Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Have you come to laugh at me?”

Damian looks small. This is the first thought that comes to Tim’s mind. It’s normal, Damian is a child, after all. But where he is, in his big bed, in the big manor bedroom, he looks particularly like a child.

“No, I came to check on you.” This is not entirely the truth. This is not what he had come to do, not fully.

If the situation was any different, if Bruce had told him Damian had been sick any other time, he would have simply given some sympathies and not showed up in the manor for a few days. He’s surely not masochist enough to willingly submit himself to a grumpy, annoying, possibly contagious Damian.   

But this is not any other time, and he needs to check on something. Guilt is pulling into his guts like a physical weight.

He had been smug, smiling when he had asked Bruce if Damian hadn’t been with him.

“No,” Bruce had answered. “He’s sick, a bad cold, I think. The rule is that he doesn’t patrol if he has a fever.”

Tim had raised an eyebrow. He had patrolled plenty of times with a fever but… yeah, to be fair, most times, Bruce hadn’t exactly known.

“What?” he had said instead of pointing it out. “Kid didn’t wear his winter suit?”

Bruce had seemed confused by the question. “I think he did,” he had said. “He went into the harbor to save a hostage. There is only so much insulation can do.”

Back then, Tim hadn’t started feeling guilty, yet. So what? Damian was a bit sick. He would be back to his annoying gremlin self soon enough. It wasn’t until two days after, when Alfred had mentioned pneumonia over the phone, that his heart had missed a beat.

“I thought it was a cold?”

“It seems that master’s Damian’s condition had been taking a turn for the worse. But do not worry, master Tim, it seems to be bacterial, and he is a fine young man. He should be back to full health soon.”

“I know. You’re the best, Alf.”

And it had been the truth, really. He hadn’t been worried, not really. He had tried to ignore the guilty feeling, maybe it had nothing to do with the prank. He had tried to ignore the feeling until guilt pushed him entirely, eating him from inside, and he had made his way to the manor.

So, here he is, in Damian’s room, watching the kid popped up on every single pillow of his room, cheeks red with fever, breathing tight.

“Well,” Damian says. “Go ahead. Laugh.”

Tim really, really doesn’t feel like laughing. “B told me you jumped into the harbor to save a hostage.”

“They pushed her in,” Damian says. He looks a little annoyed by the conversation. Tim can’t really blame him. Damian looks exhausted, and the last thing he probably wants to do is to talk to Tim. Tim should probably confess and call it a day. Let Damian hate him and get the rest he deserves. “I had to.”

Tim nods. He knows the feeling. “You weren’t wearing your winter suit.” This is not a question.

“Do you think that would stop me? Do you think father’s tests-” Damian is cut off by a cough. Then another, then another until his small frame is shaking with the strength of it, and Tim morbidly thinks he might break a rib or two, and that would not help him recover.

At some point, he stands, staggers to the bathroom, and pushes his head on the sink, spitting up mucus.

Tim just stands there, waiting. He’s not Dick, and Damian wouldn’t take his help well.

When the fit is finally finished, and Damian sits on the floor, Tim still asks, “Do you need help to your bed?”

Damian shakes his head. “Not from you, no.”

Tim winces internally. That hurts. Not that he wasn’t expecting it, but that still stings. He watches as Damian stands up, slowly and walks back to his bed.

After a time, when Damian has settled back in his pillows, Tim starts talking again. “Earlier, you were saying something about Bruce’s tests.” This bothers him. “What was it?”

Damian just glares at him. “Like you don’t know. Did you succeed? Come on, gloat and then leave.”

Tim takes a step into the room. “I really, really don’t know,” he’s going to have words with Bruce if he did any sort of training while the kid is in that state.

“Is it some kind of punishment? Making me say it?”

Tim has no idea what kind of conversation he just walked in. “No. I’m genuinely confused. I can go ask Bruce if you’re more comfortable.” That sounds like running away, from his guilt, from the thing he didn’t say.

“No, don’t,” Damian stops him, and his voice isn’t very high, but he still coughs at the end of the sentence.

Tim waits. And when Damian finally catches his breath, he says, matter-of-factly, “Father removed my access to the winter suit to test my stamina under harsh temperatures. Obviously,” he coughs, “I failed.”

“This is-” Tim takes another step into the room. “No, Damian. No.”

This was stupid. This was a stupid idea to begin with.

It all started with Dick saying Damian could fit in his old winter suit. His ugly winter suit. Then a prank war. Tim and Damian had been going for mouths, with increasingly annoying ideas to annoy or embarrass the other.

It was stupid, it was silly, but Tim almost felt like they were healing. It was harmless, fun pranks. A far cry from plotting a way to imprison the other or -Tim shudders- cutting a grapple line. They were acting like brothers, and Tim…

Tim ruined it.

He assumed that if he hid Damian’s winter suit, the kid would have no choice but to take Dick’s old one. He assumed Damian would act normally, rationally about that. Then, when Bruce had told him he didn’t notice any change, he assumed the kid just had preferred being cold all night rather than taking the humiliation. So, what if he had gotten sick? Serve him right.

