brothers (particularly the one that he considers his) are evil. So ungodly evil. Pulling things that could be right out of the exorcist and expecting Dick to not freak out like it isn’t at all plausible for Damian to have been possessed by a demon because he’s so self sacrificially good and he would do that if it meant saving someone— 

No. 

Dick shakes himself out of that thought and refocuses on the road. If he didn’t love Damian so much he would strangle him. But he does love him, so instead he’ll pretend he won’t be seeing that in his nightmares for weeks, and will deal with his trauma like a good older brother (and pseudo parent) by caffeinating himself and subsidising his will to live on sugar. 

Smarts. 

Dick reaches for his coffee cup again only to realize once more that it’s basically empty, and not going to last him any more miles. Heaving a sigh, Dick looks over at his sleeping passenger and debates pulling over. He knows if he stops Damian will wake up immediately, and he doesn’t really want to wake him up because his sleep has been fitful and brief enough as is. 

He can’t really tell if it’s the car that makes it difficult for Damian to sleep, or some other things, but it doesn’t look restful in any way, and it hardens Dick’s resolve to make them stop at a motel tonight. Actual beds, even cheap ones, will do them a world of good. 

A road sign passes, alerting drivers to an upcoming rest stop, and Dick is ready to drive by it despite knowing the next one won’t be for a while longer when he looks over and finds Damian’s eyes on him already. 

“Will we be stopping?” Damian inquires, sounding all for the world like he hasn’t been asleep a mere minute ago. 

This kid, Dick thinks. 

(My kid.)

“Yeah.” He agrees. “I could use some breakfast. Pancakes would be nice right now.” Dick sighs. “With chocolate chips, too.” It’s a dreamy, wistful sigh. 

“You eat too much sugar.” Damian reprimands. It’s too fond to be mean. Dick pouts anyway. 

“Do not.”

“Do too.” Damian replies, instinctually, before realising how childish he sounds and flushing. “That was a trap.” He accuses. 

It was not, but…Dick grins. “You’re the one who fell for it,” he singsongs, dragging out fell and making Damian’s flush deepen. 

“You are a nuisance.” 

“And you, baby bat, are a menace, but I love you anyway.” Dick smiles. Can you blame him? He likes saying it. He likes having Damian by his side, startling years off his life or otherwise. 

“…And I you, I suppose.” 

Dick only just doesn’t swerve them into the guardrail. 

(It’s a near thing.)

The twenty-four hour diner they pull up to looks like nearly every single one Damian and Slade had stopped at along their own version of a road trip. It is very strange that Damian left home with unexpected company, and would for the most part, be returning in quite a similar fashion. 

Although driving with Richard is much different than driving with Slade. For one, Slade never actually let Damian drive. Something about Damian looking even younger next to Slade, which Damian can admit his lack of height and considerably smaller frame than Slade’s did not aid in the least. 

Secondly, Damian presumes that if he asked, Dick would not pull over for them to spar in the middle of the woods, or a cornfield, or on the rocky, sandy side of the road, and he especially would not spar with Damian like Slade did. Damian wonders if knowing that Richard would not do what Slade had no qualms doing, bothers him—and after turning it over for a number of hours in the dark of the passenger seat with his eyes closed and feigning sleep—he could not say that he did mind. 

Slade is Slade, and Richard is Richard. They occupy very different places in his life, and operate on very different systems of moral values and convictions. It is not fair to compare them, as it is not fair to compare Damian to any of his siblings, or Jonathan, or father himself. 

Damian is Damian, too. He is not any of his brothers, or the better Super son, or his father, or any of the exhausting number of expectations heaped on his shoulders. He is starting to learn that that is okay, if he is himself. He is allowed to be, no matter who is watching. No matter what they want of him, or for him, or from him. 

What Damian wants matters to. So if he does want to fight in the middle of the woods, he will ask Slade, and if he wants to drive a car, he’ll demand the keys from his sleep deprived eldest brother. 

He plans on doing the latter thing after they finish breakfast. 

Richard digs into his chocolate chip pancakes—topped with whipped cream, strawberries, and chocolate sauce, naturally—with gusto, and Damian indulges in his own syrupy blueberry pancakes at a much more leisurely pace. Richard fills the space with inane chatter that Damian is content listening to. His eyes track the large motions of Richard’s hands, and take in the detail of Richard’s expression, and feels once more the longing for his art materials. This time his charcoal and a sketch pad as Richard moves too fast for the long drying time of Damian oil paints. It would be nice to capture the scene in front of him at that moment. 

Careful smudging from the charcoal to create the effect of his hands in motion, carefully shading to create darkness the sun shades across Richard’s face to capture the vivacity of his expressions. 

It would not be perfect, there exists no way to fully capture motion in a still image that Damian knows of, but he imagines the medium would be one of the best. That, or perhaps Timothy with his camera, candid as most of his pictures are. 

He has a number of pictures of Richard, and while most of them—at least the ones Damian saw—were of Richard in the suit, Damian is sure the one of him now would have no struggle fitting in with the rest.

Richard should be captured no other way. He is meant to be free, in motion, always moving, in ownership of his own agency. Stillness does not befit him, the same as silence does not, the same as a cage, gilded or otherwise, would not. 

Damian must have an odd expression on his face because Richard cuts himself, mid story and mid sentence, to tilt his head to the side and scan Damian over, for injuries or illness or whatever other thing might be plaguing him. “Where’d you go just now, baby bat?” He wonders, softly. 

Damian tilts his head in return. 

“I am back.” He replies, half answering the question. Dick hesitates a moment longer, so Damian takes another bite of his pancakes, savouring the artificial sweetness he usually denies himself, and motioning with his fork for Richard to continue. 

He does, and Damian returns to sketching him in his mind. It’s been a while since he’s wanted to express himself like so. He has missed it, truly. 

I am back. He’d said. Not the entire truth, maybe, but he is working on it, and Richard helps just by being here, across from him. 

I am coming back, he revises. It sounds more truthful to his ears. 

Chapter Text

The road stretches out before them, still more than half of their trip left to travel, and Damian wonders once more how Richard managed a drive over forty hours in such a short time, on his own no less. He’d have been wiser to take a plane, though likely easier to track. And that means now, they drive. Damian is at the wheel and the both of them are well full of pancakes and decently recaffeinated, although Damian drank a much tamer black coffee in comparison to Richard’s flavoured and sugary monstrosity which sits in the cup holder between them. 

Damian side eyes it and catches Richard’s eyes upon him as he does, a faint grin on his lips as he realises he’s been caught watching. “You know,” he starts conversationally, “You remind me a little of Slade when you do that. He loathes how I take my coffee, too.”

“Tt. Any rational human being would.” Damian rebuts on instinct, before the comparison sinks all the way in. He knew internally that he was like Slade, but to hear it aloud from someone else—no, from someone else it wouldn’t matter, but from Richard of all people? It is…startling. It makes something in Damian tense, uneasy. 

“Does it not bother you that I am quite similar in resemblance to your nemesis?” He takes a moment to swallow down his nerves before he asks, softly. After all, it always seemed to bother his father when he’d recall quite how like Talia his son was. Maybe still is. 

Only, Richard laughs softly, leaning his head back against the leather seats and closing his eyes. “I wouldn’t exactly call Slade my nemesis.” He replies, taking his own time with his words. “Maybe back when I was a kid and the titans were only just starting out—he almost broke us a few times. To the point where it could have been called a success, if we hadn’t kept coming back together and standing on our feet as a group again.” Richard shrugs one shoulder. 

“You know I’ve trained Joey, and Rose. Gone against Grant. I’ve had him as an ally, and an enemy. I’ve known what it’s like to have him as a mentor, a friend, and as someone who’s betrayed me, and hurt me.” He sighs. “I wouldn’t call Slade a good person, by any means. He’s selfish and cold, and he has a bad habit of breaking everything he touches even when he has better intentions in mind. Despite that, I would, however, call him a good man.” 

Damian’s mind races, but he cannot for the life of him think of a response. How can someone not be one, while still being the other? His confusion is written across his face, not that Richard’s eyes are open to see it, and still he answers the unasked question. 

“Slade’s a man of his words. When he says something, he means it, and he’ll do his best to honour it. To the few people he cares about, he’ll move the world for them, and while he is undoubtedly an unfeeling bastard a good deal of the time, he’s picked me up when I needed a hand to grasp, and he’ll help you stand when you can’t be on your own two feet by yourself, just yet.” Richard hums into the quiet of the car as he thinks. “And not for nothing, but he can be a decent dad too, at least when the mercenary shit isn’t getting in the way. He loves his kids.” 

His kids, Damian rolls the thought around in his head, and unbidden he hears it again, on the rooftop. Get away from my kid. It rings in Damian’s mind and he wonders if maybe Slade counts him among them. If a mercenary with no blood ties, no obligation or sense of duty towards Damian, might really care for him the way he does his own children. 

