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Outside it's cold and raining. It will be a miserable night on patrol, and it was miserable getting here, even with daylight to point out the spots made slippery by rain. But in Tarbooshes it is warm, and the sound of Arabic and the smells of cardamom and zaatar and grilled meat are soothing. Damian misses speaking Arabic. He has carefully trained his English, shaping his vowels around Richard’s, drawing his consonants forward in his mouth, until Robin sounds like he was born in Gotham, although he is told he still sounds clipped, overly formal, not quite normal for his age. He can act the part of a normal person if he must, but in the end he must always return to being Damian Wayne. Damian Wayne still has an accent, but he hardly ever speaks to anyone. He misses Arabic. He misses his mother.
He always missed her, from the first thing he can remember. Even when she was right in front of him, she was too far to reach. And now she is really too far, and he would prefer to bathe in his hatred for her, but instead, he misses her. And the taste of the soup is soothing. The flavor that was supposed to prepare him to be the heir of his grandfather.
Tonight it will keep him warm on patrol with his father. He misses his father, too, although he doesn't understand why. His father is not gone. His father has returned, will always return, every time. But things are not easy. Bruce does not target weakness as ruthlessly as Talia, but he is just as difficult to reach. Damian knew what was expected of him in the League of Assassins. Here, no matter how many times he is told, he can't seem to remember. He tries to follow Batman’s instructions and finds himself acting on instincts Talia gave him, before he can think, before he can tell himself to stop. It has been years. He should be better. He should not be missing her.
His homework is done, stacked on the table at his elbow, to be delivered to Pennyworth before patrol tonight. His text messages show that Richard still hasn't responded to the last thing Damian sent. Just a question, nothing important, a small thing he doesn't understand about being Robin, a question that would have been answered already if they were still partners, but they are not. Richard had enough of Gotham and enough of Damian and he is gone.
Perhaps Damian ought to be asking his father these questions instead. But he can't. Instinct, again, winning out over everything he has been told. In the League of Assassins, if you fall, you claw your way out of the pit. Batman says that if Damian falls, he will catch him. Damian can't shake the fear of being caught. Being caught means he isn't good enough.
If he texts Richard again, he will look desperate. He is not desperate. He does not need help. Perhaps he should go home. He can take Titus out in the rain and let the big idiot splash in the puddles and soak him. He can hand his homework in early, meet one of those expectations he keeps failing to live up to even though they have been perfectly spelled out, even though he repeats them to himself over and over in all the languages he knows, trying to get them to sink in. He can put on the uniform of Robin and play his part. He cannot miss his father when his father is by his side.
Sometimes he wakes up and he knows his father has been there to fix his blankets. Still, even though Damian is no longer a child. It is a ritual he hopes brings Batman comfort, but sometimes when it happens, he only feels lonelier. Could his father not come when he was awake? Could they not talk to each other?
But perhaps it is his fault. After all, he has not been asking questions. The questions go to Richard. Damian knows that Richard isn't expecting him to do his best, only to do what he can. In front of his father, he must always do his best. So he can forget the way Morgan Ducard’s skull caved under his fingertips. So his father will not regret bringing him back. So his father will never send him away. So his father will not think that he misses Talia.
It's growing dark enough that he can see his reflection in the window beside him, a smudge of shadow with troubled eyebrows. Al Ghul eyebrows with what Richard says is a spot-on Wayne scowl. He does not seem to be growing to resemble his father more than that. In fact he has hardly grown at all, despite Pennyworth constantly trying to feed him, and despite the best efforts of Tarbooshes oxtail soup. Pennyworth has suggested that children need sleep. Damian wonders if it is instead a side effect of having died.
What if he is twelve forever, and even with double layers of Kevlar in his suit and lead plates to add weight to his shoes, he will always have to rely on precision rather than strength to make his hits, and will always be forced to remember where he learned that precision? Batman does not rely on it in the same way that Talia does. Batman has weight to put behind his attacks, and he uses his bulk to intimidate. Talia intimidates with delicacy. Damian does not like being forced to follow her lead. But Richard tells him you have to be over five and a half feet tall before bulking yourself up looks like anything more frightening than a chihuahua in a handbag, and Damian barely clears four and a half.
