Chapter Text
Carrie Kelley turns up on Damian's doorstep wearing the Robin costume she made for Halloween when she was nine, and a backpack full of homemade batarangs.
"Hi," she gives him a lopsided grin, "I'm here about a job opening."
For maybe the third time in his life, Damian is speechless. He takes in the pixie boots, the dayglo green goggles that made her eyes look three times as big, and the hand-stitched R on her chest, facing the wrong way. Then he ushers her inside, because these days it isn't safe to linger outside in a bright costume.
Carrie takes this as invitation to skip happily down the stairs and into the basement kitchen, where Jon is making breakfast in partial undress and Zoe is slumped at the table wearing even less, still trying to wake up.
"Human," she points groggily, "we have a rogue human. Should I remove it?"
"We don't remove humans, Zoe," Jon sighs over his frying mushrooms, "Damian is human."
"Biologically, maybe," Zoe mutters darkly
"Sorry," Carrie babbles, "didn't mean to drop in on you like this. Well, technically I guess I did, but not while you were all, y'know, naked and stuff. I mean I'm a big fan, but I've never really wondered what what you looked like in your underwear.
Actually, since we're here, I've got a question about Kryptonian anatomy. Is your junk the same as a human's? I'd assume so, and please don't feel you need to show me but, if it is, that's weird right? Cos Earth and Krypton are millions of lightyears apart, so the chances of their people evolving the same reproductive organs -"
Zoe whistles.
"Kid, I've got no idea who you are, but you are asking the right questions. Where'd you find this one?" she asks Damian, who follows Carrie into the kitchen in a daze.
"He didn't," Carrie answers, which is just as well because Damian doubts his ability to compose multi-syllable words, "I found him. You. I'm applying to be the next Robin."
Jon drops his spatula.
"You what?"
"Robin," Carrie chirps.
"You are not." Damian manages, finding a chair before his legs give way.
"I'm sorry, hold up," Jon waves his retrieved spatula in the air, "do you know this girl asking about my genitals?"
"Jon, Zoe, this is Carrie Kelly," Damian says, "she's a... fan."
Carrie gives a little wave, perched on one of Jon's surfaces in her short-pants and bright yellow cape.
"Wait, is this our stalker?" Zoe scowls at Carrie with new hostility, "The one who takes photos of us for the illegal fan magazine?"
She pouts.
"Stalker is a bit harsh. I just followed you around every night and took photos of you when you weren't looking, and oh, that's basically the definition of a stalker isn't it? Kinda walked into that one. Ooh, is this alien?"
She's been distracted by Jon's makeshift spice rack (easily collapsible in case they need to run), examining a vine with orange and lilac bulbs at its tip.
"From Tamarind." Jon supplies, now busy slicing peppers and onions.
"Huh, should've guessed. The colors. Funny how their plants and their people are color coded like that. Their God must have OCD or something."
"That doesn't explain why the fuck you're here," Zoe interrupts, "or how our pet demon over here knows you. Explain, and do it quick because it's nine in the fucking morning and I am too tired for bullshit."
"Three dollars in the swear jar already," Jon mutters into his onions.
"Fuck off, Jonno."
"Four."
Damian sighs and leans back. An ache is developing behind his left temple.
The story started seven years ago, before Damian quit being Robin, before Father had disappeared, and before Dick...
Earlier even than that, when the sight of Bruce's face didn't make Damian want to break it.
Carrie was seven years old at the time, and she'd just lost a tooth in a fistfight.
***
Damian is fourteen and he's already been shot six times..
At this point it's almost routine, the pain like fire as the bullet draws a line straight through his chest, a needle through a paper doll. The automatic shutdown, muscles locked, heat replaced by freezing cold.
Fight it..
Damian angles, flares his cape. Bullet caught him midair, twenty storeys up. Hit his side, in and out by the feel of it -
The world flickers. Stay awake . Wind fades away, keep your eyes open -
He hits a fire escape, hard, metal to mouth, more blood. He's leaking. Up, get yourself up-
Damian heaves himself to his feet, the world sloshes about like a drunkard’s pint glass but he’s still conscious
Then nothing.
