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Ever since Damian came to live with his father, he had been swamped with this overwhelming and infectious feeling of guilt.
It had taken him a while to finally name this emotion that has burrowed so deeply into his chest, grappling and dislodging his heart whenever his father falls silent as he walks through the halls of the manor. Father fails to hide his pained expression, like needles are periodically inserting themselves into the soles of his feet. His steps are heavy, heavier than usual, and if Damian had been anyone else, he would have missed the ways his father's hands balled into fists.
But Damian is not anyone else, he is his mother's son, and so nothing escapes him.
He watches, for the first few days he arrives at the Wayne Manor, on these walks his father has said would be good for them. Damian had expected them to start training immediately, for father to test Damain's skills, judge whether or not he was worthy (Damian knew he was more than qualified, but if father did not think so too, then it would all be worthless).
But instead, father takes Damian on walks around the Manor. The sheer size of the home in Bristol is enough to spend an entire afternoon exploring, which is what they do for almost two entire weeks. They start in the entrance, and take breaks in the conservatory, patio and greenhouse. Alfred is always there before them, somehow, with drink and snacks.
Damian is suspicious. Surely this is all a test? And if so, he must not fail. He arrives for these walks early, wearing his best clothes, gifts from his grandfather, long silk tunics and kurtas and the finest shoes he owns, hands behind him like it were any other training drill. Father arrives in similar fashion, dressed as if he were going to an office meeting and not a walk in his own home. He constantly fiddled with this satin ties.
Damian briefly wonders if father is trying to impress him too, wearing his best clothes, but this thought is so ridiculous Damian squashes it immediately. Batman doesn't have time for such trivial things.
So they go on these walks, and Damian answers most of the questions father has for him. He avoids a few, mainly to do with his mother and his childhood (much to the obvious disappointment of his father, something Damian is rather confused about). They talk about their skills, and Damian especially avoids discussing anything to do with weaponry and how to use them.
It becomes clear very quickly that neither father nor Damian are the… conventionally social type. Father then adopts a different approach, telling Damian to ask him anything he'd like to know, concerns or wishes in need of desperate answers. Or simple things, silly and harmless.
But even after the explicit permission, Damian is nervous, though he'd never admit this out loud. There are still burning questions about his father that he's holding closer to his chest, unsure of whether or not he has a place to ask.
Although they are related by blood, Damian does not know the man. Doesn't know what upsets him and what may please him, and what might make him send Damian away with his bags packed.
Father is so… embarrassingly open, far more than anyone had prepared him for, and Damian is mortified to realise that he can not match this level of emotions.
Ever since he could walk, mother had told him stories of father — of Batman — of his heroics and his battles and his iron fist. As a child there was no greater being than his father, and without permission to photos, Damian was left to his imagination. Large black cape, hands the size of church statues and eyes darker than the night. It was foolish, and the caretakers often scolded him for daydreaming when he should be training, but it was impossible to think about anything other than Batman, my father.
And now that Damian has met him, he's terrified to realise that he could not have predicted this man at all. No imagination was enough preparation.
Such a powerful, dignified man, was somehow more of a father than Damian had let himself hope for. The same hands that he knows have beaten lesser evils to pulp, are always so gentle when Damian holds out a hand to shake. Father tries to hug him, on occasion, but Damian does not dare let him. He's far too small, which was mortifying to admit to himself. Father would crush him before he even realises it. Father stops trying to hug him after the third time Damian almost stabs him for his troubles.
It's on these walks, that are filled with more silence than questions, does Damian notice his father's strange behaviour.
It's always in the same spot, the entrance of Wayne Manor. Its ceilings are ridiculous, so high that Damian is forced to crane his neck to even glimpse at the chandeliers. He'd fallen backwards into his father's legs a few times, trying to make out the paintings that adorn the highest curves of the ceiling, carvings in the stone and — gargoyles?
The staircase puts up a fair fight in size, branching off at the top to take you deeper into the manor that never seemed to end. Even after two weeks, father would show Damian a new room that didn't seem to exist before, the manor ever growing in his mind. Alive in her own right, as Pennyworth might have joked.
Across this staircase are pictures and statues, made of marble and wood and older than father. Paintings adorn most of the walls, more exactly. At first glance, Damian had imagined such things in the pages of his history books, floor to ceiling canvases drawn in oil and dark, rich colours. Drawings of lambs, angels and disproportionately sized babies in their gentle mothers arms.
Damian had never paid much attention to them before, too distracted with trying to match father's large steps, not wanting to fall behind and appear weak or slow. He'd appreciate them for the aura they contributed to the household, commanding respect and exuding wealth, but never more.
But that day, the day Damian watches as his father tenses his jaw, biting down on his tongue as he hurries past just a fraction faster than usual — Damian stops.
Father stops too, two steps ahead, but he doesn't turn around.
Damian watches as his father's back muscles tighten, like he's preparing for a fight. The already dim lit area darkens considerably, and having just moved in fairly recently, Damian prepares to fight his father too. He had expected an altercation, an attack, to test his skills eventually. He finds he's shaking in excitement even if he is a little nervous.
It had taken Damian almost ten years to beat his teachers in combat, to uphold a worthy battle with his mother — and perhaps it would take another ten to even match father.
He grips the small dagger in his pocket, one of the few that has not yet been confiscated by the butler Pennyworth, and turns his head slightly to the left. This might be what these walks were leading up to instead, a fight to test Damian's deductive skills. Being aware of one's surroundings was important for an assassin, and Damian hopes his father is not displeased that it had taken him two weeks to understand.