He hasn't changed. He wants to see himself as a different person than he was when he arrived in Gotham. He wants to belong here, to feel the city running in his blood like it does in his father’s. He wants to know without having to learn. But it always feels like an act. The act that he can only keep up for so long before he starts to see an al Ghul in his own reflection again.
His phone buzzes. Not Richard. The alarm he has set for the time he needs to leave the restaurant in order to be back at Wayne mansion in dry clothes before Batman comes looking for Robin. Damian left his uniform at home, today. No masks. Nothing to distract him from his homework, because if he misses one more assignment Batman has promised that he's grounded. Having the mask on hand always makes him more alert. Doctor Thompkins calls it hypervigilance, and Damian has it anyway, but with the mask he can act on his suspicions, and the doctor says to create times when he can't. To pretend he doesn't have them. To talk himself down from them. Another thing he cannot quite manage.
He overpays for his food as usual, and packs away his homework. Something for Pennyworth to do while Batman and Robin are on patrol. That's what he'll tell the butler, for the sake of getting back the look of scorn that Pennyworth manages like no one else. Pennyworth, at least, is easy. There is no need to impress him because he is impossible to impress. And he is always there.
Damian takes a bus uptown, squeezed between tired commuters, young Russians talking loudly on their cell phones, and a mother in a hijab juggling toddlers. He does not like to admit it, but when he is here he tries to act like someone who lives here. In his weakest moments, he pretends he is one of Arzu’s children.
Uptown, he switches to a cab. The heat in the backseat dries the damp in his clothes from waiting for the bus. By the time he gets out, overpaying again, the surnameless Damian who drinks tea and soup at Tarbooshes and the al Ghul Damian are both behind him once again. He is ready to be Robin.
Pennyworth is waiting for him at the front door. “No umbrella, master Damian?”
An umbrella can be used as a weapon, but others are more effective. An umbrella is mostly an obstacle. Damian digs his homework out of his bag and hands it over instead of answering. “Something to keep you occupied, Pennyworth.”
“I have been so very bored,” Pennyworth says, just as Damian expected him to. “Your dinner is waiting.”
“Is my father waiting? I already ate.”
“Your father could not be persuaded to eat. Perhaps an appeal to his conscience, as the sole guardian of a young child?”
Sole guardian. They both know it's not true. Damian pulls a face. “You are manipulating me.”
“I am using you to manipulate him .” Pennyworth corrects.
“Oh, very well. I suppose it wouldn't do to have Batman collapse in the field. Not that I couldn't handle myself without him.”
“Of course, master Damian.”
Damian eats his second dinner perched on the stair railing in the Batcave, halfway dressed as Robin, watching his father glare at page after page of text that isn't adding up. Bruce Wayne has not made an appearance today, apparently. Only Batman. Father believes very strongly in discipline for others, but Damian has observed that he does not always follow it himself.
He wants to speak, but he has nothing to add. He sees nothing on the screen that Batman has not already seen. Anything else would be a distraction. It is a child’s urge that makes him want to tell his father that he has caught up with his lessons. Of course he has. That is what he is supposed to have done. Why should he expect to be praised for merely meeting, and not exceeding expectations?
Batman’s plate is still barely touched by the time he gets up to put on his suit. Damian has been practicing quiet behind him for so long that Batman blinks in surprise at seeing him.
“Robin stays home tonight,” Batman says.
“I did my lessons! Alfred has them. I did everything. ”
“It's not about that. I don't know what I'm expecting out there tonight. You stay home.”
“But father—”
“Tomorrow night, once I have the lay of the land, you come with me. Tonight, you stay here and be patient.”
He wants to scream, but he swallows it. “I can be patient in the car.”
“You will be patient here. No arguments.”
He slides off the railing and follows Batman to the lockers anyway. “This has been happening more and more lately. Have I disappointed you in some way, father? I would like to know when I am falling short, so that I may fix it.”
“Damian.” Batman stops for a second, sighs. “Why can't you take me at my word when I say that it's dangerous, and I don't want you in danger? You come with me when I know what to expect.”
“I should be there as your backup. Isn't that the purpose of Robin?”
“I'm telling you that Robin’s purpose tonight is to wait here and stay safe.”
“Richard tells me he never waited when you said to wait.”
