Chapter Text
Brilliant, impossible green.
Green like cut glass in low light. Wide and bright and trying very hard to be neither.
Damian, who had clearly begun walking away, quickly shifts his body to face his father. He stands in the corridor in his sleep shirt, hair mussed, shoulders squared now with deliberate care. His spine is straight, his chin lifted a degree too high.
With a single glance, Bruce notes how the boy’s weight rests slightly forward on the balls of his feet. His right shoulder sits marginally higher than the left (most likely from the drills they reviewed earlier that evening). His jaw is set, though the muscle ticks once, betraying a bit of strain.
And his hands–they’re now clasped behind his back. His son looks as though he's delivering a report rather than hovering outside his father’s bedroom at nearly four in the morning.
Somehow, Damian reminds the man of all of his older siblings, and none of them at the same time. How he's able to do that is beyond him.
Regardless, the sight makes Bruce's heart ache.
Because, despite the progress his youngest has made, despite all that he and Dick have done to coax him out of old reflexes, Damian still defaults to formality when uncertainty creeps in. When he doesn’t know what to do, his body falls into a soldier’s stance.
Back to being just a weapon. Assassin first. Child second.
A child trying to take up less space.
He looks so small in the dim light; despite all the ways his boy tries so tirelessly to disguise it, he looks his age.
“I did not mean to wake you, Father.”
Damian pauses before adding, almost to himself, “I wasn’t thinking. My apologies.”
His voice remains level, though the consonants soften around the edges, rounded by sleep- the sincerity is unmistakable.
Oh, look how he's grown. A voice that sounds suspiciously like Dick coos somewhere in his mind.
Bruce can’t help but agree, as he says, as evenly as he can muster, “It's alright. I was already up.”
Those green eyes sharpen at that, clearly searching his father’s face for a lie. Bruce watches as his son goes through a mental checklist, one he trained him on (is there dilation in the eyes? Tension in the corners of the mouth? Was there a fractional delay before he responded?)
Bruce lets himself be examined because he knows his youngest will find nothing.
Eventually, the boy seems satisfied.
Damian opens his mouth, then closes it again, shifting slightly where he stands. His gaze lingers on Bruce while the rest of him remains perfectly still.
The two of them allow the quiet to settle, letting it extend like a grapple, a wire drawn thin between two rooftops. Bruce gives his son all the time he needs, allowing Damian’s hands to shift behind his back again and again.
Unclasp. Re-clasp.
He is bracing for something.
Bruce is just beginning to reach out when his youngest finally speaks. “I need…I require–”
Damian exhales sharply, his brows drawing together. With a frustrated huff, he rolls one shoulder as though recalibrating himself. His mouth opens, closes, then finally shapes the words. “I had a dream.”
Those words impede themselves in his mind and sternum, but he's able to contain himself. Bruce finds himself grateful, confidently leaning on his decades of training, which hold his emotions from leaking onto his features.
“A bad one?”
He keeps his tone neutral, careful not to crowd his son.
Yet still, Damian hesitates.
It is infinitesimal, the tremor that touches his son's inhale and disappears before it can fully form. It is small beyond small, the flick of those impossible eyes toward the dark behind him, as if something was there, watching.
“It was irrational,” the boy says at last. “Therefore, it does not merit discussion.”
Bruce inclines his head thoughtfully. “I’ve had a few irrational thoughts tonight myself.”
A faint “Tt" fills the air, though it lacks its usual bite.
Damian, his back a bit less straight, remains where he is, standing in that narrow strip of lamplight as though testing the depth of water before committing to it.
He needs someone to urge him to dive.
So Bruce closes the space between them gradually, each step unhurried. He crouches so that they are level, forearms resting loosely on his knees.
Doing his damndest to sound like his eldest, he says quietly. “You don’t have to tell me.”
Like a current shifting beneath the surface before a wave shows itself, Damian’s shoulders draw inward by a fraction. At the same time, his mouth presses into a hard line that trembles despite his efforts to steady it.
“I am not–” He huffs before trying again. “Father. I do not require–” His jaw locks, as Bruce watches the pulse flutter in his son’s throat.
Upon seeing the sight, an errant thought passes through him: how could he ever have imagined this boy as an accessory to war? The League may have called him heir or a weapon, but every line of him so candidly spells out child.
Here, his youngest stands in a sleep-twisted shirt, wrestling with language itself because he wants something as simple and humiliating as comfort. (a habit nearly all of his children had. Have).