However, beside him on the wall, he is met with the thundering presence of an oil painting, the canvas waxed like it belonged to a museum, hung beside William-Adolphe Bouguereau's The Shepherdess and Ilya Repin's Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan. Damian wants to drag his nails across it, wondering if it would leave indents in the lines, or if it would remain undamaged for a hundred years to come.
It is of father, though a few years younger, his face slightly more round and less pointy, eyes a little brighter. His hair is longer, slicked back at the front, and while he is not grinning, the ever so slight curvature of his mouth suggests he is not entirely displeased. Damian can't stop staring at his father's face for a few long moments. This was a man Damian had never — would never meet, lost in time and the inevitable horrors that come with being Batman. Damian is unsure how to feel about this.
Beside him stands Dick Grayson, first Robin, currently Nightwing, father's first… son. He is also younger, enough so that Damian can estimate that this was painted early in his early adulthood, perhaps four or five years ago. Newly eighteen and a little too childish to completely be seen as an adult. He's the only one explicitly smiling in this painting, eyes bright and teeth perfectly straight, cheeks rosy that fade through his tanned skin, perfectly posed like he didn't exist outside of the gentle brush strokes. A perfect character in this painting. He seems almost… fake.
And then, in front of father, his large hands rested against a small pair of shoulders, is —
Damian inhales sharply, the air knocked out of his lungs, "Who is that?"
Damian's undivided attention is entirely on the painting in front of him, the mere size of the thing looming over him, casting a more than threatening shadow. But more importantly, since he is so focused on glaring into the much smaller boy in the painting, he misses the way Bruce stiffens, ever so slightly.
He does not answer immediately, but Damian is none the wiser, because this boy…
"Father," Damian struggled to let out, his chest tight, "Who… who is this boy? In the painting."
"Did your mother not tell you?" Father whispers harshly, and Damian tenses. No, no she didn't. But I have a feeling she didn't need to.
The boy in question looks like he might have been around Damian's age at the time of this painting, if a little older, his face somehow much too mature for his small body. He hasn't grown into his ears, cheeks a little too hollow but soft with youth. Damian thinks the boy looks like trouble, with a mischievous glint in his eyes, and a poorly-hidden smile similar to father's own. His hands are behind his back, and he's exuding innocence and naivety, except it's obviously a ruse from the way he's cheekily rolling on the back of his heels.
One of father's palms rests against his small shoulders, holding it firmly. Not in restriction, not even in control — but rather a familiar weight, tethering him to the painting. Safety. If father's hand were not on his shoulder, Damian imagines that the boy would laugh quietly, jump out of the painting and run circles around them both.
But then Damian imagines the boy's features melting like wax, eyes and mouth pulled long and drooping. The painting overflows with colourful green liquid, and in place of where the boy once stood, is now a distorted and unfamiliar mess of oil.
Bruce Wayne sighs rather loudly, and Damian finally spares him a look behind him, his heart beating out his chest, and he startles when he sees that father is facing him, eyes impossibly dark. But father is not looking at him, no, he's staring at the painting, at the boy, a similar trembling expression Damian shares. Damian wonders if father sees the same horrific imagery, of melting faces and incomprehensible people.
"Jason," father states, offering no last name, "My son. He was the second robin."
Damian feels the blood drain from his face, leaving him lightheaded. He has been briefly told about this, mother looking disappointed at the inconvenience while she had said something terrible has happened with your father, Damian, we must postpone your meeting with him indefinitely. That had been years ago, back when mother was going to let father complete Damian's first few years of training.
But something terrible happened, and Damian was forced to train with the League of Assassins instead, and meeting Batman became an even further dream — or it was, until he turned eight.
Damian knew about the first Robin from the files gifted to him for his seventh birthday, incidentally the last birthday he spent in the League. He knew a lot about Dick Grayson, his life before Robin and some of what he was doing after, and he seemed to be the most worthy opponent to battle, if the situation arose. Tim Drake was not something Damian wanted to think about if he could help it, but his intelligence was something to be wary of.
But there was no file for the years in between Dick Grayson and Tim Drake, other than a tiny, thin and unimportant file on Stephanie Brown's brief crusade as Robin. Her notes as Spoiler were much more of an interesting read.
Bruce watches Damian's expression curiously, seemingly uncertain when he then tells the boy, "Jason died five years ago. He was killed by the Joker."
With an inexplicable and choking sensation of horror, Damian almost lets it slip that no, father, he's not dead.
Because Damian knows this boy in the painting, or rather, Damian knows an older version of him. A streak of white parting his hair, autopsy scars and marks across his body that Damian had childishly questioned for years. Much larger than the boy in the painting, almost as large as father — or at this point, wherever he is, he is most definitely bigger than father.
Tayir, the name mother had given him when he was first brought to the League, pale and gangly and positively insane. He was a babbling mess, crying and screaming until grandfather decided to take pity and drown him in the —
Lazarus Pit.
Damian feels dread cut his throat, and he steps back, grabbing his mouth to stop himself from being sick all over the floor.
A blurry image in his mind finally focuses, and Damian can feel a wheel in his head begin accelerating. His thoughts are becoming a painful pressure, pushing against his ears. The reason Grandfather was so cautious with Tayir, and why Mother had seemed so unwillingly concerned, or why the other caretakers never let them be alone in a room together was because —
Tayir was his father's dead son, brought back from the grave, somehow. Driven mad by the pit. Trained by his mother and his grandfather, trained Damian.