“Richard exaggerates, and he never died in the line of duty. Ask him for advice that will keep you out of danger next time.”
“Father, please. I want to help you. You have also died before.” Technically he wasn't dead, but it is only that, a technicality. Batman has disappeared and left Damian behind too many times. Next time he is stolen away to another dimension, Damian intends to be there with him, so he can tear a way home through spacetime with his own two hands.
Bruce pushes him away, gentle but firm. “Some nights I just don't want to put one more child in danger.”
“I'm thirteen,” Damian says, but Batman ignores him. Damian watches him suit up, keeping a desperate lid on the temper that roils inside him. Shouting will not help. Shouting will only prove that he is not ready. He flexes his right hand, the fingers Maya’s father broke. All of his old scars and hurts disappeared when he came back from the dead. Sometimes he misses them. They were proof of the things he had survived, and without them he feels fragile.
“What do I do?” he asks, as Batman is about to get into his vehicle. “While you are out?”
“Sleep,” Batman says. “Alfred tells me I should be letting you do that more often.”
As if he can sleep when his father is facing danger without him. He stands and watches the Batmobile out of sight, then tucks himself into a corner where the security cameras can't see him and takes out his phone.
Richard answers on the fifth ring. “Hey, kid, what's up? Need rescuing from any criminal death cults tonight?”
“Shut up, Richard. Your mockery is tedious and uninspired.”
“Boy, if I had a quarter.”
“Why aren't you answering your phone?”
“I am. I'm talking to you right now.”
“I have sent you multiple text messages! And now father is on patrol without me.”
There's a pause on the other end. “Uh, not sure I see the connection, kiddo.”
“I have been trying to ask for your advice. I understand that my approach as Robin is perhaps a little unorthodox. It does not seem to be working. Father has not taken me with him on patrol one time this week, and I did all of my schoolwork, it is in Pennyworth’s hands, so clearly it is a problem with Robin, and he won't tell me what it is, and he told me to go to sleep. ”
“Sounds like you're kinda wound up for that,” Richard says. “Maybe try punching something?”
“Richard! You’re not listening to me.”
“I'm listening, you're just talking too fast. Are you sure it's a Robin thing, and not a Batman thing? Sometimes he gets like that. I mean, I can't totally blame him. You ever think maybe it would be nice to have one night where you don't get smacked around by a bunch of brutes four times your size?”
“I do not get smacked around.”
Richard laughs at him. “I'm so sorry. Of course I meant tossed around harmlessly, thanks to your flawless ninja training.”
Damian leans back against the wall and slides down to a crouch, holding the phone close as if to ward off eavesdroppers, though he knows he is off camera and off mic. Sometimes Pennyworth turns out to have been lurking in places where even Damian did not detect him.
“I do not need to be protected,” he whispers, just loud enough for the speaker to pick up.
“Listen,” Richard says. “We all know you're competent. Hell, sometimes you're scary. But your dad is a dad. You're not just there to be his backup, you're there to be his kid. Sometimes it makes him feel good to think he's protecting somebody.”
“But he is always Batman,” Damian says. His voice cracks and he almost wishes he had stuck to text messages, except that he knew Richard would respond more quickly to a call. “If he is always Batman, and I'm not allowed to be Robin—”
“Hey, Damian, shh. Listen. He goes through these phases. He's done it to all of us, even Jason. He just worries about you a bit extra because you're the youngest and you think you're invincible. And because he wasn't there for ten years of your life, and because you died, and I could go on for like an hour with this, but please don't make me.”
“He's not here now. ” He knows that he sounds desperate, wailing like a child, but he does not mind so much when Richard treats him like a child. Richard seems to find children worthy of respect.
“I know, kiddo,” he's saying now. “Have you tried telling Batman this stuff? Does he know you're upset?”
“I believe he thinks I am always upset. I do not believe it makes a difference. I am trying,” he says, and gulps air to steady himself, “Very hard. To be reasonable.”
There's a pause, a shift of cloth on the other end of the line. Richard is doing something else with his hands while they have this conversation. Sometimes he answers his phone in the middle of fistfights. Damian is not impressed with the caliber of Blüdhaven’s criminals.
“What do you mean, reasonable?”
