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Damian marched straight into his father's office after school and deposited the gift onto Bruce’s desk. At his father's raised eyebrow, he explained. “It's not from me. You will receive my gift after dinner, as requested. This is from mother. She sends her apologies for not delivering it in person, but she could not bypass the upgraded security system. Yet. She assures me she will return to coming and going as she pleases soon. And she says happy birthday.”
“Your mother is in Gotham?”
“She is not staying.” Bruce didn't miss the tinge of disappointment in his voice. “She has important matters to attend to.”
“Of course. How was school?”
Damian scowled. “As miserable as always.”
“Do you have homework?”
“Tt. Of course.” Bruce looked at him for a moment before Damian seemed to realise the words were a dismissal. “I will see you at dinner, father. Happy birthday.” With that, he turned on his heel and walked out.
Now alone, Bruce examined the wrapped object before him. It was unlikely that any threat had escaped Damian's notice, but the boy was known to have a blind spot for his mother. Satisfied that it would not explode, he peeled back the paper to reveal what lay beneath.
To his surprise, it was not weapons or armor, or even one of the more romantic gifts Talia used to send him. Instead, it was a large, leather-bound book, thick and new. He ran his fingers over the cover and flipped it open. His breath caught as he saw the first page.
A photo of a little boy, no more than two, wrapped up in a huge Batman cape that practically swallowed him whole, green eyes piercing through the cowl. Beneath, in Talia's spiky cursive, read: Damian, age 2 and ½. He found the spare uniform in a box beneath the bed. He had it on in the blink of an eye, without a clue of what he was truly wearing.
Bruce stared at the picture. He had never seen his son so young. Or so small. He flipped the page to reveal an even smaller Damian, still an infant, curled up in a crib and clutching a blanket tightly. The next page, Damian at five looking grumpy as he posed for a formal portrait with his mother. The next, a three year old Damian playing with a snake like it was nothing.
Bruce was frozen in his seat, flicking through the pages as though in a trance. He didn't hear the footsteps until it was too late. “Hey, B, have you seen the-” Dick broke off, noticing Bruce’s expression. “Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost.”
“I-” He couldn't even finish.
“Wow. Someone's gift actually managed to make you speechless.” He walked towards Bruce. “First time for everything, I suppose. Who's it from, anyway, I thought we were waiting until-” He looked down at the book. His words failed him. “Oh.”
Bruce didn't need to see his face to know that Dick had put the pieces together. They both just stared at the picture for a moment - Damian, seven, holding up an apple with an arrow through it triumphantly.
“The whole book is pictures of him. From before.” Bruce said, still not tearing his eyes away. He flipped the page, revealing a truly tiny Damian, just six months, eyes open wide as he giggled into the camera. They were still brown. It was the only time Bruce had ever seen his son with brown eyes. The only photo so far from before Damian's training began.
“He was a pudgy baby,” Dick said, voice teasing but fond, “It's adorable.”
“I don't have any baby pictures. I missed that.” He turned the page - Damian showing off his new katana, a gift for his eighth birthday. His smile was wide, showing teeth and making his cheeks dimple - a real smile, rare even now. “I missed so much.”
“You big softie,” Dick said quietly.
“I should have been there.” The words left his mouth without his permission. “I could have brought him home. I could have protected him.”
“No. You couldn't have.”
“What?” Bruce's head flicked to Dick suddenly.
Dick winced. “I don't mean it like that, it's that…” He paused, like this was something to be treated carefully. “If you brought him home, he'd still have been Batman's son. He'd never have been a normal kid. You know that.”
Exactly, a selfish part of Bruce thought, one louder than he wants to admit. He'd be my son.
The next page made Bruce stop entirely. Damian, age 10, preparing to leave for America. Right before they had met. The carefully neutral look on his face was achingly familiar - the same expression Bruce had only gotten to see for a few weeks before he lost it all over again.
"He wasn't easy," Dick said, after a while. "When he first came."
"I know."