Even his name, Tayir. Bird. Robin.
Damian is going to be sick.
Father jumps, looking concerned when Damian groans, grabbing the side of his head, and then he's kneeling down in front of him, somehow still menacing and towering. He doesn't touch Damian, but his hands hover above his small shaking frame, and father looks upset by it. He's saying something, the baritone of his voice rumbling Damian's own chest, but he can't process any of the words, because a million and one things suddenly slot into place.
"Damian?" Father calls again and again, worry etched into the faint lines on his face, itching to reach out and comfort his son, "What's wrong?"
"He —" Damian starts, before he's staggering back. The weakness in his voice will surely not go unpunished, but the horror in his veins is painful enough.
Horror flashes across Bruce's face, and he spares a fleeting look at Jason's painting, eyes dark and expression pinched, before his eyes are back on Damian, guilt and sadness washing off of him in waves that tighten around Damian's throat, "Oh, oh Damian. I didn't mean to scare you. I won't let anything like that happen to you."
Damian can't help but let a small cry pass his lips at that. Father does not understand that Damian does not fear death, especially not if the death comes from working with Batman. In fact, if death were to be so kind, then Damian would have it no other way than it be granted due to the crushing guilt in his lungs for lying. Father is so willfully ignorant. Left to rot in the dark. Thinking his son is dead and at peace when Damian knows the truth.
But he finds that as father finally decides to test the waters and pull Damian towards his chest, large and terrifying arms holding him as if he were made of pure and malleable gold, Damian can't speak. Anything he wants to say dies on his throat, and his mind is fuzzy as father continues to tell him absolute nonsense.
"You're alright," Father is whispering as Damian cries silently, not a single sound passing his lips other than deep, heavy breathing, because he doesn't know how father will react to crying. Will he be like grandfather, cold and firm, or like mother, soft yet strict? Will Bruce Wayne be a new battle entirely? "You're okay, Damian."
And Jason is not, Damian thinks bitterly, guilty for a dead boy, acid filling his chest as father continues to rub small circles into his back, he never will be. Because he's not dead and no one cares to know but me.
Damian does not show up for their walk the following day, or the day after that. Father had come to collect him once, but Damian locks his bedroom door, sets up a mat in the middle of the room, and meditates. Pennyworth tries once too, offering him a plate of biscuits, but Damian accepts the tray and shuts the door again.
Father and he do not take walks anymore, and they never talk about the events that took place in front of a dead boy's painting.
Three weeks later, a package arrives at the manor for Damian, from his mother. Filled with sweets and snacks that are more familiar than the rotten American alternatives he's been eating, some more silk and cotton clothes from his grandfather and, embarrassingly, an old stuffed tiger toy he hadn't seen in years. Damian is not sure why mother chose to send that.
Maybe she sent it for father, who looks so very sad when he hands the box to Damian, eyes soft and words uncharacteristically gentle, like he were talking to an abandoned baby. Damian isn't sure how he feels about this. He's also not sure why mother is using such cheap tricks to emotionally target his father, when it's obvious the man is already stricken with grief and guilt.
While father promised he hadn't looked through the box from home, Damian knows better. Father had resealed it perfectly, but even he could not know how the al Ghul's share secrets.
Hidden in between the walls of the box, disguised in cloth and wax, is a new file. It's thin, in order to be hidden without notice, and the writing is incredibly small, written in the League's own language, but every word carries a new layer of distraught guilt.
Jason Todd, Robin II. (ALIVE)
Damian isn't sure how his mother knew about their conversation in front of the painting, but he hides the file and the toy under the floorboards beneath his bed.
"This is Tayir," mother said, as she gestured to the boy beside her. He was much taller than the last time five year old Damian had seen him, the time spent in the lazarus pit speeding up his growth considerably, "He will train you while I am away for the winter."
Mother had only been gone for about four months, but Damian had childishly cherished those dark and cold months intensely. It was one of the last things he selfishly allowed himself to do, before any sort of similar feelings were beaten out of him by the more serious years of his training.
Tayir never spoke, and Damian half expected that he couldn't, or perhaps he was forbidden from doing so — but his eyes spoke enough. Large eyes that were more slowly turning more green than blue, and Damian had wondered whether they were always that colour or it was simply caused by the Pit, still and unblinking when faced with assassin society. He moves as if he had been born for this lifestyle. Damian thought the two of them could relate to that, and secretly, on some spiritual level, they had.
Tayir's training methods were less brutal, though not less gruelling.
And he was holding back. He never hit Damian with as much force as the other trainers during their sparring. Tayir remained unperturbed. He never hurt Damian on purpose. Damian would never forget him for it.
Though, sometimes, Damian remembers those four months like diamonds in a dark cave, hidden amongst the rubble — but once discovered, brighter and stronger than any other ore. Damian had not thought about Tayir for a long time, as after mother returned from her mission, Tayir was taken from him. He never heard or saw the boy again. He hadn't dared ask what happened to him, as the answer would most likely end in disappointment.
But he remembered them, with an unfamiliar fondness. Regret. He remembered how after sparring, Tayir would apply oils and ointment to the worst of Damian's injuries, something only mother had done up until then. It was so personal, but Damian didn't oppose it. He couldn't. He was five years old and Tayir was the closest to safety when his mother was away.
Damian remembers the mirth and amusement in Tayir's eyes when Damian would fail an overly complicated acrobatics trick.
That was another thing. While mother's training focused on dexterity and offence, and the League only ever taught him skills that ended in blood and dead bodies, Tayir was much more defensive. He'd taught Damian how to incapacitate a man without killing him, and then how to use his small frame to get away from a group twice his size without seriously harming anyone or himself in the process.