Damian cannot exactly say he has experienced more of what has made Slade a good man then less of what has made him a bad one, but from what he’s heard of Grant, Joseph, and Rose, neither can the three of them. 

Being close to Slade means being subject to both, Damian suspects. He doesn’t mind that all too much, not when the good can so heavily outweigh the bad.  

Richard sighs again, drawing Damian’s attention back to him. “And I’ll let you in on a little secret, baby bat.” He says. Damian looks at him and their eyes meet, Richard’s full of his signature sincerity. He offers a half smile at Damian. “I resemble him a bit too. It drives your dad crazy, but not everyone can be a paragon of justice all the time, always.” 

He laughs after he says it, but Damian has come to a screeching halt even as the car continues smoothly down the highway. Everything inside him is at a standstill, unable to believe it. Richard? Like Slade? The disbelief is plan on his face, and now he is sure Richard can see the question, only this one he doesn’t bother answering. Instead, after a moment he nods and continues speaking like he hasn’t absolutely bewildered Damian. 

“You know, I think it’s cute,” He finally decides. “I’ve always liked how opinionated you are, so what if you remind me a little of Slade? There’s worse people to be like.” 

Like mother, maybe.

(Like father, maybe.)

Damian cannot reply for a few, long moments as the road passes beneath their tires and the sun begins to blind him. He doesn’t reply until after he’s lowered the visor and fished out Richard’s sunglasses from their book in the dash and shaken off his shock.

 He peeks at Richard from behind his stolen shades and fronting bravado he does not own, he scoffs. “Only you would find that cute.” Damian retorts finally, and even though he tries and tries to make his words harsh and judgmental, it’s kind of impossible to deny the easing in his chest has made it sound like nothing of the sort. 

Richard is uncannily good at making Damian feel accepted. Worthwhile. Loved. 

(He is uncannily good at making Damian feel, full stop.)

“Hmm,” Richard hums in agreement, holding his laugh back behind his teeth. “Only me.” He replies.

Damian steps on the gas and ignores the flickering warmth inside his chest. 

Somehow, Richard has pestered Damian into going just ever so slightly out of their way to visit a tourist attraction. How exactly he has managed that, Damian doesn’t know, but as he stands in front of the Addam’s Family Home, he questions mildly his own sanity. 

Richard, the broken record that he is, begins singing the theme song from the top a third time. Damian knows it absolutely won’t be the last. With a great sigh, Damian follows Richard as he bounces around the attraction and then proceeds to do so in the museum as well, absolutely giddy to the great surprise of the people employed there. 

Damian feels almost obligated to apologise on Richard’s behalf for his exuberance, but instead he continues to follow along dubiously, only finally able to drag Richard away from the gift shop after he purchased Damian a stuffed hand known as Thing, which Damian notably hadn’t asked for nor needed, and a number of more knick knacks for himself. 

Back in the car, Richard in the driver seat and Damian now as passenger, Damian finally turns to him and says, “You realise I’ve never seen any of the media for the attraction we just toured, correct?” 

Richard finally stops humming when his jaw drops open. “Oh.” He gasps, like he has only just recalled that Damian was raised an assassin the first ten years of his life, and his only introductions to popular media have come from the man himself, and Jonathan. “Oh, baby bat, we are absolutely watching all the movies, animated and live action, the second we get back home. Then we’re coming back here and doing this all over again.” 

“I’d rather not.” Damian counters. Richard shushes him. 

“You’re going to love it, trust me. You have such Wednesday energy, it’s going to be great.” He swears. Damian can think of more than a handful of times where Richard has said that and it has most certainly not been the case, but then he sighs and similarly as he had when he’d been behind the wheel three hours ago, gives in. 

“If you say so, Richard.” 

“Absolutely I do.” He confirms. 

Damian has a feeling that if he lets him, there will be more tourist attractions for the rest of their trip.

(He will let him, of course.)

(Damian likes to see Richard smile. Of course he’ll let him.)

Arriving at the motel goes like this: Richard says they should stop for the night, Damian says he can keep driving. Richard says no. Damian argues he is wide awake. Richard says no. Damian says he doesn’t need to sleep. Richard tells him it is non arguable. Damian argues. Richard says no. Damian refuses to get out of the car when they pull up at a motel. Richard gets out of the car. Damian sighs and follows him. 

“My back thanks you, baby bat.” Damian hears as he joins Richard outside. The ground is wet beneath their feet from the earlier, and the weather humid despite the sun’s decent beyond the horizon. Damian raises a brow, judgementally. 

“Your back would thank you more if you stopped doing quadruple somersaults off of buildings.” Damian scoffs. Richard shrugs. 

“Maybe.” He says, noncommittally. 

“Definitely.” Damian corrects as Richard puts his wallet and keys in Damian’s hands, sans the two twenty dollar bills he keeps for himself. 

“We can continue this in the room, which you’ll be getting us,” Richard directs, “While I go across to the street and get us the marvel known as fast food because I do not trust anything coming out of a vending machine here.” 

The items end up in his pockets and he shrugs Richard off when he tries to hug him, next. “You’ll be gone all of ten minutes,” he scowls, trying to save himself from embarrassing public displays of affection, never mind the fact that the stretch of street they’re on is near deserted, and illuminated only by the garish signs of the motel and the fast food chain right across from each other. It is the principle of the thing. 

“Ten minutes too long.” Richard pouts. 

Considering they’d be sharing a room together, ten minutes was not long enough. “Go.” Damian points. “Now.” 

Richard pouts harder, and Damian leaves him to it, spinning on his heel in search of the front desk and hopefully, clean room. 

He has his doubts. 

Still, fifteen minutes and one room later, Damian is lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, when he hears a knock on the door and his name being whispered through it. “It’s unlocked.” Damian calls back. The door cracks open, letting in a stream of light as Richard pokes his head through, ensuring he’s in the right place before stepping fully inside. 

“You couldn’t have waited for me to come back?” He asks, affronted. Damian raises a brow. 

“Something the matter?” 

“Yes!” Richard hisses, “You could have waited to tell me which room we were in, so I didn’t have to go knocking on doors by myself, which, by the way, in a sketchy motel is ill advised!” Damian is beginning to discern a distinctly red flush on Richard’s face, even in the dark. His brow gets a little bit higher. 

“Oh?” He murmurs. 

This does not help Richard’s flush. “Two people thought I was a stripper, and one couple invited me to join them! Never, ever again, Damian! You wait for me, next time!” 

Damian smothers the laugh that wants to escape him. He is more mature than that. “Of course, Richard.” He lies. Richard shoots him a scathing glare and marches fully into the room, dropping the bags of food on the bed and casting his eyes about the small space when he seems to realise the obvious. 

“Damian.” He starts. Damian Tts in response, pawing through the bags for whatever vegetarian option Richard got him. There are never all too many at fast food places, so it’s very likely to be a salad, or something only containing egg for protein, maybe potatoes for a filling starch. 

“Damian. There is only one bed.” Richard points out. 

Damian victoriously unearths a salad with a side of cheese fries. “So glad you are a detective, Richard.” Damian returns. He pulls out a fork next, and after a moment of deliberation, begins in on the cheese fries. They’re best warm, after all. 

“And why is there only one bed?” Richard asks, feigning calm. 

“All you could afford in cash.” Damian replies, after chewing. Richard looks skyward, praying for patience. 

“And you didn’t use my credit card….because?”

“Who says I know your pin?” Damian returns. 

Patience, he mouths at the ceiling. “You know my pin.” He says. 

“Hnn.” 

Richard’s blood pressure skyrockets. “Damian.” 

Damian sighs, heavily. “We’re trying to be discrete, Richard.” He finally points out. “Using your credit card in the middle of nowhere for a motel room with two beds is very indiscreet, particularly when it concerns our family which contains the likes of Oracle and Robin III, the latter of whom stalked his way into the family and took his admittance as a sign to continue the practise. Do consider the fact that I am avoiding our family when questioning my motives in the future.”  

He finishes his speech by pointedly shoving cheese fries in his mouth. It is very improper, but that is the only appropriate way to eat them, and of this, he will not hear otherwise. 

Richard groans, collapsing in the bed in an undignified heap as he gives in. “You’re such a menace.” Richard groans again. 

“An inherited trait.” Damian informs him. 

“Yeah, well,” he sighs. “Fair enough.” After a moment his hand extends, flailing blindly. “Pass me my chilli fries?” He asks. Damian obliges. They eat in companionable silence together until Richard breaks it, a sly grin on his face. 

“You realise I’m going to wrap myself around you in my sleep and not let go, right?” 

Damian had not in fact been thinking of that, until Richard pointed out the blatantly, blindingly obvious. Richard is a cuddler, and Damian has doomed himself to be cuddled. 

Oh no. He thinks. 

Oh yes. Richard’s grin promises. 

Damian tts and viciously stabs at his salad. “Try it and lose an arm.” He threatens. Richard’s grin doesn’t dim in the slightest. He already knows he’s won. 

(And maybe, just a little, Damian can admit he has too.)