"I mean he was…" Dick searched for the word. "A lot. He was a lot. He told me the first week that I was a disgrace to the cowl."
Despite everything, Bruce almost smiled. "That sounds about right."
"He meant it, too." Dick's voice was fond in a way that only distance and survival could produce. "I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I just kept thinking, okay, what would B do. And then usually deciding to do the opposite." A pause. "That probably worked out better than it sounds."
"It worked," Bruce said simply - because it was simple, because whatever Dick had done had produced the boy they both loved. "Whatever you did, it worked."
Dick was quiet for a moment. "He used to wait up. He thought I didn't notice - he'd be in bed, lights out, but the moment I got back from patrol I'd hear him moving around. Just… checking." He shook his head slightly. "Took me about two months to figure out he was making sure I came home."
Bruce looked down at the page. Damian, unsmiling, chin raised. Already so much like himself. "He never said anything about it?"
"You know how he is. He'd have died before admitting it." Dick smiled, and then something in it became more complicated. "I think he'd already lost enough people by then. Even if he would never have put it that way."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"I'm glad it was you," Bruce said. The words came out roughly, not quite adequate for what he meant. "I'm glad he had you."
Dick looked at him. "Yeah?"
"He needed-" Bruce stopped. Started again. "He needed someone who would actually be there. Who would come home." The last two words landed with more weight than he intended.
Dick didn't flinch from it. "He needed his dad, B."
"I know."
"I was never trying to be that.” Dick's voice was careful now, picking through something. “I want you to know that. I wasn't trying to replace anything."
"I know that too."
"I just didn't want him to be alone in that house."
Bruce didn't answer. He looked back at the photo. This boy, this small furious boy, showing up like an answer to a question he'd stopped letting himself ask a long time ago. "By the time I got to be his dad, he was already fully formed. Like arriving late to a play. Everyone else already knows the story."
Dick was quiet, letting him go on.
"There's a version of him I'll never know. Before all of this." He gestured vaguely at the book, at everything it represented. "Before they made him into what they needed him to be. I don't know who that was."
Dick leaned against the desk, arms crossed, considering. "He has changed, you know. Since he came to us. You've shaped him too. That's not nothing."
"It's not the same." Bruce's voice was quiet but certain. "The foundation was already laid. I can build on top of it - but I can’t change what it’s built on." He shook his head. "I don't know what's him and what's them. I'm not sure he does either. And I should have been there when it was still possible to know the difference."
"He chose this," Dick said simply. Bruce looked at him. "That kid who showed up here? I haven’t seen him in years. Whatever they made him, whatever he was before - this Damian, the one who exists right now, chose to come here and chose to stay. He chooses you." A pause. "Every day, in his incredibly annoying Damian way, he chooses this. That's the difference - what he chooses."
Bruce gritted his teeth. “He should have always been able to choose.”
Dick didn't argue with that - just looked at Bruce’s expression and let his own slide into
understanding. "You're angry at her."
Bruce didn't look up. "It's not that simple."
"It never was with you two." There was something a little sharp undercutting Dick’s voice, now - the dislike of Talia he’d had since they met and never been able to shake. "But underneath all the complicated parts - you're angry."
Bruce was quiet long enough that it became an answer.
“She made every decision,” he said finally, “She chose who he was allowed to be. And I-" He stopped. "I wasn't even a factor. I didn't even exist to her, when it came to him. She shaped him and she kept him and she never once thought to ask whether I might-" He stopped again, something in his jaw tightening. "Whether I might want to know my own son."
Dick let that sit.
"And I look at him," Bruce continued, quieter now, "And I think about all the things Talia decided for him, and I can't always…" He exhaled. “I don't know how to be angry at her without it bleeding into everything else."
"Does he know? That you feel that way?"
"No." The word was immediate. "But I’m sure he’s guessed. It’s not… I’m not good at pretending."
Dick was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice had shifted into something gentler. “You know. If you’d have been there, I think you’d have been a great baby dad.”