It now becomes painfully clear that Tayir — Jason — was teaching him the techniques he had learnt as Robin. But Damian didn't know any better, and perhaps Jason did not either, simply teaching based on muscle memory and a dulled image of a life once lived. After all, he did not refuse the name Tayir. Bird. The Lazarus Pit was still an unknown complexity, no matter how infamous the League of Assassins were for claiming ownership of it.
Jason Todd probably didn't know himself any better than Damian knew him. Memories a jumbled mess of years and trauma and damage.
Damian didn't even bother to ask why they had dipped this seemingly unimportant teenager into the pit, or why Grandfather seemed to grow more and more curious the longer he stayed around.
It makes sense, now. The power of another son of the Bat, training under the league.
In any sense, Damian remembers Tayir. But against the grand scheme of things, and the horror that was the rest of his training that followed his seventh birthday, Tayir was of no importance. Useless in the final product. A few months passed quickly.
Damian turns eight, and then he moves to America to live with his father and begin training to inherit the role of the Bat.
Damian forgets about Tayir fairly quickly.
A month later, nothing changes.
Jason Todd is alive, somewhere, and Bruce Wayne does not know. Jason Todd is alive and Damian Wayne is perhaps the only one who cares. Though, he doesn't care either, not really.
This new information advantages him in no way at all. Its mere existence is nothing but a future threat, a sapling of a problem just planted. It would take years before it would ever amount to anything worth concern, and even then, Damian is sure he'd have trained enough to remove the issue if it were to ever arise.
(Secretly, Damian knows it will happen eventually. The fire is Tayir's eyes was not something so easily forgotten, even all these years later.)
It's almost an entire three months later that the crimes of Damian's childish ignorance come back to haunt him, guilt like butter churning and ever growing in his stomach. There's a deep sedated sensation of sickness in his bones, constantly moving from the marrow to his blood, infecting it.
It's slowly killing him, Damian is sure, but perhaps he is being dramatic.
It is Sunday, which is reserved for pre-Robin training. Father is adamant that Damian is still not big enough to start his actual Robin training, which is his way of saying without explicitly saying that he does not trust Damian yet. He's not even allowed to enter the infamous Batcave unattended, and is strictly forbidden from touching any of the equipment and computers.
(He wonders, if father had trusted him earlier, would he have told him about Jason Todd?)
Damian makes it abundantly clear that his time with father is not to be interrupted under any circumstances. These short few hours after breakfast and before lunch are the only things that seem to tether Bruce Wayne and Damian Wayne to the same earth, because if not for this, one of them will go running for space (quite literally, most of the time being father).
So Sunday morning starts as usual.
Damian wakes up bright and early, and gets ready for the day. He lays down his mat, and meditates until he hears the sound of Pennyworth knocking on father's door.
Father's bedroom is the first one after the staircase, the master bedroom, naturally. It is the first line of defence if anyone were to enter the Manor's living quarters, and the rest of the bedrooms go down the corridor by age.
Besides father's is Dick Grayson's, which has remained empty since Damian got here three months ago. Next to his is another room, locked (with two separate locks), though Damian assumes this one remains empty for an entirely different reason. Opposite that one, is Tim Drake's. Drake lives at the manor, though his presence is beginning to steadily decrease, fortunately.
And finally, almost at the end of the corridor, is Damian's.
Pennyworth enters father's bedroom with a breakfast tray at exactly eight in the morning every day, and Damian slips out of his own room three minutes later to make his way to the kitchen.
Surprisingly, the normally empty kitchen is occupied.
Drake stares at him for a moment, eyes dark and like he wants to say something with vitriol, but thinks better of it when Pennyworth hurries in behind Damian, faster than usual. He normally takes ten minutes to wake up father, prepare him for the day, but today he seems to have woken him up and then left immediately. The butler gently ushers Damian into the kitchen, uncharacteristically silent.
Damian frowns. The two are acting strange.
Drake finishes his bowl of oatmeal in a hurry, and is practically running out of the room before Damian can ask him why he looks as though he's been awake for thirteen days and hasn't showered for even longer.
Alfred sighs, and doesn't call after Drake, also strange, "Would you like berries in your porridge today, Master Damian?"
Damian's frown deepens, but he nods nonetheless. He does like berries.
Father is late for their Sunday training.
Late, as in, he hasn't shown up. At all.
Training starts at around midday, and continues until late lunch time begins. It was currently six in the evening, and Damian is still sitting on the training mats, arms and legs crossed. Waiting.
He had meditated for most of his waiting time, and simply sat silently for the rest. Seven hours passed depressingly slowly, but Damian isn't sure what else is expected of him.
Pennyworth has been doing a poor job of cleaning the medical bay inconspicuously for the fourth time, periodically looking over his sponge and disinfectant bottle to give Damian a pitiful look.
"How about we head to dinner, Master Damian?" Pennyworth finally breaks when Damian loses his focus and yawns, "Master Bruce seems to be exceptionally busy today."
Damian might have believed him, if father had even left his bedroom. Unless there was a second secret entrance leading from the master bedroom to Gotham City, father hadn't even left his bed all day.
Damian straightens his back, "Father instructed that Sunday's were for training. So I will wait."
Pennyworth grimaces, but goes back to cleaning the scalpels. Again.
"Master Damian, it is time to get ready for bed."
"Not yet."
Damian fell asleep.