(Or, at the very least, he won’t hate it.)

(He has missed Richard, after all. It isn’t so bad.)

They cannot be on their road trip forever, but Richard does manage to extend it by stopping at a few national parks, nature reserves, and other attractions he thinks Damian will like. Two art museums in different states later, Damian is itching for his room and his art supplies even more, and Richard must know in the way he simply does, because they stop in a small town and find the only art store selling supplies to use the last of Richard’s cash to purchase charcoal, coloured pencils, and strangely, water colours and the appropriate paper for it. 

Damian has never used water colour before, and the challenge it presents him with makes him excited for the next stop. The rocking of the car does not make for the easiest place to express what Damian sees onto a page, but he still fills two sheets of paper with small doodles drawn during heavy periods of traffic or at stoplights when the side roads take them through more small towns.

Damian likes to draw what he sees, and it’s typical to pass house after house waving the American flag, mom and pop shops, corn fields and forest. They’re not Damian’s typical inspiration, but he cannot say he minds the practice in between drawing the more fantastical things that intersperse the mundane on his page. Goliath, Wiggles, ninjas, a boy and a dog in matching red capes flying over one of the aforementioned cornfields. 

When Damian drives, Richard either sings along to the radio, doing a terrible rendition of Blame Brett that reminded Damian why they do in fact tease him for his inability to sing, or he shuts it off altogether to read from one of the books they picked up in a second hand store. Renegades hits a little too close to home, even in Richard’s steady reading voice, but Damian finds himself overly invested in Nova and her story, anyway. 

Still, they both know their trip cross country has come to an end when the scenery begins to become familiar once more, and Damian can discern without looking at their GPS that they’re around forty-five minutes outside of Bludhaven. Damian cannot help the way he tenses up, but Richard, all seeing as he is, rests a soothing hand on Damian’s knee. 

He doesn’t say anything, which is rare for him, but it does the job all the same. Damian gradually relaxes and lets himself release the tension locking his spine, fisting his hands. He breathes in deep, and tries not to think about how much the polluted air smells like home. 

He wrinkles his nose and Richard laughs, easy. If Damian didn’t know how much work he truly put in to sound that carefree, Damian would truly think it was easy for Richard to smile and laugh so genuinely, the way he once did as a child, but Damian does know better now. 

Richard isn’t perfect. Isn’t flawless. Cannot take blows and bullets the way Superman does, and yet, he doesn’t let it deter him from being who he wants to be. From being the man who is none of his mentors but rather, parts of all them and still always unfalteringly himself, and better for it. 

(To himself, Damian can admit he wants to be like him.)

(Not the same, not even better, necessarily)

(But parts of all his mentors, in a shape he made himself)

(His own person. He likes the sound of that)

“My place first, or groceries?” Richard asks, as they cross into the city limits. Damian considers the question, but ultimately the urge to be out of the car and in familiar welcoming territory wins out. 

“We can survive off of takeout one more night.” Damian decides. 

Richard grins. “Fine, but only one more night, grocery shopping tomorrow morning.” And Damian agrees easily. A home cooked meal probably could do the both of them some good.

“That is acceptable.” He says. 

Richard huffs, “I’m glad your majesty thinks so.” He replies. 

Damian raises his chin in a very regal manner and that highlights the aristocratic shape of his nose—whatever that means. Mother always said it, but it rarely made much sense to him. 

“I see you’re finally learning your place, Richard.” Damian says, with the appropriate pomposity required. Richard maturely sticks his tongue out at him and signs brat with his left hand, a closed fist facing him with only his pinky sticking up, that he swings around with a playfully sassy expression. 

Damian in turn flips him off—deadpan the way Jason taught him to—and Richard breaks out into delighted snickers. Damian hides his own smile behind his hand, refusing to be caught, even though he most certainly already has been.

“Homeward, Richard.” Damian directs. 

“Yessir.” Richard says. 

Dick pulls into his parking spot in the garage beneath his building, his muscles all braced to get out of the car, finally. Damian is the same way beside him, all coiled energy, ready to be sprung. Getting out and stretching is pure relief that is mirrored by his not-quite-so-little-anymore baby brother, and it offends Dick immensely that Damian is beginning to catch up to him in height. He hasn’t surpassed Tim’s five foot six frame yet either, but Dick knows the day that Damian does, it won’t be long until he does the same to Dick.

Damian’s “What?” drags him back to the present, but Dick only shakes his head with a small smile. 

“It’s nothing, baby bat.” 

Damian eyes him suspiciously even still, but after a moment he nods and motions towards the elevator. Dick points instead at the stairs. 

“Race ya?” 

Damian’s already sprinting before Dick has even half said it, and then he’s too busy sprinting after him to finish it. By the time they’re on the eleventh floor, they’re both panting and at least some of that excess energy was taken care of by their impromptu spar on the fifth floor. And the seventh, and eighth, and maybe halfway up the ninth as well. 

So what? They both tried tripping the other up. It’s not cheating if there were never any ground rules to begin with. 

Dick walks the last five paces down the hall to his door, Damian leaning against it victoriously, a triumphant look in his green eyes. “You are slowing in your old age.” Damian taunts. Dick spreads his arms out, taking the blow gracefully. 

“Har har, take all the potshots you want, this old guy trained you. I was your first Batman.” He reminds Damian, fishing out his keys and tossing them to him. Damian catches them with a strange twist of his lips, taking a moment to open the door and step inside before replying.

“Not just first.” He says as Dick trails behind him. 

“No?”

Damian glances over his shoulder. “No.” He confirms. “First, yes, but,” he trails off as he steps into the living room, the same place Dick abandoned two weeks ago looking for the boy standing in front of him now. 

“Also, the best.” Damian finishes. 

Dick’s heart thuds painfully in his chest. After all this time, he still thinks that. Dick isn’t sure he’s worthy of it, the admiration or the love, definitely not the title, but if Damian thinks it, then god be damned Dick will do his best to live up to it. 

“Anything for you, Dami.” He promises. He nudges Damian toward his room. “Don’t forget I’ve got clothes for you to change into, they’re still in your room and they should still fit you, well, if you haven’t grown that much.” Dick says. It’s definitely at least two inches since he saw him in November. 

“My room?” Damian calls back as he beelines towards his room, the little shit. 

“Duh!” Dick shouts back, heading for the kitchen. A few sweet but messily scrawled notes about things Maggie has done around his apartment—including emptying the fridge of anything that could and would spoil—are stuck to the door of his fridge using magnets, and all his mail is stacked neatly on the counter.

“You know I take your bed and let guests have mine when they stay over! Your room is your room, no exceptions!” He calls back, sorting his mail out. One pile becomes bills, another junk mail, and the last is just one letter. A sky blue envelope with his name in Damian’s most perfect, stylized handwriting. His birthday present. Dicks breath catches in his chest, a sound warbles in his throat, but he keeps his lips pressed together and doesn’t let it out. 

It takes a long moment for the desire to cry to pass, but once it does, Dick finds himself a little concerned by just how quiet his apartment has gotten. 

“Damian?” He calls, realizing he’d never gotten a reply to begin with. “Dames!” 

He steps out of the kitchen and down the hall, trying to keep calm even as he speeds up the closer he gets to Damian’s room. “Damian!” He says again, a little louder as he opens the door, afraid to find Damian gone, the window open, the curtains fluttering in the wind when Dick had just got him back. Only, what he finds is none of that. Nothing at all like that. 

It’s worse. 

The closet door is open, a pile of Damian’s clothes in a heap on the floor, and in front of it on his knees, is Damian himself—and in his hands is a long rectangular box wrapped in colourful paper composed of alternating balloons and cats wearing party hats, Happy Birthday Damian written in uneven bubble letters by Dick the day his gift for Damian was finally completed, months early. 

Last October. 

Damian looks up at him, tears already streaming down his face. His voice cracks as he asks, “Richard?”

Chapter Text

Damian is ten years old and he beats his mother in a fight after stabbing his sword through her shoulder and pinning her to the floor. It is the most brutal he has ever been in a fight against his own flesh and blood, but it is the only way she will stay down. The only way for him to win. She makes him fight for his right to meet his father, and this is the year that Damian has resolved to finally win, no matter how vicious and horrible he must be to do so. 

Mother surrenders and he removes the sword. She kisses him on the cheek as she declares him the winner. He thinks it is the best and worst birthday he has ever had. 

Damian is eleven years old and he is only just learning what family means to him. He finds it in Richard’s overly enthusiastic smiles and too warm hugs that make Damian surrender his defenses if only for a moment before he must arm himself and push Richard away once more. He finds it in Alfred’s quiet sincerity and clever sass. He finds it in the familiar way Stephanie addresses him, not like he is her superior, or she above him, but as if they are equals—it should be an offense but it is not. They jump on the moon-bounce together and he finds himself forgiving how he lets himself be a child in a way mother would certainly disapprove of. 

