Chapter Text
The breakfast was lacklustre, Damian mainly enjoyed the tea that accompanied the eggs and toast.
“Damian, I need your grandfather’s address so I can send him a letter, it’s just about how you’re doing,” Dick said, pulling out the letter he had written and the same fountain pen he had scrawled it down with.
“Oh, I can’t do that,” Damian replied, setting down his teacup on the saucer.
“I didn’t mention the… misunderstanding, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Dick said, with a voice Damian would describe as patronising.
“No, I don’t care what you put in the letter, I just simply can’t give you an address, there isn’t one and besides why do you assume my grandfather would accept a letter from someone such as yourself,” Damian responded, the boy hadn’t exactly mastered tone of voice so unfortunately, he came across very abrasive when in fact he was simply trying to subtly warn the man about his grandfather’s insanity.
“I just thought he’d care about how you’re doing,” the infamous temper rose in Dick Grayson’s chest, he didn’t like being spoken to like that, especially not by little boys that he was just trying to help.
“Again, there is no address and my grandfather wouldn’t even accept a letter from me, let alone a complete stranger,” Damian said, getting rather bored of repeating himself. He looked pensive while pushing his scrambled eggs onto his fork.
“Is there no one I can contact about getting you decorations from home for your room?” Dick asked earnestly.
Damian looked at Dick, he hadn’t expected such consideration from the man, “no, Grandfather prided himself in being reclusive, my mother’s death cut us off from all contact with the outside world, it’s only because she had foresight that I am here with you.”
Something washed over Dick as he looked at the haughty boy who acted too far too old for his age, “was your grandfather… nice to you?”
The rest of the table caught the implication, Tim and Cass’ ears pricking up, Tim because he thought it would explain a lot about Damian and Cassandra because she could empathise.
“He was nice enough, he of course wanted nothing to do with me and told me children should be seen and not heard,” Damian replied, decidedly not adding that if he even so much as took a breath too loudly he would have been whipped and that his grandfather had been heard to call his own grandson ‘it’ before. It wasn’t his fault, Damian had been told this, Grandfather was insane and this was just an effect of the insanity, besides his cousin got it far worse than he did because she was a girl.
“You didn’t take much to that sentiment,” Tim snorted into his teacup, which earned him a glare from the rest of his family.
“Master Timothy, I don’t wanna hear you talking like that again, do you hear me? It’s not right, telling kids they’re not allowed to speak, you know that much as well,” Alfred said sharply. Dick’s brows furrowed.
“You’re not telling the full truth are you, Damian?” Dick said calmly, “did he… hurt you?”
Damian then suddenly got very angry, Alfred feared he looked far too much like the late Master Bruce during his grief, “it’s none of your business! It’s not his fault!”
Damian stormed off, rage still in his deep brown eyes. The table was left in shock.
The whole day went by without a peep from Damian’s room. It was 4pm when Cassandra stepped over the untouched plate of lunch Alfred had left by the door, into the empty room. It was so empty in fact that the young boy was not even there.
“Dick!” she cried. The man came stumbling up the stairs, he surveyed the surroundings, the window left wide open and the bed left untouched. His trunk was missing and it looked as though no one had even touched the room.
“What’s going on?” Tim asked, looking in to see the commotion, he struggled to not laugh, “I told you he’d be trouble.”
Dick glared at his brother but chose to ignore him, “he can’t have gone far, you don’t suppose he had money in that trunk of his?”
Damian did not in fact go far, he had made it out of Bristol on the tram but stupidly got off at a place he had no knowledge of. It was busy, there were horses attached to buggys everywhere and it stunk like faeces. He didn’t think the people in this area were very pleasant, there were harrowed women walking the streets, some forlornly pushing prams while others holding cups full of coins, men with bushy sideburns who looked like someone you wouldn’t leave a woman alone with. Park Row was a daunting street, it also seemed to have a lot of flowers littered around it, he guessed there was some significance towards it.
“You don’t look like you’re from around here,” a young boy said, he had shocking orange hair and freckles all over his face. His accent was strong, nothing like Tim’s or Dick’s.
“What made you think that?” Damian rolled his eyes, there was one obvious answer.
“Your clothes are too nice, you’re not from Crime Alley, this is where Bruce Wayne’s parents got shot, shame he died, he was trying to do good in Gotham, that’s what the nuns say anyway,” the boy replied, “I’m Colin.”
“My name’s Damian and no, I’m not from here, I’m from Nanda Parbat, which is far from here and I travelled here via steamer,” the boy said, going to shake the other boy’s hand. He purposefully omitted that the aforementioned Bruce Wayne was his father; for some reason the notion felt foreign, he didn’t feel as though the man was truly his father at all, he’d never needed one before.
“Wow, is it hot there? Gotham gets awful cold in the winter and the nuns always complain that I’m growing too fast for my winter coat and that they’ll have to cut back my food, but Sister Thomas always gives me more ‘cuz she says she feels bad for me ‘cuz I dunno who my mother is.”
“No, I lived on snowy mountains, I’m much used to the cold but in the summer sometimes my mother would take me to our island where the weather is much fairer,” Damian noted. Colin’s eyes bugged at the term ‘our island’, he’d never been out of his grimy neighbourhood before.
“Do you live with your mother?”
“No, she died a couple of months ago, I’m an orphan now which is why I have been sent to live with my so-called relatives in Gotham which is truly preposterous, Pennyworth is the only decent one of them and the rest of them patronise me as if I-I’m some child who needs to be felt sorry for because my Grandfather wasn’t particularly pleasant.”
Damian al Ghul did not like being patronised and asked if his Grandfather beat him, it’s not as if he did anything worse like trying and kill him (except for that one time he was convinced that Damian was the new vessel he needed for his spirit and he needed to drown Damian out of his own body to possess it but that’s by the by in his eyes). It wasn’t his fault anyway, Grandfather was insane .
“I’m sorry your Grandpa was mean to you but don’t you think they’re worrying about you? I mean, if I had a long-lost family I’d definitely stay with them, ‘specially cuz they ain’t beatin’ ya,” Colin said, “I mean, no offence, of course but ya know.”
Damian reflected on Colin’s words for a while, leaving the air tense unknowingly, he piped up after a while, “I think you’re right, the only problem is I have no clue how I’m getting home.”