Chapter Text
It was a late night in the manor and Damian was pacing down the hallway with the intensity of a house cat stalking its prey. In his hands was a silver tray with a matching cover, and his intended destination was Timothy Drake’s room.
Damian would likely never be what one would call an adequate brother. He was violent, too quick to jump to anger. He was afraid, and it made him too sharp, too quickly. He was trying to be better, and some days he succeeded.
Some days he didn’t. He wasn’t sure which kind of day this had been.
All the lights had been turned off for the night, leaving thin strips of silver moonlight crossing his face like scars as he passed under the windows of the hallway.
He had just managed to develop a fledgeling relationship with Timothy that might one day be able to move beyond their violent start, and his own unjustified cruelty. It was a new thing, and much like a newborn bird, would need to be tended to and cared for in order to mature.
Damian hadn’t learned how to do that. How to be that.
He slowed his steps, trying to give himself just a little more time before he came face to face with his not-quite-brother.
Richard had helped, of course, but he seemed to come from the opinion that caring was natural, intrinsic. That Damian should simply know and understand how to care for something, and moreover, to be able to act on those feelings.
But caring wasn’t instinctive for him. If it ever had been, it was now long-buried under layers and layers of… something. He was learning, was the point, but perhaps not quickly enough.
Damian stopped, taking a deep breath. There was a creeping unease that filled him slowly, bit by bit like water dripping down from the walls of a cave.
Timothy had fallen off a building and just didn’t care. He didn’t care .
But that was only part of what worried him. There was a carelessness in the way that Timothy moved, and Damian knew that some of it was likely born of his inability to truly die. However, he had seen his face when he plummeted from the dinosaur. When he hit the ground earlier today. Simply because he could not die, did not mean he did not feel pain.
Despite this, Timothy seemed determined to treat himself as a temporary existence.
Unacceptable.
At the very least, Damian owed him for his aid in– in informing Father of their quarrels. Of Damian’s failure as a brother. As a Robin.
He had learned from observing Alfred (and to a lesser extent, Timothy himself) that the simplest, most straightforward way to care for someone was through food, hence the cool weight of the silver tray in his hands. Damian wasn’t practiced at cooking, but he found that that skill came much more easily to him than words did. Although he knew Timothy would need those as well.
Damian’s stomach twisted.
The best member of the family in using their words to communicate emotion was likely Oracle. And she was furious with them, as was her right. He had previously assumed that Dick was the most adept at communicating emotion, but after further observation he had realized that his eldest brother preferred to simply hug people. Using physical affection as a demonstration of care, which did not seem to affect Timothy other than to unsettle him. Counterproductive.
Thus, food. Which he needed to deliver to Timothy. In order to do so, he had to convince his feet to move once more.
Through trial and error, Damian had figured out that Timothy preferred lighter meals with unusual flavors. His visit to Titans Tower had been quite informative, particularly in noting Timothy’s love of sardines. Damian had yet to figure out exactly how sardines could be used in cuisine, nor was he able to sneak them into the manor without Alfred noticing—and he was rather reluctant to explain why he wanted sardines—but he would soon figure it out.
He was Damian al-Ghul-Wayne. And he was a quick study. Had he been anything else, it would have been his downfall.
…Some lessons were perhaps slower than others.
Perhaps he would tell the butler the sardines were for the cats.
He reached Timothy’s room. Soft murmuring came from behind the door.
Perhaps Richard had finally had a realization.
It was unlikely, but Damian could hope. Still, it didn’t sound like Richard.
He opened the door. The tray fell from his hands with a clatter, spilling soup across the floor. In his haste to get to his brother, Damian didn’t even notice.
Timothy was bleeding. From the ears, from the nose. A trail even dripped from the corner of his eye looking disturbingly close to a tear. Over his shoulder a dark shape loomed, and they twisted to stare at him with harsh, unforgiving white eyes.
Damian ignored them.
“Drake!” He grabbed Tim by the shoulders. “Wake up!”
He got no response. “No. No, I refuse! You will not die here. Wake up, Drake,” he demanded, shaking him again.
Damian’s chest filled with ice as he watched Timothy’s mouth open, only for blood to come burbling out.
And Damian couldn’t think.
“Timothy!” His voice was high and reedy, and cracked halfway through. “Do not die, I forbid it!”
This somehow garnered a response. Timothy’s glazed eyes focused on him, and Damian choked back a sob.
“Damian.” He sounded wrong. Broken, like he was speaking through shattered glass. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” He watched his older brother try for a smile even as the skin began to crack, revealing fault lines of silver underneath. “Everything will be okay.” His gaze turned dull again, focused on something that Damian couldn’t see.
“Liar!” Damian screamed, grabbing his forearms and letting fingernails dig into skin in the vain hope that somehow, it would bring his brother back. “You promised!”