Richard brings out a cake that Alfred baked, Stephanie clapping along as all three of them sing a tune he’s never heard before and place presents wrapped with varying levels of skill on the table for him to open. When Damian slices the knife through the dessert, he finds a white cake with multicoloured splotches throughout, and in between sponges it’s layered with fresh strawberries. Damian learns for the first time what a birthday should really be like, and now he knows it’s the best he’s ever had. 

Damian is twelve years old and almost all of his family has all gathered in costume in the cave, there are party hats and streamers, noise makers, gifts, and a cake. He isn’t expecting such an affair when the previous year had only been composed of four people, Damian himself included, but he’s glad to see them all. At least until they’re attacked in their own home and Damian is kidnapped. Grandfather has gotten it into his head again that he still wants Damian to be his heir, and he thinks he can lure Damian away with the promise of power that Damian no longer wants and does not need. 

His family arrives to save him, but it turns into an argument as it always does. Damian frees himself and turns down his grandfather to his family's approval, and his grandfather’s upset. He sets free the deities and they thank him. Father hugs Damian. He tells Damian he’s proud of him. It’s the most seen he has ever felt by his father, and he thinks that this birthday—even half ruined by a kidnapping, is right up there with the best ones he’s ever had. 

Damian is thirteen years old and it’s just him and Alfred, a cake too large for just two people. Damian can’t even remember where everyone else was, and why they hadn’t been there, but as always, mother makes herself known and Grandfather as well. This year he does not want Damian as his heir and instead his cousin, Mara al Ghul, and her demon’s fist, are set to take him and the teen titans out to complete their training. He brings them together to stop that from happening. 

The teen titans take Damian onto their team, mostly out of loyalty for Richard, Damian will realize later but in the mood he’s in, he hurts the others with his words and actions as much as he himself hurts. It’s not a very good birthday. It’s still better than being in the league of assassins. 

That’s what he tells himself, at least. 

Damian is fourteen and no one celebrates with him. He’s been missing for months, he’s joined a death tournament, he doesn’t tell anyone around him when the day comes and ends. His family inevitably catches up to him a few days later, and Richard manages to sneak him a gift, give him a little speech like that makes it all better—and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t, a little. Truly, the most special gift that day was coming face to face with his brother and knowing his brother looked back at him and saw him. He was no stranger anymore. His brother remembered him, and he could not deny how much he wanted to go home when he realized he might have a home to return to with Richard there. It just wasn’t time yet. 

Rose, Nika, and Connor await him on the island along with all the others. They don’t know it yet—Damian hadn’t either, really—but he was going to save them, and he was going to be saved by them in turn. Sacrificing one birthday to fight for his friends, for himself, is worth it. He’s certain of it. 

His fifteenth is spent utterly alone. Time and a clock closer company than his family. His pets are his only companions. They wait together, they mourn together. Damian tells himself he gets over it on day three. Weeks later he stops the ticking of the clock by reaching into its chest and grabbing onto its heart and letting it swing no more. The day passes. Time passes. Damian tells himself that the grief and anger will pass with it. 

Damian realizes he never really stopped waiting. It’s been months, and until he found this box wrapped in birthday patterned paper, a big bow and his name on a tag in the corner, that he understands even silenced, the ticking in his ears, in his heart, was always there. Hoping against hope that maybe someone would realize they forgot him. Maybe someone would remember they loved him, and there was at least a little reason to celebrate the day he’d been brought into the world, for better or for worse. 

He doesn’t understand how a day that has meant so much and so little and nothing at all could bring him this low, to be crying on his knees as he hugs a box to his chest and sobs trying to take shaky inhales through lungs that refuse to work with him. He doesn’t know what’s in it, doesn’t even know if that matters at this point. It’s not what’s in the box that matters, but rather what it means. 

Someone did remember him. Someone cared. Perhaps Damian Wayne was not unimportant, at least just a little, because the most important person in the world remembered him and he finally has proof that that day held some significance to at least one other that was not him. 

And he’s trying to get himself under control when Richard walks into the room, trying but failing, he’s sure. Richard may have been calling for Damian long before he entered, but he isn’t sure he actually heard any of the words his brother had been saying. His ears had not registered the sound of Dick’s voice calling to him from another room, getting closer and closer, more and more concerned until he burst in and found Damian there, a teary, sobbing mess. 

Composing himself now is futile, Richard has already taken in the dismal state Damian is in, but he isn’t saying anything. He forces himself to look up and ask in a wobbly voice, “Richard?” 

Richard’s face is complex. If Damian had to name the emotions running across it, he’d say devastation was most certainly a front runner among them. He gets down on his knees beside Damian and he’s crying too as he scoops Damian up in his arms, uncaring of the edges of the box between them, digging uncomfortably into their stomachs as he attempts to squeeze the life out of Damian. 

“I am so, so sorry, Damian. I can’t believe I—No, no I’m so sorry, little bat. Oh, god. I’m so sorry.” Richard cries into his hair. “Baby bat, Damian, I don’t know how to make this up to you, but I promise I will. I forgot your birthday, I’m so sorry. You deserve so much better than that.” He professes. He’s sobbing too now, even as Damian’s die down. Damian shakes his head in disbelief. 

“But you did not.” He replies, even as his response is muffled against Richard’s chest. The present is proof of that. Its mere existence is all the proof Damian needs. 

Damian is loved. (Because Richard loves him.) 

Damian wasn’t forgotten. (Because Richard remembered him.)

 “You didn’t forget.” (The clock stops ticking.)

He can’t be hearing him right. Dick shakes his head, trying to clear it, and his thoughts, all muddied by tears and the horrible, horrible realization he forgot Damian’s birthday. “What?” He asks finally, dumbfounded. 

Damian pulls away, not to escape him, but simply to look up at Dick with so much undisguised love and affection that Dick feels ashamed of himself. He cannot possibly deserve to be looked at by Damian like that when clearly, clearly he is the worst person on the planet right now. He’s failed abominably, and Damian is staring at him with little stars in his eyes and Dick can’t understand how Damian is even tolerating him. 

“You got me a birthday present. You remembered it.” Damian tells him. Like a simple birthday present can make up for the months in between the actual day—that Dick missed altogether being away on a fucking Titans mission, which doesn’t excuse him in the least for not celebrating the moment he got back and stepped foot inside his home. He forgot Damian’s birthday, he did, a present doesn’t change that. 

“I made it weeks before I left for the Titans mission.” Dick tells him, honestly. He did forget, and he can’t let Damian idolize him for not fucking up as bad as he could have. Those green eyes looking up at him begin to water again, and Dick is certain he’s about to be pushed away, maybe punched for being a terrible older brother—Jason’s done that enough times that it’s not an implausible reaction—but then Damian laughs, like he can’t believe it. 

“You planned that far ahead?” He asks, staring down reverently at the gift in their laps. He hasn’t even opened it yet. 

“I—Yes, but, Damian, I missed your birthday.” Dick argues, devastated. Why isn’t Damian getting that he should absolutely loathe Dick right now? 

Damian rolls his shoulders, his version of shrugging off Dick’s words. “You were late last year too.” He replies. Dick nearly feels like screaming. That’s because Damian had run away from home to fight other assassins. Damian had been home for his birthday this time, and all the weeks after. Dick had so much opportunity to remember, to make it better, and yet he didn’t. He failed Damian. 

“By a few days, not months.” Dick points out. Damian hugs the present to his chest, even with as awkward as it is with Dick’s arms still around him and its very long size. 

“Shut up, Richard.” Damian tells him. 

Dick goes to argue again, but the look in Damian’s eyes makes him change tracks. “I’m still sorry, Damian. This…I…Baby bat, you’re my…you’re everything to me, sweetheart, and you deserve better than a gift belatedly given after your birthday. I don’t think I’m worthy of the way you’re looking at me right now. I want to make it right, and I’m hoping you’ll put up with me long enough to do that.” He requests. He’s not sure why he bothers because Damian won’t stop looking at him like the day begins and ends with Richard at the center of it all. 

“Tt.” Damian utters in reply. “I don’t know how many times I must tell you this, Richard, but you need never ask for my forgiveness because there is nothing to forgive or put right.” 

Damian proves him right without even trying, and Dick for the time being, gives up on trying to reason with him. He tucks Damian’s head back against his chest and resolves to cry more, later. “Agree to disagree, baby bat. I still plan on doing better, but as long as you’re here in my arms I won’t argue.” 

Damian clicks his tongue again, but he doesn’t protest being held. “That is surprisingly wise of you, Richard.” He comments. Dick snorts a laugh. It’s better than the scream that wants to bubble up and out of his throat. 

“Thanks, bud. I appreciate that.” He murmurs. 

“Yes, well…” Damian trails off. Richard gives him another squeeze, and refuses to let go until Damian does first. They hug for far longer than Damian might have tolerated under any other circumstance, but in this moment Damian isn’t fifteen—God, he’s fucking fifteen now—and Dick isn’t quite his brother. They’re this thing that they made, day by day, hour by hour, when Bruce had been lost in the time stream that first year, now years ago. This thing that was not quite brotherly, not quite father and son. 