Damian, Son of Batman and The Dragon, heir to the League of Assassins, fell asleep while waiting for his training session to begin.
It's truly telling how much his training has been lacking ever since he arrived in America, if Damian's defences have lowered so drastically that he'd let himself slip away completely unguarded. Sure, he was in the Batcave, but even then, there was only one person Damian trusted to not attack him in his sleep (and that was Pennyworth; the man was too dignified to do something so cowardice).
He only clambers out of his unconsciousness and into a more lucid state of wakefulness when he hears a familiar inhale from his father. He's standing a few feet away, not yet on the training mats, but Damian imagines he's close enough to see Damian asleep.
It's part childishness and part fear that prevents Damian from waking up entirely. He had no idea how Bruce Wayne would react to finding Damian asleep when he should be waiting. Maybe this was all a test. Damian was supposed to stay awake and wait, and he had failed.
Only, that doesn't seem like the case when the sound of Pennyworth's Oxford Brogues approach the training mats, "He's been waiting for you since breakfast."
Father inhales sharply, again, sounding like he's just woken up, "Why didn't you send him away? You knew I wasn't coming."
Damian's stomach twists at the obvious dismissal of their training session. It had been foolish to assume father respected Damian enough to find value in something so obviously pitiful.
"You underestimate the Wayne family's stubbornness," Pennyworth tells him, sounding just a fraction away from scolding, "You also underestimate the feelings of the new son whom you now have responsibility over."
"Alfred. You know what day it is." Father replies concisely.
Damian wants to frown, but he's far too sleepy to truly try. His mind is working vaguely in the back, wondering what is so important about this specific Sunday?
Pennyworth is apparently having none of it, "I do know what day it is. I also know that I can't abandon this child and lock myself away simply because of today's date."
Damian almost startles entirely away when he remembers the date, and a small beige envelope hidden under his floorboards.
April 27th, Jason Todd is pronounced dead.
"I didn't —" Father starts, sounding smaller and further away than Damian's ever heard him, "Alfred."
Pennyworth doesn't grace either of them with another wise observation, but the silence is punishing enough. Damian's heart is beating out of his chest, but he feels as though he's watching this all take place from the corner of the cave, hidden in the shadows and watching everything unfold. When in reality, he's curled into a little ball in the centre of the training mats, a plate of cut fruits in front of him that Pennyworth had given him in exchange for dinner.
"I'm sorry." Father finally whispers.
"I'm not the one who you owe an apology to." Pennyworth tells him gently, and the tone is soft, comforting, and Damian finds he's falling back asleep.
He lets it happen. It would be less embarrassing than waking up and having to endure father's guilty apologies and hidden truths. Or maybe it's Damian's own guilt and hidden truths. Lying to a man who still mourns his son, that Damian knows is alive.
"I'll tell him," Father's voice sounds muffled, like he's speaking underwater, or maybe Damian's the one drowning, "He sleeps so… peacefully."
"Thank goodness he hasn't inherited your horrendous snoring."
"I don't snore. Are children usually this… still? I'm fairly certain Dick still sleepwalks and Tim's sleep talking is back. Has Damian moved at all?"
"Well, I would assume a child's upbringing might affect more than just their behaviour when awake, Master Bruce."
"...right."
Damian's fast asleep, as still and as quiet as a stone statue, by the time the tone of the conversation reaches a sombre and upsetting end, again.
When he wakes up, Damian does so all at once. He'd quickly learnt that as an assassin, but also as the heir to the Demon Head, that he didn't have the luxury of a peaceful slumber or an easy wake either. You never know where you'll be, or who will be there, holding a sword to your throat. Damian had learnt that the hard way.
So Damian snaps his eyes open, sitting up in bed immediately. He blinks at the opposite wall for a moment, pushing the sleep out the corners of his mind and —
And then he stops. Turning his head to the left.
"Oh, good morning," Father breathes, masking his surprise or discomfort at Damian's abrupt alertness well, a tablet in his hands, "Did I wake you?"
Damian swallows thickly, and realises that for some reason, he is very afraid, "No father."
Father is not convinced, but he doesn't push, "I see. I wanted to ask you something, and thought I'd wait for you to wake up."
Damian doesn't ask why his father couldn't have waited outside his room, or simply woke him up to ask whatever question was weighing him down so heavily that he'd wait beside his bed like Damian would never wake up again, "Yes?"
"Do you like museums?"
Damian blinks. Disgustingly, his eyes stick together from where sleep still holds them shut, but Damian is so startled he doesn't bring his hands up to rub his eyes. Instead, he stares at father like he's grown another head, "I have never been to one. But I have read about them." He answers honestly.
"Alfred tells me you like art," Father then seemingly walks off topic, turning off his tablet and tucking it next to his thigh, leaning back into the seat, "Is that true?"
Is this a test? "Yes… father." Damian answers, somewhat unwillingly.
Mother had seen his talent for art and interest in it as a positive, claiming it was a worthy and intelligent skill to have, and would often come back from her travels with new paints and foreign paper. Grandfather has been less enthusiastic at the hobby that took up the time Damian could have used to further hone his training, but didn't forbid him from it either.
Father hasn't expressed any distaste for Damian spending time by himself in his room scratching pencils against cream paper… yet. Damian's unsure how something like this would be tolerated in this house of silence and secrets.
Father must see Damian's growing scepticism, because he quickly amends with, "I want to take you to a museum, so you could see all the paintings and sculptures. Maybe it will inspire your next work. There's a new renaissance exhibition."