But it was too late. The silver fractures were growing bigger, bit by bit, and he was beginning to crumble like badly made pottery. Each fragment gone revealed more glowing silver light, and even that was beginning to wisp away. This didn’t seem like a physical death. This seemed a permanent death.
“Alfred! Kon! Drake is dying!” He screamed with every ounce of fear and panic that he could muster. He prayed they could hear him, begged an uncaring deity that someone would come.
There was a gust of wind, and Superboy shattered the window as he broke into Tim’s room.
"Please help.”
Damian al-Ghul would have been too proud to beg. Damian Wayne had no such compulsions, not now. He had made too many mistakes to hold on to his pride in the face of such catastrophe.
Kon ‘El made a noise like a dying man, like the air had been sucked out of his lungs.
“Please,” Damian begged again, “do something. Bring him back.”
The clone lurched closer to his brother, and Damian just kept holding on. It was the only thing he could do.
He sank to his knees by Timothy’s side, bringing him into his grasp. Part of Damian wanted to hiss and scratch, yell at the clone for taking liberties, but he had seen the way Timothy looked at him. At his team.
“Come on, Rob. Come back please, you can’t leave us like this. We were gonna celebrate your eighteenth in France, remember?” Kon ‘El laughed wetly, and for the first time Damian felt a pang of sympathy. “Use your daddy’s card and Lex’s and rack up a shit ton of money on champagne.”
Timothy didn’t respond, and Damian was terrified .
“My word.”
There was another gasp from the doorway. Damian didn’t, couldn’t, let go, but he knew it was Alfred. Normally the thought would reassure him. Right now it was just setting him on edge, because if Alfred couldn’t fix it… then who could?
“Young Master Timothy, what–”
“Back off,” the clone snarled. “You’ve done enough.”
Alfred straightened, eyes flashing with steel. “If you think you can keep me from my grandson, I fear you are deeply mistaken.”
Kon ‘El was furious. “You think you get to call him your grandson? You think you have the right–”
“Now is not the time!” Damian interrupted. “We must aid Drake. If either of you are aware of what is happening, then please…” he couldn’t finish the sentence.
“What’s happening, we heard– Oh my god, Tim.”
Richard had appeared in the doorway, and his face had gone terribly pale. If Damian had been terrified before, now he was downright horrified.
Bruce arrived seconds later. The noise he made was inhuman. Soon Timothy was surrounded by people trying to hold him together.
When Damian reached out, trying to press the flaked skin back together, the light seared his hands, and he recoiled in pain.
Timothy didn’t blink. Didn’t even notice.
“Timothy, wake up. Wake up, please wake up.”
The last vestiges of his pride had fled him, leaving him cold and desperate. He wasn’t the only one. Father’s hands were cracking, skin turning black and peeling from flesh as he ignored the pain to try to hold Timothy together.
Suddenly, everything stopped. The tall, dark figure towering over Timothy’s shoulder bent low, pressing their face to his forehead. His face slackened, a sigh of relief escaping his lips.
And then he crumbled into nothingness, silver light fading soon after.
“No!”
Damian wasn’t sure who had yelled it. Maybe all of them, maybe just Bruce. But Bruce was the only person to try and physically fight the looming spectre.
It didn’t move, allowing him to pass through it without so much as a whisper.
“What have you done with my son?”
It was a low rasp, nearing a growl, and Damian shivered.
Finally, the figure spoke. Lips peeled back impossibly wide, revealing an unimaginable amount of teeth. The voice echoing from inside it was as far from human as one could get, cold and empty.
“Your son? Your son? You think you can lay claim to my child?” They somehow grew even taller, teeth gaining a red glint. “You think, after everything you’ve done to him, every death, every tear, every instance of suffering under your care, that I will allow you so much as the slightest claim over him?” They smiled, and it was utterly ruthless. Damian’s heart sank.
“You think wrong.” The figure drew itself into a spiraling pit of black and void. “If he comes back, you should pray he has forgiveness in his heart, because you will find none in mine.”
Then they paused, turning to Kon. Voice softening to something almost gentle, they said, “He loves you, you know. All of you.”
Kon swallowed, and Damian watched the heartbreak cross over his face.
“I know. Thank you.”
The figure nodded once, and then it was gone.
“I… I need to tell the team.” And just like that, the clone left, leaving them standing in Tim’s room over a small puddle of steadily drying blood.
“What– What just happened?” Dick’s voice was a croak.
Bruce was still kneeling on the floor. Damian had seen that look before. He’d seen it on Grandfather’s enemies, right before he drove them to suicide. It was the face of someone who’d lost everything.
“This can’t be real,” Dick groaned, getting up to pace back and forth. The sudden, jagged movement made Damian flinch. “This can’t be real, I mean, he’s died before, right? So maybe this is just– maybe he’s back at Drake Manor?” There was a frantic light in his eyes that was almost scary. “He’s okay, he has to be.”