They couldn’t name it, maybe first out of respect for Bruce’s memory, but then later because they’d didn’t have words that really explained how much they meant to each other. 

In this thing, this space, or the lack of it now between them, age doesn’t matter, blood doesn’t matter, time doesn’t matter. 

Damian needed this hug. Damian needed Dick. Dick is here now to make sure he doesn’t go without again.

“I’m going to do better, Damian. I really am.” He says. The sincerity radiates through him, his voice, his hold. 

Damian doesn’t reply for a few, long moments, and Dick isn’t sure that he will, until he feels it against his back. First lines, curved and straight, beginning to form the shape of a bird. A Robin, if he had to guess. 

He doesn’t have to guess.

“Yours, first.” Damian whispers into his chest.

“The best.” Dick agrees. 

When Damian finally does let go, Dick takes his face between both of his hands, and holds him still as he presses a gentle kiss to his forehead. “How about you open your present, now?” He suggests. Damian looks down at the box on his lap, and he nods. 

“I would like that.” 

Dick smiles. “Here, or in the living room? I’ll get you a knife so you can slice the tape and very carefully unwrap it like you normally do.” He adds. It’s usually something that agonizes him, watching Damian open gifts. Dick himself is the type to rip into things with gleeful abandon, but Damian takes his time. When Dick would just love to see his reaction and the surprise—that is, if he likes it—Damian keeps everything controlled. 

Time can’t change that. Damian nods. “Yes, that would be preferred. The living room may be more comfortable.” 

“Okay then, up we go.” Dick says, standing and tugging Damian up with him. 

Damian clicks his tongue. “I am not a child, Richard. I do not need help standing.” He says, and maybe the little act would be a bit more convincing if they both hadn’t been sobbing on the floor a few minutes ago, and the aftereffects of their crying session weren’t stained in salt down their faces. 

“Be that as it may,” Dick replies, picking up Damian anyway and giving him a spin, his feet leaving the ground and a muffled oomph as Damian’s face is smushed against Dick’s shirt. “You’re still small enough for me to hold right now, and I’m going to use that to my advantage as long as I can.” 

“Your entire existence plagues me.” Damian tells him. It verges a little too much on the side of sincere, and Dick isn’t as offended by it as he could be. A part of him thinks that if asked—and if Damian told the truth when asked—that the tiny voice in Damian’s head that tells him what’s right and wrong, and argues with him when he makes a decision he knows isn’t good for him? Yeah, that tiny voice? Dick is willing to place bets on that voice sounding uncannily similar to his own. 

“Your entire existence brightens up my day.” Dick returns, entirely sincere. 

Damian pushes away from him with a huff, clearly a mistake as it lets him see the red flush of Damian’s cheeks under all the dried salt. He plants a hand on Dick’s chest and pushes him backwards out of the room, and down the hall, back into the kitchen. He’s not using a fraction of the strength he actually has, but Dick isn’t trying all that hard to resist either, so they end up there without injury. 

The box stays tucked under his arm although it isn’t a particularly light gift. Dick’s heart does a stuttering thump in his chest, nerves on high alert and fresh anxiety setting in as he spins on his heel to dig for a knife in his cutlery drawer. Damian has already headed into the next room when Dick turns around, and that gives Dick a moment to breathe, settle the churning in his stomach making him nauseous.

After so much build up, and the very fact that Dick forgot Damian’s birthday, what if he doesn’t like the gift Dick selected months ago? What if it was meant for a fourteen year old boy who cuddled up next to him on the couch as teens fought purple aliens on screen that might not exist anymore instead of the fifteen year old carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders currently sitting in the same spot? 

“Richard!” Damian’s call snaps him out of his thoughts. 

“Be right there!” He calls back. He shakes himself and pushes off the counter, heading into the living room where Damian as predicted, is sitting cross legged on the couch with his gift in his lap, and on top of it, the same sky blue envelope that Dick found mixed in with his mail.

He didn’t even see Damian grab it. 

“I believe since we have both missed our birthdays, that it is only right that we shall open our gifts together.” Damian tells him. Dick smiles, taking up the couch cushion next to Damian and crossing his legs to mirror his littlest love’s position. 

“If his majesty says so.” 

Damian nods primly. “He does.” Dicks heart grows ten sizes and he fears for the state of his ribcage. It’s unfathomable to Dick how he can still be this sassy, this funny, after the complete mess they’d both been a handful of minutes ago. “Hush.” Damian reprimands. 

He always knows when Dick is being sappy, it’s so annoying. “I haven’t even said anything!” He argues. 

“Your face speaks volumes.” 

“Just pass me my gift.” Dick pouts. Damian hands it over with a familiar click of his tongue. Those TTs do nothing to make him less sappy. Dick obligingly passes over the knife when Damian holds his hand out for it. 

Very carefully, the knife slices through each piece of tape. He has enough practice by now to ensure not a single rip of uneven edge is caused by his hand as he meticulously unwraps the gift revealing a pristine white, lidded box. Dick holds his breath, watching as Damian sets the preserved piece of wrapping paper on the coffee table and holds his fingertips facing upward on the lip of the lid. He hesitates, and Dick is starting to turn blue with how long Damian is taking to put him out of his misery. 

“You’re doing this on purpose.” Dick accuses. 

“I’m savouring the moment.” Damian counters. 

He’s lying, Dick thinks. In this moment, they’re both braced for impact, strung as tight as Odysseus’ lethal, impossible bow. Maybe they’re both waiting to be put out of their misery. 

“You can open it, Damian.” Dick assures him, with an ease he doesn’t actually feel. “You deserve it.” 

Damian nods, unconvinced. Resolve follows a few seconds later, and he pops open the lid—

—To a whole bunch of tissue paper. Dick is about ready to scream at his past self, and even Damian is getting impatient. “Seriously?” 

“It’s pretty!” Dick defends himself. 

Damian tosses the paper aside with an abandon entirely uncharacteristic to him, revealing finally, Damian’s present. 

“Is this…?” His eyes trace over deadly black steel sharpened down one side, an unnatural thread of colour running above the cutting edge that glows purple from the tip to the ricasso, broken up by the guard and resuming in a flame-like swirl at the top of the grip, made of deep black leather that flows into the pommel so the hilt appears almost to be one entire piece. “Keith’s transformed sword from the Blade of Mamora?” He asks. 

“Yes.” Dick confirms, keeping his voice steady despite the elation and the anxiety doing combat in his intestines. “It’s not a prop.” He adds. “It’s designed to be usable…” Which would have earned Dick a lecture if Bruce were here to see Damian open it, but he wasn’t, and Dick wouldn’t be the one to tell him. Damian recognized his gift by sight alone, despite it being months since they last watched the show together.  

“And the glow?” 

“Raven helped me.” Dick admits. “Most of the Titans did. Roy and I worked on making the sword, Raven enchanted it to make it near indestructible as well as creating the glow, and the others had a go trying to hold their own against me while I tested out the sword. I’m not as good as you are with one, but I won more times than I came to a draw.” 

Damian’s lips tip up ever so slightly into a smile, the first true reaction crossing his features. “No losses.” 

Dick mimics Damian’s signature. “Tt, Who do you take me for?”  

A full smile blooms on Damian’s face. “My Batman.” He sets his gift on the table and willingly wraps his arms around Dick. It takes a moment for Dick to fully come to terms with the fact Damian initiated a hug before he’s squeezing the life out of him. 

“My Robin.” 

It’s probably the hundredth time they’ve said it, but it bears repeating. 

“You like it?” Dick checks, then. It’s pretty obvious, but, he just has to make sure anyway. “It’s not too…” Childish? Nostalgic? A remnant of something that once was but won’t ever be again? 

“It’s a sword, you buffoon.” Not as nice as Batman, not as bad as it could be despite the derision in his tone. Dick will take it. “I plan to reign terror down on our enemies with it.” Damian continues, eyes gleaming. Dick considers if perhaps he would have deserved the scolding from Bruce. “However, as I have not been in the field for quite some time, I may have to wait to do so. You put much thought and effort into the gift, and very simply, it is from you. I will always cherish it for that alone.” Damian declares, solemnly. 

Damian is too good for him. He leaves Dick speechless with his words, his actions, everyday. 

“Although,” Damian adds, “I do believe that we should consider finishing Voltron, seeing as we were interrupted previously.” 

Dick doesn’t wince despite that being his fault. A mistake he absolutely won’t be making again after swearing to do better. He has no choice if he wants this innate wholesomeness in Damian to thrive. He wants the world to know how amazing the fifteen year old in his arms is. He never wants Damian to have to feel the need to run away again. 

“I can get on board with that plan.” Dick agrees. He resolves to revisit the ‘reigning terror down on their enemies’ part, later. Other things take precedence, their previously abandoned cartoon being one such thing. “Now?” He asks, but Damian shakes his head no. 

“It’s your turn.” He reminds, nudging the envelope still on his lap. 