Damian's heart soars out his chest and into father's palm, apparently, because then he adds, "I hope it's not presumptuous of me to assume you'd like to go?"
"Of course not, father," Damian breathes, unable to do much else when his blood is roaring in his ears, "Yes I would like that. Next Sunday?"
Damian doesn't see father much, ever since they stopped going on their walks. Up until now, Sunday's were the only day's that Damian could safely say he had his father's undivided time and attention.
Though, judging by the way Father's face falls, it wasn't the right thing to ask. Damian's not sure what he's said wrong, since father suddenly looks crestfallen, guilty, "I was wondering if you'd like to go today, actually. Monday."
Blinking, Damian's mouth slowly thins into a straight line in disbelief, "But you have work today?"
"I took the day off." Father admits, looking almost embarrassed, and Damian realises this is an apology.
Something about it settles uncomfortably in Damian's stomach. He realises, again, that it's this insatiable and poisoning sensation of guilt.
But in his chest, selfishly, childishly, is hope.
"I would like to go to the museum with you today." Damian admits clearly, leaving no room for misunderstanding. His fingertips buzz with something cruel, but Damian ignores it for the much better feeling of belonging.
Father smiles, small and hesitant, but Damian thinks he'll remember it for a very long time, "I can't wait."
"Hey there!"
Damian stops sketching, his back pressed against father's bedroom door.
Batman and Robin had been patrolling yesterday, and just about everything that could've gone wrong, ended up happening. Drake's been locked away in his room, wrapped in enough bandages that he could be passed off as an Egyptian mummy, alternating between grumbling and snoring. Damian had helped Pennyworth tend to Drake's wounds, not because he was concerned, no, but because it's what father would have wanted. Had he been awake.
He didn't get the chance to see father after he had been treated by Pennyworth, and father had promptly been doused with enough painkillers to knock out a small elephant. It would be unwise and cruel to wake him, just to make sure he was alive. Damian wasn't worried.
So Damian opts to sit outside his father's room, waiting, a sketchbook in his lap and an array of pencils in front of him on the carpet. Pennyworth had trusted him to call out if anything were to happen, and so he has been sitting alone and vigilant for the better part of an hour.
Or he was, until now.
"I'm Dick, I don't think we've properly met yet," Dick Grayson, first Robin, currently Nightwing of Bludhaven, father's most formidable and respected ally, says gleefully. He's dressed in what might be the most horrifically bright orange pajamas, smiling down at Damian.
"Damian al Ghul-Wayne." Damian tells him, though it's rather redundant. They both know each other, either from what father has said to the both of them, or from the files they undoubtedly have on each other.
Dick whistles, and drops himself down with the grace only an acrobat of his capabilities could possess, "So, why are you waiting out here, and not inside with Bruce?"
Damian stares at Dick with poorly hidden distaste, and then turns back to his sketch, as if the answer isn't obvious and right in front of him, "Father is recovering. I don't want to disturb him."
Damian continues to sketch in silence for another few moments, unsure why Grayson was creepily staring at the side of his face and not leaving. The lines of the sketch become darker, the more Damian presses the pencil into the paper — though he's careful not to damage the lead either. They were gifts from father after their visit to the museum last week.
But after a while, it becomes painfully annoying, and Damian slams his pencil into the paper and turns to Grayson with a scowl, "What do you want?"
"Sorry," Grayson mumbles, shaking himself out of thought, the expression of loss and space gone and replaced with his familiar (and fake) smile, "I just — I had a brother, Jason? You might know about him. He used to sit outside Bruce's room like this. Too scared to go in on his own. Didn't want to bother him, or something silly like that."
Many things happen all at once. Most excruciatingly, Damian feels the telltale horror of guilt shoot through his veins again, running his blood cold. He's stricken with panic, for a moment, shocked at the almost carefree mention of Jason Todd.
Father hasn't spoken about him, at least directly, to Damian since the painting incident, and Damian is hoping that will be the last time. Alfred mentions him occasionally, when in the kitchen or when in the garden, something small and seemingly unimportant like Master Jason loved berries on his pancake too or this tree was planted by Master Jason when he was twelve. Tim has yet to say his name even once. Good.
But Dick Grayson is so unforgivingly… normal about it. Damian isn't sure what this test is supposed to prove, if it is one.
The second thing Damian realises is, "I'm not scared to enter my father's room!"
"No? Then just go on. He won't mind. In fact, I think he would like the company." Dick says, smiling like something about this was terribly funny.
"I don't… want to wake him up." Damian mumbles, running a hand across the side of his sketchbook.
Dick sighs and stands, rubbing invisible dust off his trousers, still looking as cheerful as ever, though something about his demeanour has become sombre, "I don't think he'll mind, kid. Just don't stay out here too long, the hallways can get cold at night. Or at least wear some socks."
Something about his casualness suggests that this is a conversation he's had before, and Damian bites the inside of his cheek. Guilt burns, and it pools, and it's growing.
He could tell Dick Grayson everything. Tell him about the League and the Lazarus Pit and the boy with green eyes instead of blue and finally feel something be lifted from his shoulders. But it would be cruel to tell them any of this with no proof, with no clear idea of where their beloved Jason Todd was now. They didn't trust him yet either, to say something so valuable and not be lying.
But perhaps the cruellest thing of all, would be to lie to them and tell them that the boy they lost is the same one who rose from the Pit. Jason Todd was alive now, that was true, but he had died, and this does not change that fact.
Damian grips his pencil, and wonders, who is he really subjecting all this cruelty towards.