***
When most people find injured birds, they have broken wings.
Carrie's has a bullet wound.
***
Damian wakes to sparkles and unicorns.
He pushes himself up groggily, hand going to his aching side. Fabric, tied tight around it. Damp, and the tang of iron in the air. There's a trail of red across the noxious orange carpet. His doing, no doubt. Had he been more lucid, Damian might have thought the stain an improvement.
He finds the energy to turn his head and nearly screams. Something- monster, demon- presses against him -
Damian throws himself back and almost passes out again. The world swims, but he can't move -
"Are you the Tooth Fairy?” a little voice asks.
Damian looks round. There, on the bed in the middle of the room, cross legged on a rainbow-print bedspread and clutching a teddy bear to her chest like a shield, is a little girl. Four years old, maybe twelve? He doesn't know, his judgement's off.
"No," he croaks, and winces as pain shoots through his chest.
The little girl stares at him over the top of her teddy bear with feline green eyes. Her hair is the same orange as her carpet. Maybe the color choice is some kind of camouflage.
"Are you sure?"
"I-" Damian coughs and falls on his face, "I am not the tooth fairy," he tells the carpet, thankful Todd isn't here to hear him say it.
“Aw man,” the girl sighs, “then you probably scared them off. I had a trap laid out and everything.”
“Wha-” Damian peers up at her from his position on the floor, “why would you want to capture the Tooth Fairy?”
“For scientific study. Duh. See, the state science fair is coming up, and it was either this or a baking soda volcano, so -”
“But why would you think I was the..." he can't finish; if he has to say 'tooth fairy' one more time he might throw up.
"Well non-one knows what a tooth fairy looks like, do they?" the girl's nose scrunches irritably, "in movies they range from your average Tinkerbell to Dwayne Johnson-sized -"
And Damian has officially hit his limit.
"Enough," he warns, trying to find the strength to rise.
She pouts and ignores him.
"Why are you scared of Mr. Snuzzles?"
Mr -?
Damian rolls onto his back and looks back at the monster that terrified him. A sugar-pink unicorn plush gazes reproachfully back.
Damian's head thunks back onto the carpet. He thanks Allah again no-one else is with him. He'd never live it down.
"Where am I?" he asks, finally pushing himself back up. The world still tilts crazily, but he's got his breathing under control and years of pain management is kicking in.
"My room," answers the girl, still staring at him like he's an alien.
"I can see that, you whelp," Damian grimaces, taking in the glittery wallpaper, torn curtains and - Allah save him - the My Little Pony posters plastering the walls, "I meant what street."
"My street," the girl says like this should be obvious, "it's got five trees, six green doors, a fire hydrant at the end and a newspaper stand on the corner -"
Damian holds up a hand for peace.
"Never mind," he snaps, "Where are your parents? Who saw to my injury?"
"My parents are out sticking it to the Man. I did your bandages."
Damian stares at the girl.
The girl stares back.
Damian looks back down at his bandage, expertly tied. It's been fashioned from her torn curtains, a repeating print of shooting stars and ringed planets stained red like some bloody nebula.
"How?" he manages.
"Well, you fell on the fire escape outside my window, and you were leaking all over Mrs Fletchley's planter boxes downstairs. Plus I didn't want to be sent to jail for murder yet, so-"
"Yet?" Damian interjects, bewildered, "Wait, no, that's not - I meant how do you know how to tie a bandage like this?"
"The internet."
"But you're about five years old! Don't people have age restrictions on this sort of thing?"
"I'm seven," the girl says crossly, "and my parents say age restrictions are just a construct of The Man."
Damian wonders if this is all some fever dream brought on by his near-death experience. He heaves himself up and staggers to the window. It's probably best to get far away from here before sending up a distress beacon.
"Wait," the little girl slides off her bed and thrusts a little drawstring bag out to Damian, "you have to take my tooth!"