He refuses to show any smidgeon of nerves as Dick takes the knife Damian used to open the present from him to slice open the envelope. It’s unfair how Damian can look so at ease when Dick had been throwing up on the inside. 

Now if this were anyone else, Dick could guarantee there’d be cash or gift cards sitting in a card inside the envelope, but Damian isn’t just anyone else. The gifts he’s given everyone else recently proves that. 

“What should I expect?” Dick asks, hesitating a moment before reaching into the envelope.  

Damian shoots him a resoundingly unimpressed look. “Do not play, Richard. It is not cute. Get on with it.”

It’s honestly refreshing being ordered around by Damian, particularly after all the tears from both of them. Dick huffs with the appropriate amount of drama, “Bossy, bossy.” He chides. 

“Yes.” 

Self awareness! 

While also refreshing, Dick huffs again, but this time to cover up his smile as he reaches into the envelope and curiously pulls out a bunch of pages folded together and stapled in the corner. Damian would never package one of his drawings this way, which means Dick is truly going into this absolutely blind as he unfolds and starts reading. 

And then starts crying, all over again. 

“Wait, wait,” He stutters out. “Is this…is it real?” Damian nods, only now just starting to show a hint of nerves in the face of Dick’s tears. 

“I had some assistance as well,” He clarifies, “But yes, I promise you that this is real.” 

His hands smooth over the paper, trying to get it to lay flat, but his attempts at reading it are useless. The water falling from his eyes and the tremble in his hands makes it impossible to read, as much as he wishes that he could again. 

“Will you?” He chokes out, motioning at Damian to take the papers. Damian does so, smoothing them out himself before he begins to read. 

“On March sixth of next year, the day of Marie Lloyd’s birth, le Jardins des Papillons de Marie Skydancer will open its doors for the first time in the town of her birth. We are honoured to invite her son, Richard Grayson, to be the first to enter the conservatory which will host many butterfly species as we strive towards not only their preservation, but the thriving of a healthy and lush environment of flora for which our butterflies may similarly thrive, alongside a number of bird species.”

Damian is careful not to stutter, even as he chances a worried glance at Dick, who nods at him to continue. “We can only hope to create a sanctuary as beautiful and unique as the soul to whom it is dedicated. May the wings of our butterflies honour the memory of a woman who could dance in the sky with the same grace as these rare and precious creatures. We look forward to beginning a wonderful journey together, sincerely, the grateful skydancers of le Jardins des Papillons de Marie Skydancer.” 

Sobbing is not an apt word to describe the sounds escaping Dick’s mouth as he’s read to. This falling apart doesn’t feel anything like being torn apart or beaten down. It’s something new. It’s something he can’t describe. His heart overflows and tears spill out in a similar way, the rasping sounds as he surrenders to the swell of water and emotions beside him are desperate and hard to listen to—yet despite the ache, it’s not a pain. This is a tender wound, in need of being expressed. He forgets how things can build and build and build up without the intention to let them get bottled up inside his soul. 

The top sheet of paper is flipped over to the next, and this one does have words—or not many, at least. What it does have are layouts, floor plans, various architectural elements. Damian begins explaining how long construction will take, and how large the conservatory will be. How he funded majority of the contruction, and has set up a payment plan to support the goals of the butterfly garden, any studies on the preservation efforts of the butterflies and maintenance.

It’s so much, and much of it he’ll have to ask Damian to explain to him again because he doesn’t know how much he misses through his tears but Damian is patient with him, speaking in the same low and level tone as he used to read first page. 

As much as Dick would like to pull him into a hug for the umpteenth time, he’s a little too overstimulated himself to initiate contact, and Damian just patiently waits him out. It’s too much. He doesn’t know how to say that, and won’t even attempt it at risk of hurting Damian’s feelings, but it really is too much, and Dick, for once, doesn’t want to care that it’s too much. 

Too much money, too real, too genuine, too pure. Too tender of a wound. Too much love in him to be contained. 

A half a box of tissues later, Dick thinks he’s mostly stopped overflowing enough to take Damian’s hand in both of his own. He gives it a gentle squeeze before bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss against Damian’s palm. The hands of this fifteen year old boy have have lost skin, gained scars, been slicked with blood—his own and not—broken nails, built calluses. So much has happened to them, but still he proves that they’re capable of so much more. 

Maybe he held a gun and pointed it at his best friend. Maybe he used them to orchestrate his own kidnapping. Maybe he’s been using them punch, fight, kick and claw. 

In between his own, Dick sees all of it, sees more than that. These are the same hands that held onto the steering wheel and safely drove them home across the country. These are the same hands that painted a portrait of Barbara’s Batgirl and the much smaller one of Tim. These are the hands Damian uses to push himself back up, off the ground so he can fight again. These are the hands that take care of Alfred and Titus, play the piano with nimble fingers, grab the remote and change the channel onto the show they’re binging. 

Damian’s expression is complex, it always is, somehow. Like he has so many things he wants to say, so many things he can’t help but think, some many things he doesn’t want to feel (and some perhaps that he truly did).   

“Thank you.” Dick whispers into his skin. 

His words are simple, where his expression is not. 

“You are welcome, Richard.” 

It’s enough. (It’s enough. It’s enough.)

Chapter Text

It’s disconcerting to see Damian sitting at Dick’s kitchen island instead of on it. He guesses he’s still so used to seeing Damian half a foot shorter, decked out in Dick’s family’s stoplight colours—muted of course, because Damian had slightly more sensibility than Dick and their two brothers after him did as kids. 

Honestly, it’s kind of amazing that Bruce and Alfred let any of them out at all, but traumatized rich people and their butlers don’t really have great parenting skills. Dick isn’t sure he’s much better though considering he did the same the first opportunity he got, didn’t he? Sure, Damian had been in much worse hands before Dick got him, but giving him Robin still probably ranks somewhere high up on the irresponsible scale. 

If Dick ever has more kids after Dames, he’s going to have to seriously rethink the whole child vigilante model. 

“I can feel your eyes boring into me.” Damian calls out. He isn’t facing Dick, so it would be pretty impressive if this weren’t Damian’s usual. The eyes on the back of his head and super sensitive bat ears are definitely inherited traits. 

“So sue me.” Dick replies, leaning against the door frame. Damian lets out a sigh, aggrieved and oh so tired, Dick grins. 

“Maybe I would if it wouldn't be a waste of money.” 

Dick laughs, shaking his head and walking into the kitchen properly, given Damian a brief squeeze with one arm that he tolerates. “You scare me sometimes, kiddo.” Damian’s head tilts to the side like he might be considering that a compliment, and that’s a topic for another day. Dick has a hangover from how much he cried last night, and he’s taking it easy today. No hard subjects.

“Breakfast?” He asks. 

Damian flips through a take-out menu, eyes crinkled in mild disgust. “Your fridge is empty.” 

The yellow light of the fridge illuminates bare shelves and a few bottles of condiments. Take out that likely should be thrown away. Nothing particularly edible that Dick can cook with. “So it seems.” He agrees, recalling Shelly’s note from the night before. Damian tosses a take-out menu at him, and it nails him in the shoulder with one very sharp and pointy corner. 

There are rules for throwing things at people when they’re not looking—mainly, don’t—and rules for throwing things in the house—also a please do not, I want my deposit back guys c’mon, situation—but Dick lets it go. The most harm a take-out menu can do is empty out his wallet, and maybe force him to dip into his bank account. Damian didn’t aim for his head and it’s not a big enough deal. 

Emotional exhaustion is real, folks, Dick is really slacking on this whole parenting thing. 

“Pancakes?” Dick suggests, holding up the Denny’s menu. Damian shrugs. “Our only other options are pizza, Thai, or Chinese.” He adds, looking at the spread of menus in front of Damian. Not that Dick is all too against dinner for breakfast, he just isn’t sure that much grease before eleven in the morning is good for the arteries. 

“We could go shopping for groceries.” Damian counters. Dick is wondering where he got the responsibility and audacity from to suggest such a thing. 

Damian shoots him a look, like he can hear the whine building in Dick’s throat better he’s even uttered a squeak of protest. Dick wisely keeps his lips pressed firm and meets Damian’s judgemental stare head on. There’s a silent battle of wills over god knows what, considering they’re just talking about breakfast, when the doorbell rings. 

“That….” He narrows his eyes in the direction of his door. “Is unexpected.” 

Damian moves to hop off his stool, but Dick motions for him to wait and stay in place, walking to his front entrance and taking a peek through the peephole to see who it is. He’s prepared to send Damian running if it is anyone Dames isn’t quite ready to see yet—so, everyone in the family aside from Dick, and maybe Jon, too—but his worries are for nothing. 

“It’s just my neighbour.” He says, before opening the door to Shelly, and with her, Haley. Haley bounds into the apartment, barking with a kind of joy that is particular to dogs and dogs alone. The sound of her happy yips draws Damian out of the kitchen, always eager to be around an animal he can spoil and somehow train to do his bidding. 