"By the way," Grayson suddenly says as he's halfway down the corridor to check on Drake, "Your art is lovely!"
Damian startles, and looks down at the sketchbook in a hurry. What stares back is a rough draft of three separate images. One is the outline of father, shoulders like tectonic plates, shifting beneath the earth with purpose, but no other defining features to suggest it's him as he's sitting at a table with a pile of books in front of him. The one beside him is of a tiger, more detailed and regal, staring at something off the page.
The most detailed of the three is, embarrassingly, a portrait of Timothy Drake. It's the same one hung in the living room, besides the other portraits of the other Wayne children. Damian hadn't even realised that's what he was drawing so intensely, nor that it's something he's committed so clearly to memory.
With warm cheeks and red ears, Damian glares up at Dick Grayson, ready to threaten him into silence, only to find the young man gone. Damian hadn't even heard him leave.
Feeling faintly like he's lost some sort of game, Damian gently packs up his pencils and holds his sketchbook close to his chest. One hand rests against the door of the master bedroom, the smooth wood cold and intimidating.
Damian takes a breath, and enters the bedroom.
"Is your name really Tayir?" Damian asked, age five and missing two of his front teeth. They were sat in one of the training rooms, cross-legged on the mats with a bowl of fruit between them.
Tayir had blinked in reply, silent. Unsurprisingly. Damian hadn't heard him even make a sound, let alone formulate words. Some of the caretakers speculate that Tayir didn't even know how to speak.
"Mother suggests that you don't remember your real name yet," Damian had told him innocently, though he would've been lying if he said he hadn't made the tone sharp to evoke some sort of emotion from the silent teacher. Outrage? Confusion? Sadness?
And Yet, Tayir had stayed emotionless. He silently ate a blueberry, and Damian huffs, falling back to lay on the mats.
"Damian means conquer. Grandfather says I might have been a king in my past life. Tayir means bird," Damian continued, staring up at the ceiling, "Maybe you were a bird, in your past life?"
He missed the way Tayir's green eyes dimmed, flashing blue, but only for a moment. By the time Damian sat up again, reaching for a strawberry, his eyes were cracked with emerald green, and raging silently.
Damian is dying.
"Damian? Damian hold on. You need to stay awake son, listen to my voice."
He had always thought that he would die bravely in battle, alongside his family. Back to back with his mother, standing alongside his grandfather, an army of League Assassins at his command. More recently, he had imagined it with Batman, saving a city that truly wasn't worth all the suffering, wearing the ridiculous colours that decorate the glass cases in the batcave.
He imagines his death would be heroic. Or at the very least, impactful.
Instead, Damian is shot by someone so irrelevant that the people around him are more focused on saving his life than catching the perpetrators. It happened so quickly — as cliché as it sounds.
Wayne Incorporated is launching a biodegradable plastic, and the first two places to receive this new innovation would be schools and hospitals. Father stands on the podium, smiling a rare grin of pride and true enthusiasm, and announces a few extra charities that they'll be opening and places they'll be funding (the Gotham Wolf Sanctuary and National Art Gallery of Gotham end up being two, for reasons unspecified). Then Drake takes the stand, as the heir, giving a speech Damian had tried desperately to look uninterested in, but his palms hurt from clapping at the end.
Then it was supposed to be over. Father had promised that they'd have time to go home and train, and had even implied that if Damian continued to work hard and impress him, then the prospect of sharing the Robin title with Tim (something that took a lot of convincing for both parties to agree to) would become an even sooner possibility. Drake might have joined them for sparring. Maybe even Grayson, if he had the time.
But then, a scream, and then a gunshot, and then —
Damian is dying.
He had thought that if it were to happen, it would be to the sound of nothing. The silence of the night. With the moon as the only witness, and Batman, proud of his son, of his efforts in battle. Damian is satisfied with his journey, with the name he's inherited and made for himself.
But standing above him is not Batman, and Damian's done nothing to make this death worthy.
"Call an ambulance!" Father shouts, his face pale and sweat building across the lines on his forehead, blue eyes wide and intimidatingly sharp, "Damian! Damian, you need to stay awake."
Right now, Damian is not Robin, and father is not Batman. They're dressed in black suits with gel in their hair and wearing ridiculously colourful ties that Grayson had picked out for them.
Damian is dying, there's no question about it. But as father leans down to place a hand across his pulse, counting the slowly depleting thumps of a heartbeat, his expression horrified and fearful, Damian realises he needs to tell his father that Jason Todd is alive. He must.
He absolutely can not die letting Bruce Wayne think he has lost two sons.
Maybe mother would be disappointed, since there has to be some sort of plan going on in the shadows with the resurrected Jason Todd and Talia al Ghul — though, she's going to be so much more disappointed that Damian's dead. Devastated even. Damian blinks harshly.
He's going to die. He hasn't seen his mother in months and he's going to die and it's so silly but at that moment Damian thinks he can smell her jasmine and rose perfume, feel the softness of her hair. Is that what happens, when you're about to die? You feel the arms of your mother gently holding you?
Only it's not his mother at all, because the tears that are falling on his face would never come from his mother. She never cries in front of Damian. Never worrying him with something so trivial like that. She'd guide him with the same strength she raised him with, proud till his very last breath, and then, and only then, would she cry for him.
"Damian," Bruce Wayne, the ever complicated complexity that Damian still doesn't know how to understand, sobs without hiding his anguish, one hand pressing down on the wound across his side and the other holding Damian's face, "You're okay. Can you hear me? Nothings going to happen to you."