For a few seconds, no one answered him. Then, slowly, Alfred spoke.
“I fear Young Master Timothy may be lost to us for good.”
And somehow, out of everything else that had happened that night, this was what tipped Damian over the edge.
He started to cry.
The lights in Timothy’s room seemed suddenly too bright.
Dick made another choked off noise, collapsing onto the rug next to him and drawing him into a tight hug. Damian didn’t protest, he simply clung to his eldest brother as tightly as he could.
Bruce remained on the ground where he was, crumpled to his knees, practically in shock.
This close, Damian could feel Dick speak. The words came out in a low, rasping grind. “Steph. Babs. Cass, we have to let them know. They gotta– we have to–” he broke off, and Damian felt tears begin to stain the back of his shirt. “Shit.”
“Leave that to me, Master Dick.” Alfred’s face was bone-white. He had placed a steadying hand on the wall, but somehow he had enough composure remaining to pull out his phone. “I will inform the ladies. In the meantime, I suggest we gather in the kitchen.”
Damian wasn’t sure how they got there, or how long he had been sitting at the counter. One minute he was in Tim’s room, the next he was in the kitchen with a warm mug of tea in hand. Still crying.
He took a sip.
Chamomile.
Dick had his own mug, but he wasn’t drinking out of it. Bruce wasn’t there, and at this point Damian didn’t really care where he was.
Things had just started to get better. They had just started to get better, and before they could try to make amends, Timothy had been ripped away from them. Maybe even by his own choice, but Damian was trying very hard not to think about that.
He took another sip of tea, letting the strong flavor wipe away his thoughts.
Brown would be here any second, as would Cain. He wasn’t sure what he would do, then. He wasn’t sure what he could do.
The mug had gone cold, and Cain was next to him. The weight of her hand on his shoulder barely registered.
His mother would be ashamed of him.
She was tilting her head, huge blue eyes shining with a mix of compassion and tears. And Damian couldn’t take it any more.
He threw himself off the chair and into her arms, and she caught him. Someone was shaking, but whether it was her or him or both, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that this hurt. A kind of hurt he had never been trained to handle because he was never supposed to have felt it.
He cared.
Finally, Bruce appeared in the doorway. He looked so much older than he was, and Damian hid in Cassandra’s embrace, not wanting to look at the man that was his father. Not wanting to admit that he had failed this family once again.
“I’m sorry.”
Bruce’s apology dropped into the silence of the room like a giant stone shattering an iced-over pond. Suddenly everyone was talking, yelling at once. Damian curled tighter into Cassandra’s arms.
Then everything fell silent once more.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce repeated. “I have failed you as a parent. I– this should never have happened. None of it. I…”
Cain shifted, but didn’t let go of Damian. He finally got the courage to uncurl himself and turn to face Father. Who was crying. Damian would have been less shocked if he had been told Father had been replaced with an alien shapeshifter again.
“I failed Jason, and it led to his death. And I didn’t learn my lesson. I failed Tim in different ways, and now… he’s gone too.”
There was a loud crash at the doorway. Several heads swiveled to see Jason, and the broken red helmet at his feet.
“Say that again,” he said, voice low and dangerous. “Who died?”
For a minute, no one spoke.
“Tim. Tim is dead, he just–” Dick broke off again, choking on the words. Damian couldn’t blame him.
Jason demanded, “How? What happened, what do you mean you failed him?”
“I don’t… I don’t know.”
“Well, figure it out, Bruce,” Jason growled, stalking across the room to shove himself right up in the Dark Knight’s face. “So when’s the replacement coming back?”
Silence. Jason stilled.
“Someone explain. Now.”
“We don’t know if he’s coming back,” Cass said. “It was… strange.”
“Strange is pretty par for the course, ain’t it?”
“Not like this.” She shook her head. “Fragmented, bleeding. Gone.”
“And that somehow means the kid’s not coming back?” Jason ran a hand through his hair. “Ain’t no way, Replacement’s like a damn cockroach. He’s tougher than that.”
“Not this time.” Dick said quietly. “I– there was this thing there with him, and it… I don’t know. I don’t think he’s coming back this time.”
Steph entered the room, an envelope clutched tightly in her hand.
“For a group of detectives, you’re all fucking stupid,” she sneered. “He left us this, and you missed it.”
A chill went down Damian’s spine. This was proof Timothy hadn’t been taking care of himself. That he had planned this.
Cass’ arms tightened around him, providing a comforting presence. Softly, he said, “Thank you.”
She nodded, continuing to hold him tightly.
Bruce tried to take the envelope from her with trembling hands, but she held it out of reach.
“I’m giving this to Alfred and he can read it.”
Damian thought this was a fair request, but Bruce slumped over like a puppet with its strings cut.
“Fine.”
Alfred took the letter, cleared his throat, and began to read.