There is a flash of panic. He doesn't know what he meant. An al Ghul must always choose his words carefully—but Damian is not an al Ghul. He is in the Batcave and he is talking to his brother on a civilian phone loaded with Wayne tech. “What I mean is if I am not allowed to be Robin at night then he should not be allowed to be Batman during the day. It isn't fair. Why should he be allowed to monitor my every move yet I am left to wonder if he will come back or remember me in the morning?”
Richard sighs, blowing out the phone speaker for a second. “Great question.”
“At least before I promised never to kill again he had a reason to keep me grounded. Now I do everything asked of me and he does not keep his promises.”
“Yeah, uhh, that's legitimately unfair, but,” he hears Richard shift position again, “I hope you're not thinking of committing murder to get his attention, because when Jason tried that it kinda didn't work.”
Damian sucks his teeth in annoyance. “I'm not stupid. I am telling you my fair and reasonable grievances against my father so you can tell me a solution that does not involve killing anyone. Perhaps if I firebombed the Batcave?”
“Please don't do that.”
“I'm joking.”
“Your sense of humor is still so bad, I don't understand it.”
“I learned from you.”
“Ooh, ouch. More like you learned from Batman.”
They're quiet for a moment, just breathing together on opposite ends of the phone line. Damian picks at a loose thread on his leggings. Richard bangs a spoon against a pot. Damian can hear Pennyworth coming down to work the monitors. No doubt the butler is already aware that Damian has been grounded. He quashes a childish urge to hide. After all, he has nothing to be ashamed of. It is his father who should be ashamed.
“You feeling ok now, kiddo?” Richard asks. “Because I've got mac and cheese to eat and asses to kick.”
“Dinner out of a box? What a glamorous life you are leading in Blüdhaven, I see now why you had to leave Gotham.”
“I'm hanging up now, Damian. Good night. Don't break anything.”
It's only after he's put the phone away that he realizes he never got a solution to his problem. If Richard doesn't have the right answer, how on earth is Damian going to find it on his own?
Pennyworth is pacing in front of the computer, waiting for Batman to relay requests or orders. The butler says that he is old and if he sits, he will fall asleep, so Damian takes the chair instead. His father is not on the comms. He might as well be nowhere.
“I believe he intended to be stealthy tonight,” Pennyworth says.
“You knew he was going to leave me here,” Damian accuses, swinging the chair around to glare at him. “You could have warned me.”
Pennyworth places a hand on the back of the chair and turns it back to face the empty screens, as if this will redirect Damian’s irritation. “You have a tendency to shoot the messenger, master Damian. I preferred to confine any possible shouting matches to this arena, between you and your father.”
“I do not—” but he does. If Pennyworth says he does, then he must. He shuts his mouth and slumps deeper in the chair, disgusted. “I didn't shout at him.”
Pennyworth touches his shoulder, a brief acknowledgement of a job well done, and continues pacing. The screens stay blank, and the comms never chirp to life. Damian folds his knees to his chest and lays his head down. If there were an emergency, father would call. Unless he lost the signal without realizing. Or it was too quick, and he was unable to react. The peripheral vision in the cowl. Richard was always complaining about it. Father says it is not a problem, but surely a second, younger pair of eyes would be helpful all the same. He should be there. Father should want him there.
He needs to be ready. He needs to be there to respond when father realizes his mistake. He needs to react before Pennyworth can, to show them the benefit of youth.
But the call doesn’t come, and doesn’t come, and doesn’t come. Pennyworth’s footsteps echo off the ceilings of the cave and Damian puts his hood up and shuts his eyes. He can pretend it’s practice for sensing as much as he can without his eyesight, but really, the darkness is soothing. He was awake for too much of the day. His eyes are tired.
He wakes up, gasping, from a dream of confinement, drowning in water or earth or blood, choking as a heavy black mantle tangles his limbs and drags him down. Awake, he is still in the dark. He's on his father’s back. He's being carried. The residual panic from the dream makes him think for a moment that he is dying, being taken somewhere terrible—but no, father smells of soap and the disinfectant they use when they return from patrol, and they are in the Batcave, headed upstairs to the house. He must have fallen asleep in the chair. His neck hurts like he's been curled up.
“You all right?” Father asks. “You're getting heavy. Didn't mean to jostle you.”