If Damian could feel anything but the blood pouring out of the bullet hole in his side, maybe he'd frown and tell his father to stop telling him lies. There's no use preventing the inevitable with empty promises and soft words — Batman, of all people, should know that.
Though, perhaps it's different when it comes to your own son.
"Father…" Damian tries to say, but his throat is unbearably dry and what comes out is more of a half-cough and half-cry of incomprehensible mumbling. But father immediately leans down to hear him better, and for a moment, the screaming and sirens and general loudness of the disastrous world around them becomes faint and muffled.
"Damian? Don't speak. Just hold on." Father repeats again and again and Damian imagines he'd be very upset if bone chilling terror wasn't filling his lungs.
He was dying. He hadn't even turned nine yet. Drake, somewhat begrudgingly, had even subtly asked him what he would like for his birthday gift, and Damian knows Alfred is already planning the party. This was supposed to be his first birthday with his father.
"Father I —" Damian chokes, because if he can give his father anything, he can give him this, "Jay…"
Father stiffens, and as Damian's eyelids flutter close for a moment before shooting open again, he pushes down on the wound. "Damian? I'm here, son. I'm right here."
"Jason…" Damian mumbles.
For a second, he worries that father hasn't heard him over the shock and the adrenaline, but it would be impossible to miss the way his crystal blue eyes suddenly darken, a foggy overcast of something distant. His pupils shake widely, raking over Damian's entire face, looking for something that isn't there.
Father opens his mouth, but nothing comes out, and Damian knows he's been heard.
Damian swallows thickly, though nothing soothes the burning in his throat and the hammering in his chest, the bottom half of his body numb and cold, "Jason Todd is… alive. With… League. Jason…"
"You —" Father might have let go of Damian completely, pushed him away in disgust and terror, but Damian's eyes are already closed and he can't feel a single thing to confirm if his suspicions are true, "What are you —"
Damian had imagined this scenario before, many times in fact. It was a recurring nightmare after Damian had seen the painting in the entrance. Father is always furious in this dream, filled with anger never seen before, horrified that Damian would keep something like this from him. He's screaming and shouting and crying and Damian is falling backwards into an endless void, desperately reaching out for a family he's betrayed so viciously.
Some nightmares must come true, because Damian feels himself slip back, losing footing and descending into nothingness. Father's hands, his mother's arms — they both feel so far away.
"Damian!"
He wonders, in his last moments, is this what Jason felt, too?
SON OF BILLIONAIRE BRUCE WAYNE, DAMIAN WAYNE, SHOT AND IN CRITICAL CONDITION. PUBLIC DEMAND ANSWERS FROM GCPD.
"Seriously," the man grumbles, shutting the newspaper harshly and throwing it back to the guy who was trying to sell it to him, "You'd think they'd give this kid a break."
The paper vendor narrows his eyes at the man's attitude, but wordlessly straightens out the paper and places it back onto the pile, "Well, it's sort of a big deal. This the second time Bruce Wayne's lost a kid."
The man glares at the vendor, "The kids not dead though, is he?"
Someone else, a random lady smoking her second cigarette beside them nods, "I hear he'll be just fine. Wayne's got the country's best doctors for him no doubt."
The man scoffs, though he's visibly not impressed with what he's seeing, and that includes the flowers and teddy bears littering the already busy and crowded streets of Gotham City. As far as he's aware, the youngest of the Wayne's isn't dead enough for people to be crying and holding candles to the sky. These people didn't even know him.
"Boy hadn't even made it to double digits," the vendor sighs, "Poor thing."
The man who's becoming more and more insufferable scoffs again. Like he's laughing at an inside joke no one else understands, finding something enjoyable about this affair. Though it lacks the genuinity it should, and ends up something far more deprecating. Sad, almost.
The lady and the vendor share a strange look, but neither say anything. You don't get far in Gotham by confronting every weirdo you meet on the streets.
"Maybe Wayne should stop having kids if he can't look after them." The man mumbles once his humour fades away, and the lady frowns, dropping the end of her cigarette and crushing it with the heel of her beige heels.
No one outwardly agrees with him, but from their lack of disapproval, the man seems resignedly smug about his accepted comment.
Only, the more the vendor stares at this strange customer, the more he realises that the man is less of a man and more of a boy. His features are sharp and mature, but the space around his eyes is softer. It's as though he's wearing the baggy clothing and dark colours to hide away that he's not as wise as his deep, damaged voice suggests. Not to mention the statement that is his hair.
"Here, how about this paper instead?" The vendor offers, because whatever this kids story is, he's still got a job to do.
The boy spares a careless look down at the outstretched paper, and miraculously, looks almost amused by it. The lady leans over to, and nods her head in some sort of silent approval, tightening the belt on her coat.
"I heard they've given him a name now." She offers offhandedly, preparing to go back to whatever job she has now that her smoke breaks over.
The boy almost smiles as he asks, "Really? And what's that?"
She shrugs, "Red Hood, or something."
She walks off after that, somewhat in a hurry when the boy laughs like she's told him something funny. The vendor nervously smiles along, unsure what exactly got this guy in a good mood, but whatever it is, must be working in his favour.
The boy grabs the paper from him and drops some change onto the table, more than the paper is actually worth, and nods in dismissal.
"Thanks," the mysterious boy grins, and the vendor nods back, confused at the sudden politeness.
As the boy walks off, the vendor wonders, has he seen this kid somewhere before?
NEW BOSS OF CRIME ALLEY — UNIDENTIFIED HERO, OR VILLAIN?