On any other night, Bruce might have settled for a hand on his shoulder, maybe a brief squeeze meant to pass for reassurance.
But after the dream he had? Well, sue him for being a bit more sentimental than usual.
Not allowing himself to second-or-third-guess, Bruce reaches out and gathers his son into a hug.
The boy, of course, stiffens immediately, instinctive as a blade resisting its sheath. Despite that, Bruce’s arms remain steady around him, neither tightening nor retreating. One palm spans the narrow plane of Damian’s back; the other settles gently at the base of his skull.
The resistance lasts three breaths.
On the fourth, after a sharp inhale, it relents.
Damian’s hands hurriedly seize fistfuls of his father's shirt with unrelenting strength (his boy was always so strong). He presses his face into Bruce’s shoulder, and the breath that escapes him carries the faintest hitch.
Bruce rises with him, lifting his son off the ground.
He adjusts his hold to support the boy’s center, one hand spreading more securely between his shoulder blades, thumb resting at the ridge of bone where tension collects– and Damian, somehow, doesn’t object, even bending his knees slightly to help his father get a better hold.
He’s a bit too big for this.
Still, Bruce carries his son.
And without consciously deciding to, Bruce, the Batman, the terror of Gotham, begins to rock and sway.
Small, rhythmic motions that feel instinctive, older than Gotham, older than grief. Like boats rocking in sheltered coves or like wind moving through leaves and tall grass. Or maybe...like the memory of a lullaby that doesn’t need words to exist.
The same motion he’d once been too afraid to offer his children when they were small and breakable and needed something he didn’t yet know how to give.
Before, it would have been just a hug.
Now? Bruce is happy to rock his son back and forth.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs.
“I am not a baby,” Damian says into his shoulder, the words muffled by fabric and pride.
Bruce feels the words land. They ripple outward through his chest like a stone disturbing still water. Beneath the indignation, he hears the plea. Beneath the indignation, there is something thinner and younger.
He doesn’t laugh, and he doesn’t dare tease. The vigilante would rather bite his tongue clean through.
He wants–God, he wants. Bruce wants to declare his son to the world in a way that’s old, rickety, and reckless. He wants to tell him the dangerous, tender thing sparking at the back of his throat like an exposed wire.
He wants to say what he's wanted to say to all of his children.
You are. You are my baby. You always will be.
But that would be for himself, not for the boy in his arms.
So instead, Bruce shifts his grip slightly, trying to be grounding. His hand spreads wider at the center of Damian’s back, thumb pressing gently between the boy’s shoulder blades. He, just a man, adjusts his other hand at the nape of his son’s neck, fingers sifting through sleep-tousled hair in slow, steady passes, the way his mother once did when storms rattled the windows, and he had insisted he was not afraid.
(“And even if you were scared, it would be okay.”
“But Mama, I’m not.”
“Maybe so. But I’d be here for you even if you were. I’ll always be here for you.”)
“No,” Bruce agrees softly. “You’re not a baby.”
Damian goes very still.
Bruce senses his son's listening, senses it sharpen, the way a hawk stills before descent. His son is undoubtedly measuring the air for mockery, for any inflection that might be adjacent to ridicule, so he decides not to let the silence sharpen any longer.
“You’re my son. ”
The sentence settles between them before Damian lets out a small sound that might be a scoff if it didn't sound so suspiciously close to relief.
But Bruce notices. He notices everything–the way his youngest’s shoulders are no longer taut, the heat in the shell of his ears, the way thumb hooks more firmly into the seam of the man's shirt, and the way his weight leans a fraction closer into him once he finally realizes that Bruce won't comment on it.
"Well...yes. You do not have to point out the obvious, Father.” Damian mutters, though the syllables arrive fainter than he must have intended.
Bruce hums at that and resumes the gentle sway. The motion is nearly imperceptible now, measuring something kinder than seconds.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Inhale. Exhale. Sway. Rock. Sway.
After a while Damian shifts again, less rigid now. He drags his face higher into Bruce’s shoulder, half hiding there.
Embarrassed.
Bruce pretends not to notice.
His hand moves in slow circles across his son’s back. “What was the dream about? Again, you don’t have to tell me, but–” he asks, careful.
“You were dead.” Damian’s voice is muffled by Bruce’s shoulder. “You were dead again.”
The words hollow the air.
Bruce doesn’t flinch. He feels the impact internally, a bruise forming where no one can see, but he refuses to let the devastation show.
“I’m…I’m sorry.” He rakes his fingers through his son’s hair again, trying his best to be soothing. “I’m so sorry that you and all of your siblings had to go through that. That I wasn’t there for you during such a difficult time.”