Alfred the cat used to be suspiciously good at breaking the things of people who’d recently annoyed Damian. It was hard to blame Damian of course, because cats knock things off of tables all the time, and if you left your brand new sweater out Stephanie, of course there’s going to be cat fur on it. 

But everyone is still pretty sure Damian is a Disney princess in disguise using his powers for evil and mischief. 

Dick turns back to Shelly, a fond smile in his face  and opens his arms for the hug she always greets him with. She’s got that loving grandmother vibe that’s hard to deny, and Dick is always a bit of a sucker for hugs. 

“I see your little one is back with you.” Shelly whispers to him, nearly lost in the midst of all the excited barking. It’s possible that Haley is even happier to see Damian than she is Dick, and he can’t fault her for it. “I was so worried when he hadn’t been coming around. I know custody disputes can be hard, but I’m glad you never stop fighting for him. Your smile is so much brighter when he’s home.” 

There are so many assumptions there that Dick isn’t sure if he should correct. Or if he even can correct, with the way his throat swells. I’m not married—or divorced, would be a great way to start, and there definitely was not a custody dispute for Damian. Technically, at least. Although he and Bruce used to have that arrangement when Damian was younger, they hadn’t needed it in years. 

The rest though….

It’s hard to argue with the rest. 

“Thank you.” He ekes out. Shelly pats him on the back. 

“I’m proud of you, Richard.” It’s been a while since he’s heard anyone say that to him, it’s been a while since he felt proud of himself, but he’ll take it. Let himself feel it, even if he may not entirely deserve it. He did fight for Damian, tried so hard to find him, get him back. Tracked down Deathstroke (or put a hit on himself, but still) and drove across the country to knock on the Queen’s front door (metaphorically, since considerably more acrobatics were involved gaining access to their lovely abode). He brought Damian home, and he finally got to make up for a mistake he hadn’t even realized he made. 

He’s fucked up a lot, but those things, the things he knows he got right, he can let himself be proud of those. 

“And Happy Birthday.” She adds, “Wait here, I have something for you.” She instructs, disappearing down the hall and into her own apartment before Dick can say a word otherwise. 

Two minutes later, Shelly is back with a cake box, gently pushing it into his arms and refusing to accept any payment for taking care of Haley while Dick was off searching for Damian. Dick isn’t allowed to protest, and after many more thanks—the only word she’ll let him get in edgewise, Dick is back inside his apartment with the door shut behind him, watching as Haley performs tricks for Damian. 

Dick never taught her any tricks aside from sit. Yet somehow, she’s rolling on his command, barking when he says speak, and playing dead when Damian shoots a little finger gun at her. That last trick he can recognize as the same one Jason taught Titus ages ago, and god, Dick remembers the tantrum from little eleven year old Damian that followed. 

He has to stifle his smile at the scene in front of him. It seems the command grew on Dames. He wonders if Jason knows. 

Damian looks up with narrowed eyes at the same time Dick thinks that, and that he’s positive is an inherent talent too. Talia always knew when Dick was thinking bad things about her he wouldn’t say out loud—well, at least not in front of Bruce—it’s clear Damian has the same talent for knowing when Dick is being sappy and sentimental. 

“Whatever it is that you are thinking, don’t you dare.” Damian warns. 

Dick shrugs, doesn’t bother playing innocent because Damian would see right through him. “I have cake.” He offers in peace. “It’s a little belated I guess because we did presents yesterday but…who doesn’t love cake for breakfast?” 

Damian considers that, and eventually comes to the decision that perhaps, grocery shopping can wait. 

Haley has her own seat at the island, stacked with pillows she can see as Richard sticks candles into the cake. It is truly impressive that it looks so professional when it is in fact made by the slightly arthritic hands of Richard’s nosy and overbearing neighbour Shelly, but Damian has been reminded enough times that she means well and he must allow others more grace than was ever afforded him for his own actions. 

Maybe Shelly is overbearing and nosy by Damian’s measure, but then what does that make Damian’s own father? The paranoia and control issues have leant to behavior that is borderline—if not outright—stalking, and is more often than not an oppressive weight as well as being an invasion of privacy that makes it difficult to have secrets, even harmless ones. 

Surely Richard’s neighbour is deserving of more grace than Damian’s father who’s been corrected more times on what is and is not appropriate to know about his children, and on the methods in which he collects that information. Particularly when he chooses to ignore these corrections for the sake of his mission. 

An excuse, they all know by now. 

Damian mulls this over as he scratches in between Haley’s ears and Richard lights the candles. It’s too early in the morning for this much sugar and fat, but Damian’s sweet tooth has always been inconvenient. It has the ability to override years of careful consideration and moderation of the food Damian put in his body, and it is likely that eating this for breakfast won’t fill him the way his body requires, and additionally—because Damian isn’t actually all that well adjusted to the artificialness in western desserts and food products—likely to make Damian’s stomach hurt later, perhaps accompanied by a side of nausea. 

Knowing this does not stop him from wanting to consume the cake now. It irks him that his self control is so weak, and yet. Cake.

Haley’s tail wags with an excitement and a greed that Damian cannot fault her for when his own is guaranteed to do to him what would happen to her if she too was allowed any cake—which she most certainly will not be. 

Across from him, Richard takes a deep inhale, and Damian braces himself as he starts to sing. 

Richard is not an unpleasant singer. He can carry a tune and hold a note, and his singing voice is just a bit deeper than his speaking voice. Rather, he is what someone may call proficient. It is the way Richard looks at Damian when he sings Happy Birthday, like he is genuinely happy Damian is alive, and part of his life, and spending yet another birthday with Richard when surely any of Damian’s friends should be stealing his time and attention. Richard treats every birthday like it is a gift. He is someone who appreciates the value of life—how short it can be, and how abruptly stolen—someone who holds birthdays to a symbolic standard of a life still being lived, one worthy of being celebrated. 

The feeling it stirs in his chest is always uncomfortable, too large for Damian to understand, and for his still smaller frame to contain. In theory, Damian has died, he’s killed, he’s felt that dreaded pain of a loved one ripped away in a manner most cruel—that one shot to the head that stole his brother—by all means he should also appreciate the value of life. Perhaps in some ways he does; He appreciates the lives of those who are significant to him, and he is still trying to learn to appreciate others who do not hold weight in his heart like Richard’s neighbour, and he more than appreciates the comparatively smaller lives of animals, both those that are his companions and those that are not, however…

Being appreciated in turn is something much harder to grasp. 

And yet, Richard still sings, year after year, like Damian is not a lost cause. Even when everyone else has given up on him or forgotten or perhaps never cared to begin with, Richard sings for him. Richard, who is far better than Damian, far more worthy of this same love, care, and attention, Richard who pushes the cake closer so Damian can blow out the candles, despite this cake being for him, not Damian. 

What to wish for when he doesn’t believe in wishes and he’s already been given more than he deserves? Slade’s time, the Queens’ patience, Richard’s continuous belief. 

He leans forward, and slowly blows the candles out, one by one. Richard lets out a loud whoop better suited to a crowded hockey arena during a Gotham Nights game than his small apartment kitchen—and pulls Damian into his second hug of the morning, although Richard is likely only counting this one as the first proper one of the morning. He pretends he tolerates it. Internally, he takes a deep breath and relaxes the tension built up from a morning where his thoughts are heavy and loud and unsuited to the light Richard fills his home with. 

Eventually Richard pulls away, and two very generous slices of cake are cut, one ends up on a plate in front of Damian, the other in front of Richard. Haley woofs for a treat of her own and she gets two doggy biscuits for being the best girl. 

“So,” Richard nudges him with the toe of his foot. “What did you wish for?”

Damian savours a forkful of confetti sponge with lemon curd filling and whipped icing, all of the sugar is making his tastebuds go ever so slightly numb, although the zest of the lemon brings them back to life. “Who says I made a wish at all?” 

Richard shrugs, “It’s customary to make a wish.” And if there’s anything Damian is good at, it’s following tradition, sticking to customs, even ones he doesn’t understand the point of or believe in. It’s a practice so ingrained in him that he could be sanded down to nothing but the marrow of his bones and still, Damian would be pulled toward the teachings of his childhood, written into the DNA of his bloodline. 

“Well I did not.” Damian tells him. Richard hums around his next bite of cake. 

“You don't have to tell me if you don’t want to.” Damian rolls his eyes at the response. Does not bother protesting that there is nothing to tell. 

He’d be lying anyway. Which Richard thinks he knows. Damian just won’t be proving him correct, because even if Damian wouldn’t be wrong if Richard is right, it would still be deeply unsatisfying. 

Being a contrary asshole—as Jason might so elegantly put it—does run in their family even if shared blood doesn’t. 

