Chapter Text
Damian is helping his father torture Jim Gordon when the world ends.
Damian hands Father a scalpel, trying to ignore the way the gore still turns his stomach, all these years later. Then there’s a noise and a light and a feeling like space and time coming untethered from their mooring.
Before Damian’s head stops spinning, a body slams into him, taking him to the ground. His attacker binds his wrists and ankles and Damian wants the hands off of him, his skin crawling. Then Damian catches a glance of his attacker and there is only fear.
Superman doesn’t look gleeful, the way he usually would to have Damian on his knees. Instead, his mouth is set in a grim line. Even Damian’s best breathing techniques can’t stop his heart from trying to escape from his chest.
Damian thinks he’s going to throw up. He can’t do that, can’t piss off Superman more than he already has. If Superman is here, in the cave, something has gone terribly wrong. (There will already be hell to pay from Father for how quickly Damian was bested by the alien. Damian tries very hard not to think about it.)
He looks up again, catches a glance of Superman fighting Father. Damian feels his heart stutter in his chest, because Superman didn’t come through the portal alone — there’s another Father. His costume is a little different, sure, missing the knife mechanisms on the knuckles or the red lights behind the eyes. But there’s undeniably another Batman in the cave.
The Batmans (Batmen?) fight. There’s something to the other Batman’s movements that remind Damian of Father at his worst, his angriest.
Damian watches as the most dangerous man he knows falls and does not get back up.
The other Batman staggers away from the fight, towards Damian. Damian holds himself very still — he knows better than to flinch from Father. Even a seemingly different version of him.
“Damian,” Other Father gasps. Damian stares resolutely at the floor, refusing to look up and let this other Father see that his eyes are tearing up. He knows better than that.
They want his brothers.
Damian should have known. They asked him obvious questions first — what he was doing (he was assisting Father in torturing the commissioner), is he the other Batman’s son (yes).
Then — “are there other children?”
Damian’s bones go cold.
Two of Damian’s brothers are steps away, locked in the cell for the night. Too close. He wants to hide them somewhere far, far away. He’s bound, on his knees, and can’t do anything for them. His third brother is upstairs — which might be worse. Damian tries hard not to think about the state Tim will be in, the state he’s already in. Father rarely keeps any of the boys upstairs for more than a couple days. Damian hasn’t seen Tim in a week.
For a split second, Damian considers saying no. But if this other Superman and Batman decide to kill Damian, nobody will be there to let them out of the cell or patch them up. And even worse, if the men already know his brothers are here, lying to them will put his brothers in more danger.
“Yes, sir,” Damian says, unwilling to gamble with his brothers’ lives. Hating the way Batman and Superman look at each other, before Superman disappears in a blur.
Other-Batman approaches the cells. Damian always hates this, watching Father approach his brothers but unable to stop him. Always unable to stop him. And this Other-Father is unknown, could be a hundred times worse than the Father still bleeding on the ground.
Other-Batman uses his fingerprints to open the cell. Damian doesn’t know why he’s surprised they worked — this isn’t his Father, clearly, but Bruce Wayne is Bruce Wayne, no matter the universe.
(Damian remembers, vaguely, his Father talking about another universe. A universe ripe for the picking. Damian had been on punishment for something at the time, so the entire exchange is hazy. He distantly recalls Father telling him to shape up or he might find himself replaced with the Damian from that universe. He had written it off as a fever dream or a particularly sick joke, after.)
Then Other-Batman has his two youngest brothers and Other-Superman has Tim in his arms (and Damian is so, so grateful he's alive). There’s nothing that Damian can say that will convince them to let go of his brothers. He knows this the same way he knows that his mother was killed when Father took him. Jason looks at Damian, one of his small hands in Dickie’s and the other in Superman’s. Damian is incapable of protecting them. He always has been.
And then his brothers are taken through a doorway, and there’s nothing left to fight for.
Somehow, Damian manages to talk the other Batman into taking him to the new universe, too. He volunteers to help train his brothers, even though it makes his skin crawl and the other Batman even angrier.
It’s a whirlwind after that. The portal makes his head pound. They put him in one of the cells in this alternate version of Father’s cave.
It’s not the first time Damian has found himself on this side of Father’s containment cells.
A man who is Dickie-all-grown-up brings Damian food. He looks at Damian with a disgust that is merited but still makes his heart hurt. (It’s okay. Damian understands. He hates himself too.)