Damian scoffs softly into the fabric of his shirt. “Father, there is no need for apologies. It wasn’t your–”
“I am sorry, all the same.”
Bruce keeps rocking, slightly slower now. “And I’m…here now. I wasn't then, but I’m here for you now."
The nod that follows is almost theoretical–a suggestion of movement more than a gesture; yet, Bruce feels it imprint against him, feels Damian linger in the touch half a second longer than necessary, as though he was imprinting the moment into memory.
And well, it doesn’t take the world’s greatest detective to pick up on the fact that his boy is tired and should go back to bed.
“Well,” he says after a beat, voice a little rougher than intended, “it’s nearly four in the morning.”
Damian hums in vague agreement without moving.
Bruce waits. Damian continues not moving.
They both seem to realize at the same moment that the hug has lasted a very long time.
Neither addresses it.
Instead Bruce shifts his stance and lifts Damian slightly higher against him. The boy lets out an undignified squeak followed by a small huff of protest, though his arms tighten automatically around Bruce’s neck to compensate. Together, they start down the corridor.
The manor watches them pass. Floorboards murmur beneath bare feet; portraits hold their lacquered breath. Thomas's stands in oil and shadow, and Martha’s painted smile glows faintly in the low light.
For a fleeting second, Bruce imagines their reaction to this sharp-eyed, iron-willed child who pretends at indifference and fails.
They would have loved him fiercely.
They would have loved them all.
He enters Damian’s room and sits on the edge of the bed without breaking rhythm. The mattress dips, adjusting to the shared weight. Paper and clean cotton scent the air, beneath it the faint metallic trace of polished steel. Training blades gleam dully from their rack, obedient and still.
Damian’s fingers loosen their desperate hold and then, reconsidering, tighten again.
“I do not require any more consolation,” he announces, voice already thickening with sleep.
Bruce smooths a hand through his hair, untangling a small knot near the crown. “All right.”
“I do not–” A yawn fractures the word “not” before the boy can fully guard it. He swallows it down with visible irritation.
“I suppose an extension would be acceptable,” Damian amends, dignity clinging stubbornly to the last syllables.
“Of course.”
The boy exhales at that, long and uneven. His body grows heavier with almost sleep, trust slowly redistributing his weight fully into Bruce’s arms.
The man watches the rise and fall of his son’s breathing, counting the breaths without meaning to. Old habits, he supposes. Vigilance is an animal that never fully sleeps.
Still, his gaze softens as he studies the faint crease between Damian’s brows, the way it smooths inch by inch.
After a while, when it is clear that sleep hovers but doesn’t fully claim his youngest, Bruce finds himself speaking into the dimness.
“Son.”
A drowsy hum answers.
“Were your eyes always green?”
Bruce feels it before he sees it–the slight tightening of fingers in his shirt, the faint flutter beneath closed lids.
“Yes,” Damian mutters automatically.
A beat passes.
“…No,” he corrects more quietly. “At one point, they were brown, according to Mother.”
Bruce’s heartbeat stumbles at that.
He doesn’t ask when. He doesn’t ask how. He doesn’t dare ask why they changed. All of his questions settle and stay unsaid.
Neither of them mentions the implications.
Bruce only hums “I see.”
Damian exhales, satisfied with that answer–trusting his father to leave it there. He leans back and his eyes open to narrow slits of green—forest leaves catching what little light the room offers. There is calculation there, and something more fragile beneath it, something that studies Bruce again and again and again, before he asks:
“You will stay?”
Bruce shifts slightly so that the boy can read his face clearly, forcing his expression to be as open as it can be. He doesn’t hide the exhaustion there; He doesn’t hide anything at all.
“I’m not going anywhere, Damian.”
The boy studies him for a moment before humming to himself. Satisfied, he tucks his face back into his father’s shoulder, allowing Bruce to resume their rocking.
Outside, the manor settles into its ancient bones. A pipe clicks somewhere in the walls. Wind brushes the windows and passes on. Far down the hall, wood contracts with a soft knock–a reminder of voyages once written, of captains who chased leviathans into ruin.
Bruce doesn’t chase, and he remains where he is.
He rocks his son steadily as he can, until sleep claims him fully.
It will be painful when he finally has to set Damian down and tuck him into bed. But when he does do it, he will cherish it and commit it to memory.
Because it’s an experience with his son that wasn’t taken away from him, one they get to have together.
But until then, the two of them will keep holding on.