Bruce exhaled hard, eyes squeezed shut. A lump was forming in his throat.
“You’d have been there if you could.”
“When she told me she was pregnant… God, Dick, I was so excited. I wanted him so much. I grieved him. Why would she hide him from-”
A floorboard creaked outside the door, followed by a muttered curse. Bruce cut himself off. He sighed heavily, his head in his hands. “Come in, Damian.”
The door swung open and Damian shuffled in. The kid at least had the decency to look sheepish.
Dick looked between them awkwardly. “I'll let you two talk this one out.” He slipped out before either could stop him.
Bruce resisted the urge to chase after him and beg for mediation. Instead, he looked at his son. “What are you doing out there, exactly?”
He flushed. “I'm sorry father. I did not mean to- That is to say, I only wanted to know what it was she gave you.”
Bruce softened slightly. “Well. Come and look then.”
Damian crossed the room carefully, not exactly nervous but… cautious. Treading carefully.
When he looked at the photos, a kind of wonder came over his face, as though Damian too were seeing this part of him for the first time. A relic of a long forgotten childhood.
“How long have you been eavesdropping?”
The kid couldn't meet his eyes. “The whole time.”
Bruce grimaced. That was… Unfortunate. Too late now to try and convince him that he hadn't meant it. Instead, he took a deep breath and levelled a look at his son. “Well?”
“I don't understand.” He was lying. His eye twitched.
“We both know you have things to say about what you just heard. Come out with it. Speak freely.”
Damian seemed to brace himself slightly, as though already preparing for retribution. "She did what she believed was right." His voice was flat - the same way it always was when he tried to defend his family. Like something drilled into him, something he had to believe. "She had reasons. Good reasons."
"I know," Bruce said.
That seemed to throw Damian. He was prepared for an argument. "You... know."
"She always does."
Damian didn't seem to know what to do with that. He looked back at the book, quiet words escaping him. "She loved me. She does love me. Whatever you might think."
"I never doubted that."
Damian was quiet for a moment, turning a page without really looking at it.
"Do you love her?"
If you love her, does that make what happened to you easier to forgive? And if you hate what she did, does that mean you hate part of me?
Bruce went quiet for long enough that Damian looked up, something hard in his expression - like he was afraid of the answer. Bruce didn’t know whether a yes or no would scare him more. Finally, he settled on the truth: "It's complicated.”
Damian held his gaze for a moment, searching for something. "She gave you this." Damian said it like it meant something. "She didn't have to."
"No."
"She wanted you to have it." He seemed to be working something out. "She wanted you to see."
Bruce didn’t say the obvious - that he could have seen it all long ago if not for her. They both knew that already.
"I think perhaps she knew it was not entirely fair. What she did." Each word from Damian’s mouth came out like it was being pulled. Like extracting something from somewhere it's been lodged for a long time. "She would not say that. She will never say that. But I think-" He stopped again. “This is an apology. To you. Because you missed it.”
Bruce swallowed. “I- You should know that I would have been there. If I could. I would have always chosen to be with you. It's important you understand that.”
Damian nodded, slightly stiffly. The soft smile that crossed his face gave him away though, and he knew it. “Of course, father. I know that.”
Bruce nodded back. They looked at each other in silence for a moment.
Then Bruce coughed, putting the moment to rest. “You'd better head to dinner. Tell the others I'll be down in just a moment.”
“Very well. Sorry, father.” He marched back out of the room. This time, Bruce checked that he was gone.
Once he was sure the hallway was empty, he reached for a picture frame on top of a bookshelf. Silently, he emptied it out, and carried it back to his desk and flipped towards the final pages of the album, completely blank - a line in the sand of when Damian was sent away.
Bruce slid a new photo in. One from a few months ago, from before Tim's birthday gala. He and Damian squabble harmlessly in the foreground, Cass behind them dropping in comments on behalf of whoever was currently losing the argument, just to stoke the fire. Dick stood off to one side, posing like an umpire.
Damian Wayne, 13 years old. Home.