Damian is tired. He’s 16, in a universe that is not his, implicated in dozens of crimes. He wants to sleep. He wants this all to be over — the killing and the torture and the League and all of it. He wants his mom.
But his brothers need him. And every sleepless night, every punishment from Father, it was all worth it if it meant they were protected.
(Damian doesn’t know how to protect them from this side of the glass.)
Jason is the only one of Damian’s brothers who is both foolish and brave enough to try to talk to Damian, in the first week. Tim would have found a subtler, safer way to do it. Damian hasn’t seen Tim since the younger boy was carried, limp, through a doorway between universes.
Damian wants to tell Jason to run, to hide. Damian wants to protect Jason, something he’s only ever been passable at. Damian wants to pull Jason into a hug and never let him go, something impossible to do with the glass between them. Damian rarely gets what he wants.
Tim’s stable, is the first thing Jason signs, in the language Damian and Tim first made up all those years ago. Damian, just for a second, allows himself to acknowledge the fear he’d been carrying that Tim might not have survived the dimension jump. We’re okay, Jason adds. They’re not hurting us.
Damian is devastatingly glad for the first piece of news and more than skeptical about the second.
Have they hurt you? Jason signs.
No, Damian signs back, which he would have said even if they were hurting him. He studies Jason — the younger boys looks unhurt, any visible skin clean and unbruised. His clothes seem nice, if not necessarily new, and his hair is washed. He hopes Jason didn’t have to do anything to earn those allowances.
It’s weird here, Jason signs. He glances around the cave, so similar to the one at home other than the lack of torture implements and human remains. They say… they say lots of stuff about not hurting us and keeping us safe. But they get mad whenever we try to ask about you.
“Don’t,” Damian signs aggressively. If it makes them angry, do not mention me. Do you understand?
But —
Damian cuts him off. No. Do not do anything that will make them angry, okay?
Jason doesn’t respond.
Damian raises an eyebrow. He knows too well that Jason’s silence does not always (or even usually) mean he’s planning on heeding Damian or Tim’s instructions.
Fine, Jason signs, lips pressed together. Damian’s heart aches for Jason, for the anger and hurt lingering under the surface that he’s never allowed to give name to.
Then Jason’s face lights up. There’s a tiny you here! he signs. Damian had, in the past day, interacted with an adult Dick Grayson who clearly disliked him deeply. Damian thinks, just for a second, of Father’s threat to replace him with the Damian from this universe. Damian wonders if the Other-Father has started Other-Damian’s training yet, or if this younger version of him was protected by his brothers.
I was never tiny, Damian signs back, only partially joking.
Jason giggles, which Damian can’t hear. Damian allows himself a smile, just for a second.
Damian’s smile drops when he sees a shadow coming down the stairs.
Incoming. Stairs, He signs frantically at Jason. My fault, understand?
Even with forewarning, Jason shudders when Batman stalks towards them, menacing despite the tray of food in his hands.
Damian can’t hear what Batman says to Jason. Before he can say anything, his brother shoots him a final apologetic glance and flees back up the stairs.
Batman lets him go.
Then the speaker crackles to life.
“You are not, under any circumstance, to speak to them. Any of them,” Batman says. His voice is colder than Damian has ever heard it, which would be impressive were it not so terrifying. Fear slides its way down Damian’s spine. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Damian says, swallowing hard. It’s the only thing he can say, the only answer allowed of him.
“What were you saying to him?” Batman asks, his question pointed. And Damian doesn’t know what the man wants from him. He’s had years of practice in sort-of pacifying his version of Father, but this is not his Father. They don’t want him training his brothers but they don’t want him talking to his brothers, either.
(Damian wonders if he would be okay never talking to them again if it meant nobody was training them. His answer is immediate — of course he would be. Protecting them is all that matters.)
“I instructed him to report on Timothy’s health,” Damian says, which is not a lie. Damian is good at not-quite-lying to Father. Not-Father’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t say anything.
“Tim is going to make a full recovery,” Batman says, grudgingly. “No thanks to you.”
Damian flinches. He knows Batman sees it. But he’s right — Damian left Tim to be hurt by Father. It was Damian’s responsibility to keep Tim safe and he failed. He only ever failed.
The man who both is and isn’t Damian’s Father stalks away, radiating anger. He leaves the food, though. Damian doesn’t know what to make of that.