Tim had assumed… he had assumed wrong. He had underestimated how much Damian’s upbringing is still engraved in his brain, in his behavior. He never thought, one second, that Damian would think Bruce was testing him by letting him get in danger.

Tim had let him believe that. For days, while the kid was slowly becoming sicker and sicker, he believed his misery was his father’s making.

Damian starts coughing again, and Tim realizes how much worse this could have been. He wouldn’t dare call developing pneumonia lucky, not when he had been there a few years back and he knows how much it sucks, but, all things considered, Damian had been lucky.

The hypothermia could have left permanent damage to his limbs, to his brain. He could have gotten cold shock and drowned. Damian doesn’t look like it, he might not feel like it, but he’s so damn lucky to be alive to cough up his lungs, right now.

He could have died. He could have died, again, and it would have been Tim’s fault. And all this time, he thought it was his father who endangered him. And Tim, in his embarrassment and cowardness, had let him.

“He would never do that,” Tim says.

Damian gives him an unimpressed, tired look. “Well, he did.”

“No,” Tim takes a step. He’s still far enough from Damian that he’s safe, not from contagion, because he doesn’t really care about contagion, at this point, but from the kid’s fury if he decides to snap. “No, I did. It was- fuck, Damian, I’m so sorry, I though you would have taken Dick’s old one, rather than going out without protection while… Gotham is freezing, Damian. I didn’t think this through.”

He almost adds that he didn’t think Damian would be that stupid, but he stops himself. That is not how his apology is supposed to go. “It was a stupid prank, but it turned out awful for you. I’m sorry.”

He finally brings himself to look at Damian. He’s expecting rage, anger, anything, but the kid just looks dumbfounded. “It wasn’t a test,” he says in a small voice.

“It wasn’t,” Tim repeats, and then, once more, for good measure. “I’m sorry. Your two uniforms are so alike, Bruce probably thought you had the winter one on. He’s not mad at you for being sick, or disappointed.” Bruce had looked proud, actually, when he’d told him Damain had saved that woman.

“He hadn’t come to see me. Not even once,” Damian says.

Tim winces. “Yeah, he can be like that.” He needs to have a talk with Bruce. Or maybe with Dick so Dick can have a talk with Bruce. He’s a coward, like that. “But he’s not mad. You didn’t fail anything. It was just… it was just stupidity.”

On both sides, but mainly on Tim’s. For all he said to Dick he understood what it meant to be a big brother, now, he sure didn’t act like it.

Damian hums. “So, it was not a test. Just you being stupid.”

Tim nods. “Just me being stupid,” he agrees, for once. “I am giving you this one just because you’re sick, don’t get used to it.”

“I’m not that sick,” Damian says, and Tim internally winces. Yes, Damian is that sick. From just the few minutes he had been in this room, he knows it. “I could still kick your ass.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” Tim tries to make a joke out of it, but the kid does look like a small wind could kick him over. Damian starts coughing again and with each spasm that rattle his small body, Tim’s guilt is growing.

It would be easier, he thinks, if Damian had yelled. If his reaction had been anything else than this tired acceptance.

“It’s true,” Damian says between coughs. “I’ve been doing very well on the train-” He doesn’t finish the sentence, partially because his lungs don’t let him, partially because he’s probably realizing what he’s saying. What he’s confessed.

“Damian, have you been training?” In that state?

“Had to become stronger,” Damian croaks.

Right. Because he thought this was a test. He thought he had failed, somehow, by getting pneumonia, so he had kept training, probably behind both Bruce’s and Alfred’s back.

“It seems that master’s Damian’s condition has been taking a turn for the worse.”

He had pushed himself, not only the night when he rescued the hostage but the next ones, too, because he felt like he wasn’t good enough. Tim wonders how bad Damian’s health would have actually been if he had let himself rest in the first place. He feels nauseous.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, even if it doesn’t change anything, even if Damian is still feverish and out of breath.

Damian shakes his head. “Don’t give yourself too much credit. Pennyworth said it was bacterial, meaning some water got into my lungs. This has nothing to do with being cold.”

“That’s… not exactly true.” He sees what Damian is trying to do here, and it’s way more than he deserves. “Hypothermia reduces your body defenses; the cold might have made you a less good swimmer… You might have swallowed some water, but the odds were against you.” He needs Damian to understand it. To understand he didn’t fail in any shape or way. To understand that getting sick wasn’t his fault.

“Do you want me to tell Bruce what I did?” That would only be fair. And Bruce, unlike Damian, might actually yell. Tim feels like that would help with the guilt, in a way.

Damian shakes his head. “No,” he says. He doesn’t elaborate.

They just stay there, in awkward silence, for what seems like an eternity before Damian says, “if you’ve said what you wanted, you’re free to leave.”

Tim guesses he did say what he wanted, even if that didn’t go the way he expected. “Okay,” he says. “Feel better soon. I mean it.”

He turns, and is already on his way to the door when he hears Damian’s voice. “And, Drake?”

Tim stops. “Do not think you are safe. Any day, now, I will have my revange, and you will regret defying me.”

When Tim turns, he sees a large, shit eating grin on Damian’s tired face.

For the first time since he set foot in this room, Tim smiles.

He knows, as soon as Damian is better, he better get ready for any sort of prank.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.