And luckily, he’s saved from answering by another knock on the door. Let it be Shelly again to distract him, Damian thinks, he’s hopeful that it’ll work because she took up so much of Richard's attention so quickly when she knocked the first time, so abnormally hopeful that he forgets to be wary of what to do if it weren’t a neighbour at the door. He forgets to be on guard, watchful, and carefully avoidant of the people he doesn’t wish to see. They’ve both been lulled into a state of security because Richard forgets too, throwing open the door without a peephole check and throwing caution to the wind, with it. 

There’s the sound of a body hitting a body—Richard’s fourth hug (although it might be generous of him to call it that) of the morning—that sends him stumbling a few feet back as he’s nearly taken off his feet with the force of it, and then a release to steady him, followed by “Are you fucking crazy? You put a hit on yourself and let Deathstroke call to collect?” 

Speak of the devil—or think of him—and he shall come. 

“Jay—”

“No, wait, actually. It was worse than that. You actually escorted yourself to his doorstep and then…sat pretty with a ribbon tied around your neck?” He continues, ire and worry mixing into something almost sweet. For Jason, at least. 

“Little wing—”

“Did I say you could start talking, Dickhead? No, so shut the fuck up.” There is a small part of Damian that considers using his wonderful new sword on his second (first?) eldest brother for that comment towards Richard. Yes, it was an idiotic plan, but Richard did it for him, and Damian has to admit the ingenuity of it, no matter the accompanying stupidity. 

Richard reaches around Jason to push the door closed, what good that will do when Jason has no control over the volume of his voice strikes the action as futile to Damian, but he watches captivated from his seat, and Haley too is intrigued by the show. “And not only was that dangerous as fuck, you moron,” Jason continues, unphased by their proximity, and in fact using it to jab his finger into Richard’s shoulder with all of his ire/worry. “You disappeared right after it, leaving us to wonder if Deathstroke might have actually managed the job, this time.” 

There’s a gap between his words where they stare at each other, Richard waiting to be yelled at some more, Jason waiting for Richard to speak again, probably to talk over him and yell at him some more. 

Damian could use their standoff to excuse himself before he’s noticed—sitting here so long in the open is risking that with every second that ticks by, but…there is something heartwarming about Jason being so very angrily concerned about Richard. The halls of Wayne Manor were often so quiet and empty, and that feeling of being surrounded by so many things and so few people often exacerbated the acute knowledge that Damian is and was always alone to unbearable degrees, that the yelling now is almost comforting. 

A part of Damian wonders if perhaps there is something as wrong with him as there is with Richard who is very clearly resisting the urge to smile in Jason’s face right now with the biggest, brightest grin. Being yelled at in concern is something that Richard can appreciate when it’s Jason dodging the yelling. It’s one of the few ways he shows he cares, also inherited from father. Although, while it is endearing on Jason, on father it is often belittling. 

“Well?” Jason demands. Dick presses up onto his tiptoes and gently rubs his nose against Jason’s. 

“I love you too, Little wing.” 

Jason sputters, face going red hot at the over abundance of affection. And yet, he tolerates it the same way that Damian does Richard’s hugs—which is to say, secretly, silently savouring it and internalizing the feeling of being so openly, unfetteringly loved. It’s something to cling to when their luck turns their lives into things that could justifiably lead to them joining the lot of Gotham’s Rogues. 

Timothy called it a ‘villain origin story’, if Damian is remembering correctly. 

“You don’t take me seriously at all.” Jason grouches. It lacks any semblance of fierceness and is instead just pouty. 

“Psssh,” Dick denies, weakly. “I take you very seriously.” 

When he doesn’t try, Richard is an astoundingly inept liar. 

“Besides, I didn’t sit pretty for Deathstoke.” Richard argues, getting them back on track. “I did a few laps, called him a cyclops, and a few other things that surprisingly didn’t get me shot.” He teeters his hand. “Like, it definitely wouldn’t have been fatal, but he knows how to shoot without killing, and I wouldn’t quite put it past him to do it for fun.”

“Are you hearing yourself?” Jason asks, bewildered. 

“I am joking.” Richard returns. Both Jason and Damian’s eyebrows raise at that. After spending so long with Slade, Damian is no more certain as to the nature of the relationship Richard and he hold. Their discussion in the car on their road trip back to Bludhaven in fact muddied it further. 

Skepticism is slow to fade on Jason’s face. “Sure.” He grunts out after a moment, “I believe you.” He absolutely does not. 

Jason’s hands press firmly down on Richard’s shoulder before he can try for another nose rub, affection overload will not dissuade him from yelling at Richard, even if it is so freely given. 

“I did have a reason.” Dick insists, feet forced flat to keep him out of reach of his desired affection. 

A snort is Jason’s response. “Nothing is worth putting a hit on yourself, Dicky.” Dick opens his mouth to argue, but he closes it again because if he insists, then he’ll have to explain what exactly made him do it—and there is a reason they’re here in Bludhaven, after all, and not back home in the manor. Damian is supposed to have time to adjust. To come back. To deal with the mess he left behind him because he couldn’t find the words to articulate that he was drowning, suffocating, in the silence they left him to while their lives were so much bigger than his. 

That leaves Jason and Richard at an impasse, and from the looks of it, Jason is very close to shaking Richard for his stupidity with no apparent reason. 

Damian has to make a decision. To hide or to come forward. On one hand, the former is something he’s very good at and could probably get away with, on the other hand, he is unable to enjoy his cake in peace with the racket the two of them are creating, and Haley has grown quite bored too. Her eyes are drooping along with her head, and any moment her cushioned chair is about to become her bed. 

Maybe a bit of Gotham needed to come to him, before he could go to it. 

“Perhaps you may cease the arguing until after I have consumed my breakfast.” Damian suggests from his stool, scooping up a bite of just lemon curd and letting it sit on his tongue a moment, sugar and zest battling for dominance over his palate. He focuses on that instead of the unpleasant tightness in his stomach, and the way he must force himself to keep his spine from curling and shoulders from curving inward. 

The force with which Jason whips around has Richard reaching out to steady him at the sound of Damian’s voice. The sight of him takes time for Jason to process, a hard reboot where his software crashes and a concerned thump from Richard is required to shake him out of his stupor. 

“There’s my reason.” Richard finishes with a soft smile, visible hearts in his eyes as he looks at Damian with a kind of approval he should know better than to crave. They’re the large cartoonish ones of the squishy and hot pink coloured variety. 

Absolutely sickening. 

“Holy fucking shit, baby bat?” Jason exclaims, although maybe it’s more “Holy fucking shit—Baby bat??” The brief moment of consideration as Damian deliberates it and focuses on not throwing up means that he is not able to reply by the time he’s being scooped up and squeezed to death, spine and ribs creaking in distress from a burst of Jason’s inhuman strength. Breathing ceases to become possible, and his lungs voice their concern although not much more than an eek escapes Damian. 

“Okay, okay, you’re squishing him to death!” Richard cries, trying to pry Jason and Damian apart. A crow bar might not even be up to the task, so Damian must be. 

“Ak….hi….air…please.” He manages.  

Jason practically drops him at the words, only Richard stops Damian from tumbling to the ground as he takes deep, gasping inhales and the room gives itself a little spin in front of his eyes. Jason runs a hand through his air, guilt pouring off of him. “Sorry, sorry.” He spits out, harried. Damian tries to wave him off, but it’s more a dainty flap of the hand that accomplishes nothing. 

Of all the ways Damian is reminded of his mortality, he did not expect it to be at Jason’s hands, let alone from a well meaning (bone crushing) hug. How pathetic. 

How bewildering.   

“Am I going to get yelled at too?” Damian wonders. He pretends it is not as breathless and wheezy as he is sure he actually sounds. 

“Oh, absolutely.” Jason confirms, still petting him. Damian nods despite the fact that he hates having anyone touch his hair and he pretends again that this does not warm his chest, that this does not faze him. This feeling of being fussed over and nearly crushed to death, mixing with the anticipation of being yelled at with the same ire/worry as Jason had done with Dick—the sheer affection in it under all of Jason’s brand of roughness is another thing Damian is sure he isn’t worthy of, but this morning he is greedy, and he will take it all, savour it, internalize it, and grasp onto it until his fingers are white and bloodless. 

“I will finish my breakfast first.” Damian asserts, delaying the gratification of a dressing down he only somewhat deserves. With how Jason had just made his metal spine creak, this is taken as a fair compromise. 

“Fine.” He’s lifted right out of Richard’s grasp (embarrassing) and put right back onto his stool like he weighs absolutely nothing, his plate is shoved into his hands and his fork is stabbed deep into the sponge so that it stands at attention, like a fighter ready for battle. 

“Have your cake,” Jason tells him. 

Richard cannot help himself, ever. “And eat it too!” He tacks on the quip. 

Damian breathes in deep for a count of eight, and lets out a long, suffering sigh of roughly equal length. “No puns before twelve.” 

There is no guilt in Richard’s eyes as he gives Damian the nose kiss he couldn’t give Jason a second time. “No promises.” 

Damian pretends like he does not love it. Him. Definitely not Jason, either. 

(And he finds that he is also an astoundingly inept liar when he doesn’t try.)