Damian doesn’t see his brothers again for a long time. It’s clear that they’re being kept under careful watch after Jason’s attempt to talk to Damian. He hopes they weren’t punished too harshly on his account.
Damian sees a lot of Superman and Batman, though, spending hours upon hours being interrogated about Father. (Is it even an interrogation if no fingers are broken? Damian isn’t sure, though the unspoken threat of his brothers being harmed is a bigger incentive to cooperate than any torture would be.)
Damian has to admit that imprisonment, in this universe, by this Justice League, is not so bad. Nobody has touched him. They haven’t brought in any other members of the League, which is good. Damian doesn’t think he could keep his composure if faced with another version — any version, really — of Wonder Woman.
He tries not to think about what will happen when they send him back.
He doesn’t know exactly what’s in store when he gets home, but he knows it won’t be good. If Father has managed to scheme his way free, he will be furious with Damian. Damian should have fought harder against the intruders, shouldn’t have allowed them to take the younger boys, not when Father wasn’t done with them yet.
But if Father is still imprisoned, Damian will be going back to a fate worse than death. The League are cruel, fickle, and above all suspicious. Damian will be returned after a month in a different universe, unhurt but without his brothers. The League will smell treachery. Even if they don’t, they’ve never gotten to break Damian the way they want, thanks to Father’s interference. Without him…
Damian takes a shuddering breath. There’s no reason to get ahead of himself. He allows himself to sink into the floating emptiness he used to spend his time in, after his mother was killed and before he had brothers to look out for.
Damian’s technique of carefully not thinking about the future is ruined when Batman informs him, in no uncertain terms, that he’s being sent home the next day.
It has been a long time since Damian has felt so out-of-control, so much like he needs to strip out of his skin and scream and scream and not stop screaming. Damian wants to stay strong — but there’s nobody to stay strong for anymore.
Damian wants his brothers so badly it hurts.
Damian tries not to fall asleep. He wants to remember how it feels to not be in pain, even if his stomach twists up in knots and his heart tries to escape from his chest. He sits, and tries to meditate, and fights off the blackness at the edge of his vision.
Sleep eventually wins. It always does.
“Damian.” It’s just a whisper, but Damian is awake in an instant.
His eyes widen at the sight of his brothers huddled on the other side of the containment cell glass. He glances around the cave, but they’re alone.
“Tim?” Damian asks, staring at the boys on the other side of the glass. They look good, healthy. They are washed and fed and unhurt. Damian feels tears prickling behind his eyes. At least he didn’t ruin this one thing.
Tim fiddles with something, tongue poked out the way it always does when he’s concentrating, and then the door slides open. There is nothing but air between him and his brothers.
Damian doesn’t move.
“Come on!” Tim hisses.
Damian forces himself to put one foot in front of another. Damian’s life is forfeit already, it has been since he was ten years old and father first put a scalpel in his hand. His fate has been signed and sealed for years now.
But if they get caught? He has no idea how this League will react, what they will do to his brothers. His brothers who, against all odds, seem almost safe here.
Tim stares at him, something sad in his eyes at Damian’s hesitation.
Damian takes a deep breath and steps outside of the glass cell for the first time in a month. He allows himself a second to breathe, a second to hug his brothers close. He inhales the clean scent of baby shampoo and laundry detergent.
The alarms start to blare.
Tim curses, grabs Jason’s hand, takes off running. Damian doesn’t even think. He scoops Dickie into his arms and follows Tim, trusting his brother to know where they’re going.
There’s a moment where Damian thinks it’s going to work. They’re going to get out and run as far and as fast as they can. They’re going to start over somewhere where the worst things that will happen to his brothers are scraped knees and awkward conversations. Tim will make them new identities — he probably already has — and Damian will pretend to be eighteen and keep them safe.
Batman drops silently from the ceiling, cutting off their escape.
Jason makes a small sound, pressing back against Damian’s legs as Damian’s arms tighten reflexively around Richard. Tim stands in front of them. Damian’s hands are too full to pull him back.
Before they can regroup, the air whooshes behind them. Damian knows without looking that Superman has them surrounded.
There’s nowhere to run. There’s never been anywhere to run. Damian is looking down the barrel of a future without his brothers, short as that future will be.
“Damian,” the man who is not Damian’s Father says. “Step away from the children.”
For the first time in a long time, Damian disobeys.