Work Text:
Damian Wayne never imagined he’d be spending a day surrounded by wine-dark green forests.. surrounded by Father’s group of barbaric so-called children.
Bruce Wayne’s pathetic attempt at bandung the family together for a weekend is.. questionable. Damian will figure out his motive, and why the imbecile Drake is here. An explanation he is especially entitled to is why Todd is here.
They’ve all been disbanded as a family. Damian can hardly consider Wayne manor his home, but it goes without saying he’s trying to. He’s been living there for almost a year. Alfred Pennyworth is like another father figure now, Bruce is called, ‘Father,’ and Grayson is who he turns to for anything.
Father even took the liberty of inviting Clark Kent on their spontaneous family outing. He is not insufferable, but his company would be better appreciated with his kids, who he did not bring. He ignored his Father scolding him when he scowled at Kent in greeting, demanding he bring his kids next time.
Damian packed light for this end of the summer, spur-of-the-moment escape from Gotham, the large group cramped together in an RV. A recreational vehicle. Why does Father even know what one of these is? He keeps his backpack nearby him at all times; he’s comfortable with Father and Pennyworth, but he isn’t sure he trusts the others to not pry into his bag.
Drake walks by and makes a beeline towards the rest of the group, raising an eyebrow at Damian. Yeah, he’d better. He raises his brow back in competition, daring Timothy to say something. Anything. He refuses to join in Father’s silly activities for the afternoon, at least until Richard arrives. That was a shame, Grayson having to wait until the end of the work day Friday to travel from Bludhaven.
Damian’s trying. He’s really trying. He made it here, okay?
Timothy’s gaze flickers between him and the field, and Damian sighs. He won’t give into these childish activities they’re planning. He’s never seen the fun in sports, or at least since he’s been in Gotham. League of Assassins training was rigorous, but he never considered the training fun. It was martial arts, it taught him to be perilous. Gotham Academy is elite, and they do not have time for petty activities. Damian trains and works out. He will not play these games.
Damian quickly averts his gaze away from Drake and Father once he noticed Tim’s brows raise up in fear and the flinch from his Father’s hand being placed on his shoulder from behind, giving Drake the dignity to regain his composure. He knows Tim would at least do the same for him. Possibly.
Once Richard arrives, Damian feels a force dragging him towards his older brother. Pseudo-brother, at least, adopted brother. Whatever. He doesn’t think, he only runs towards Dick to hug him. Finally, another sane person at the Wayne outing.
“Hey, bud!” Dick greets, and Damian will admit he missed some of this undivided attention.
Damian greets his older brother and watches with a raised chin, his eyes darting between Grayson and each brother he hugs in lieu of a greeting. He watches Pennyworth ease Richard into a hug, Bruce’s face softening, Todd and Grayson roughly pull each other into a short embrace, then Grayson ruffles Timothy’s hair.
Bruce quickly schools his expression once Damian looks back at him, and he decides to ignore it, there is no use spiraling into defeat from his thoughts.
Damian sprints across the field, his lungs begging him for air past the feeling of carelessness in his chest. Drake charges towards him, and any other day Damian would be annoyed with this configuration. Timothy, charging towards him , but they’re both laughing so hard and he tucks the ball under his own arm and away from the other man.
Their game is rough. He skids across the mud formed by the morning dew and afternoon humidity, probably opening a wound while running away from Stephanie. Predictable, she is on TImothy’s team and he will admit she is fairly fast in this game. He’d never compliment her and call it skills, because her attained skills are merely barbaric and she flounders, fast, tackling every person in sight. It’s exhausting to watch.
His own ego is a little bruised after Dick tackles him. Neither of them play conscientiously, they prowl across the field, stalk, and tackle. They’ve all received training from Bruce and brought their own attributes to the game. But, Dick, tackling him? It’s just not fair.
Damian hides any indication of content on his face, immersing himself in football and mimics the players from the players on the TV that Bruce watches on Sunday’s and the game that Drake plays on the game console they share in the manor.
Damian’s belly begs for him to slow down once he drains his entire water bottle after the game, and Father does the disgusting act of ruffling his sweaty hair and placing a palm over his forehead in an attempt to bother him. Father acts the same as his foolish, hellhound kids. But he would never admit he’s hiding a smile behind his water bottle.
He has the feeling Bruce knows because he turns away, lowering his head and smiling as he makes his way towards Clark Kent.
Maybe it isn’t unreasonable for Damian to feel ashamed for not being able to fit in with the family. The family that he has yet to become a member of. And, that thought, is just one of the hundreds of issues he berates himself with in his head. His attempts to drive Bruce away don’t work, most of the time. Pennyworth might be one to understand him the most out of the group.
Ra’s al Ghul’s training brought him up to ruthless. He cannot form attachments, not anymore. Every moment of his life is full of every neuron sending anxious signals, a trainee jabbing the sword towards the fencing suit, the sword pushing past it’s boundaries uncomfortably, the sharpness on the edge of crossing the line. This is how his brain treats him, the sword point teetering on the edge of the cotton, taunting.
Damian sits on the side of the field, Father suggesting he stay in the company of Todd, Drake, Cain, Brown and Gordon. Barbara sits nearby him in her chair, keeping a respectful distance and watches him from her peripheral while he reads a book.
Kent and Father toss a ball between each other in front of the recreational vehicle after claiming he needed adult time with another adult, possibly using the activity as a cover up to conspire against any villains in Metropolis and Gotham. Even Grayson joins their conversation.
So, the complete shock and disbelief emanated off Damian when a football strikes his cheekbone, sending him careening into the ground from the brute force of it. There were two games occurring, he should have stayed inside of the RV. He swears to himself, whoever threw that football defies every law of gravity written and defied every theory of force, because the approximated force sent him sliding in the mud.