Damian is busy scanning for injuries. Father is carrying him, so nothing major to the chest, shoulders, arms. His gait is normal. No shortness of breath, despite the comment about weight, which is inaccurate anyway. Nothing. He is relieved to be proved wrong, yet worried that it makes him superfluous. If father called into the cave, he didn't hear it. He should not have been sleeping. He should not have been dwelling on Talia earlier, wasting time and energy on a childhood he should not miss.
“Bad dream?” Father asks, evidently making a diagnosis of his own. “You're sweating.”
“It was nothing,” Damian says. “Normal.” He should say that he can walk, he is not a child who needs to be carried, and after all, he is awake now. But he does not. He closes his eyes and lets his head fall onto his father’s shoulder instead, breathing in the scent of Batman returned safe from patrol. This is all he wanted. A moment of quiet together, the sense of a job well done. Except he wasn't there to help do it.
“Have you been taking those tablets?” Father asks, a hint of Batman in his voice, businesslike, ready to interrogate.
“Yes,” Damian whispers. He does not want to be interrogated. And he has been taking them. They help. But only when he sleeps in his own bed, in his room, where he keeps his medicine in a silk pouch tucked into the side of his mattress. They do not help when he sleeps folded up like Alfred the cat on the computer chair in the Batcave, waiting for the call that will tell him his father is dead. “I did not mean to sleep.”
“I told you,” father says. “You looked like you needed it. You're too young to have dark circles like that.”
“I have seen photographs of you as a child. I’m not too young. They run on both sides of my family.”
Father chuckles, just a little. It must have been a good night on patrol. He is in a good mood. Damian's stomach twists. Batman went out without Robin, and he has come back cheerful. Drake is a liar. Batman does not need Robin at all.
A thousand questions fill his head, cramming it too full to speak. Will he be allowed on patrol tomorrow? All seems to have gone well, but will that secure the promise or destroy it? Is it him? Has he failed, destroyed Robin when he thought he was perfecting it?
“Don't sleep in that uniform,” father says, distracting. “Speaking from experience, it’s a surefire recipe for nightmares.”
Damian lifts his head, not sure he heard correctly. “Experience?”
“I get them too, son. I must have told you that before.”
No, he hasn’t. Damian pays very close attention to the things his father tells him. He would remember. “What do you—what are they like? Your dreams.”
“I dream about you,” Father says, quiet. “That you're hurt, lost, in danger. That I've failed you. You and the others. Alfred. My parents. I dream that you've gone back to the League. Or been taken.”
“I would never,” Damian says, the twist of guilt in his stomach making his voice louder than he intended. It's true—he never would. But shouldn't he feel less conflicted about it? Shouldn’t he love Gotham with his whole heart, and not miss his island? “I'm your son. You are the only parent I need. I will always be here.”
Father doesn't answer. Perhaps he is thinking the same thing as Damian, that it's a promise that will be difficult to keep. Not because of Talia, or the League. But because of Batman. What Batman is. What Batman does.
Father traces his steps to Damian’s bedroom door, unerring in the dark. He sets him down gently, supporting him on his wobbly, sleeping legs.
“Take the uniform off,” he says. “Get some good rest. We’re going out tomorrow.”
“Promise?” Damian asks, squinting to see his father’s face in the faint glow of light pollution from outside.
Father lays his hands on Damian’s shoulders for a moment, anchoring him to the floor. “Promise.”
Damian watches him turn to go. Father’s steps are deliberate, but a little slow. He is exhausted. How long did Pennyworth say he had been working? “Sleep well, father.”
Batman pauses on the threshold, looks back over his shoulder. He's smiling. Content. Damian wants to understand that contentment, take it into himself. But his father turns away before he can grasp it. “Sleep well, son.”
He takes his father’s advice. Takes off the skin of Robin and puts on pajamas, like he is an ordinary boy settling in for an ordinary night. He takes his pills and puts his headphones in and wakes Titus to invite the dog onto the bed, where his warm weight might shift the landscape of dreams toward something reassuring. And still Damian lies awake. Imagining the long shadow of Batman in his doorway, deliberately not looking, because he isn't sure if he is more afraid of seeing it there, or seeing that it is not there. Closing his eyes and focusing on the sound of the chanted Surahs in his headphones. Until the sun comes up and he knows his father will finally be sleeping too.