"I told you I'm not the Tooth Fairy!" Damian yells, his chest twinging again, "I'm Robin!"
"Exactly! No-one at school's gonna believe a superhero came to collect my tooth! Even if you are really grumpy."
"I've just been shot -" Damian sighs and cools his forehead on the window pane, thinking of how much better Jon would be at this kind of thing. He'd say thank-you, for a start, "How did you lose the tooth anyway?"
"I was in a fight with Becky Morgan at school," the girl bares her teeth and the neat little hole in the upper right corner proudly, "She was trying to steal Travis' lunch money again."
"And did you win this fight?"
"No," the girl sighs unhappily, "Becky's gonna get more money than me, and from the real Tooth Fairy, cos she lost two teeth. It's not fair."
Damian, silently climbing out of the opened window while she's distracted, retracts his leg thoughtfully.
"You... knocked out two of her teeth?"
The girl nods. Damian looks her over again, taking in the broken glasses held together with sparkly sellotape and the bruises on her knuckles he hadn't noticed before, impressed. Shrimpy, to be sure, but even weeds like Jon could make adequate soldiers if they worked at it.
"Next time, try punching from your hips," he takes her by the elbow and demonstrates the motion, "move with your whole body. That way you hit harder."
The little girl frowns in concentration and practices the motion, tongue poking out the same way Jon's does when he's trying to be serious.
"Very good," Damian says. He decides to humor the child and pockets the little bag with her tooth nestled inside, resolving the throw it in the next available trash can.
"Wait," the girl says again as he turns to leave, "doesn't the Tooth Fairy give you something for your tooth?"
Damian growls in frustration, turns, and hurls a batarang into the far wall. It quivers there, embedded in that god-awful wallpaper.
"Well that's not very nice," the girl says, "I don't 'spose you have many friends, do you? All the other superheroes seem too nice for you."
Damian's mind flashes to Jon and his smile.
"Yes. Too good for me."
"Don't be sad," the girl says, grabbing the plushie unicorn off the floor, "here. Have Mr. Snuffles."
Damian stares at the thing. Its mane is made of rainbow streamers.
"I will not -"
"He wants to make up for scaring you," the girl says firmly, shoving the unicorn into Damian's arms, "Trust me, he helps when you're feeling lonely, and I think you need him more than I do."
And she pushes him the rest of the way out of her window, locking it behind him.
***
Usually it takes Damian twenty minutes to get from the Brewery to the Manor, but the hole in his side and the unicorn nearly bigger than he is strapped to his back slow him down. By the time he gets to his room, he's so tired he barely has time to chug some pain killers and lock the door before he collapses again and falls sound asleep.
An hour later he's woken by Alfred's knocking at the door, having tracked down his suit locator after he didn't report in. He realises he's hugging the unicorn like a body pillow.
The unicorn is stuffed hastily under the bed and Alfred is allowed in to stitch him up and chide him for not getting him to do so sooner. The quality of bandage is praised but it's source not questioned, the bloodstain now dark enough to hide the shooting stars.
Damian wakes the next morning realising he'd never learnt the girl's name.
***
The unicorn stays. Mostly because, having faced down psychopaths and demons, the thing that keeps Damian Wayne up at night is the thought of his brothers catching him trying to dispose of it. He's never had a stuffed animal before. They always seemed rather pointless when he could tame any creature he liked.
Of course he never hugged the thing, or slept with it. Most of the time it was stowed safely under his bed. But there were days when the world was being particularly uncooperative or Jon was being particularly, inexplicably kind, when Damian would take the thing out and stare at it- this relic from the kind of life he would never know- and demand answers.
The unicorn never gave him any of course. It just took all his most private confessions, the ones he didn't want even his pets to hear for fear they would think him weak, and sat there. Most of the time Damian ended up punching it. It was surprisingly efficient stress relief.
So the unicorn stayed, and drank up Damian's secrets, and Damian thought himself safe because he would never see it's owner again.