His shoulder is the first to hit the ground, and he’s sure he dislocated or broke a bone but there isn’t time to think, he rolls over a few times. His rib cages feel like somebody took a crowbar and he gasps for a few breaths, his lungs beg him for reprieve.
He can’t breathe.
One shaky breath in, and it sends him reeling over in pain. Chest burns. Breathe. Breathe. Take a breath .
Damian’s brain sends him into panic mode, because he’d never allow himself to panic in front of Father’s bunch of overgrown man-children. He can’t control himself, he wheezes for air and the desperacy of the sound horrifies him.
He could hear Father’s voice in the back of his mind, probably from a memory during their patrols and he’s reprimanding him, the urgency in his voice perfectly masked like his vigilante self in the night with anger seething out of him, the words hissing in the form of a rattlesnake. If only he could stop the rattling.
He did something wrong. He must’ve done something wrong.
He stares up at the towering bodies over him, the ringing in one ear that hit the ground. This isn’t as severe as some injuries he endures as Robin, but he clenches his teeth through his ragged breathing and tastes blood in his mouth, blood drawn from his cheek.
Damian’s eyes burn and fill up with tears to his horror.
“Bud, are you okay?” he hears from the side, Barbara’s voice over the ruckus of the other teens fighting.
“Oh, my God!” Damian registers as Clark, and Damian sits up on his good elbow.
Damian ignores him and thinks he’s never going to stop trembling, but he can’t stop seething with rage. He feels hands on him, and sees Jason looking down on him with pity, and to his own horror he thinks he might be making fun of him, with his eyebrows creased and a look of judgement. Cain and Brown are off to the side whispering to each other, and he finally turns to Drake beside him who is having trouble breathing. Drake is doing almost as awfully as he is, his head briskly turns between him and a brooding Father stalking towards them.
“I-- I--” Drake breathes,
Todd grips Jason’s shoulder, shushing him under his breath. “Bruce-- I swear, it was an accident--”
“You idiot!” Damian is irate, and he shuts everyone up. “I demand you all tell me which imbecile here did this! Was it you, Drake?”
“I’m-- oh, my God, Damian, I’m so sorry-- I-- I didn’t, I didn’t mean to--” and Damian could lunge at him and Todd must notice the exasperation before he launches himself towards Drake and creates a barrier between the two of them.
“You did this to me!” Damian’s internal delight from his venomous words is interrupted when Bruce pulls Drake away, and he wants to reprimand Father for being caring to the foul criminal, Drake. Father holds Drake’s face in his hands, soothing him.
“Father! I demand you send this fool to boarding school,” Damian screeched, “Send him away like you sent away the other imbecile, Todd!”
“Master Damian,” Pennyworth furiously said.
“ What? Drake is older than Todd was when he was sent to boarding school,” Damian talked back, noting the shock on Todd’s face, “Then again, did that actually work.”
Damian slumps down on the ground, he draws his knees up to his chest to push against his bruised ribs. Each flicker of the campfire in front of him, each snap, is like a slap in the face. The sun lies low on the horizon across the field, and the fire holds his gaze.
To his dissatisfaction, Father sits down directly next to him. The large man does not account for personal space but refuses to look him in the eyes.
“Father, I already know what you’re going to say,” Damian says, and Father raises his brow in curiosity. “I’m grounded. No TV or games, no animal shelter visits, and no patrol. I know.”
Father simply sighs. His shoulders resign under his flannel, and he watches the rest of the group. He doesn’t understand his face. It isn’t a look of exasperation or tiredness, or even discontentedness, and Damian was not expecting this hint of disbelief in his face. The curiosity glints in his blue eyes, and he wants to shake him by the shoulder to continue with a lecture instead of this mind game. He resorts to the Bat when anything goes wrong, and right now he’s sure his father wishes he had his cowl to hide behind.
“Do you remember the cat Selina brought by the Manor last month?” Bruce asks, soft voice intertwining with the crackling of the fire and smothering the background noise of the others shouting.
“Of course.”
“The cat was terrified of us. He curled into himself in the corner of the sopping wet box, because Selnia had half the mind to bring him back to us . I’m confident she knows how to handle those situations, but she was closest to the Manor,” Bruce explains, and Damian raises his brow in question.
He rests his chin back down on his knee, allowing Father to emanate body heat and press against his side. He begins eyeing Drake and Grayson, they brothers are leaning against each other while they listen to Cain retell a story from patrol, a gorey and detailed one that has the group doubling over in laughter and has Pennyworth shaking his head in secrecy.
“He clearly wasn’t old enough to to be away from his mother, but somebody had left him on the side of the street with only a note. We didn’t know what happened to him, we know that Selina heard his cries. And we decided to help him that day,” Bruce says, sighing from resignation once he sees the confusion written across Damian’s voice.
“He was so fragile. Even in your tiny hands, he was a little ball of fur. And you held him, cared for him, even after you were scared of picking him up.”
If Father’s soliloquy is a lecture with hidden insights and life lessons, he could scream right here, right now. He just might.
“I was too scared to hold the kitten but you held my palm, remember?” Bruce asks, not really awaiting an answer. “The kitten mewled loudly and you held my fingers, gently. You had unwavering faith in me. And sometimes I wish you and the cat didn’t.”
This sent a wave of nausea through him, dreading whatever part comes next. “The kitten had been hurt before. And I had the power vested in me to fix it all, to repair the fractures left behind, and to help him see the world has improbable parts to it. I couldn’t bear letting him believe his world was shattered.”
“He had a dismal view of the world, but he became my intrepid son. He was a stabilizing element in my life I didn’t know I needed. Each of my sons were. Are ,” Father continues, and something warm blooms in his chest. He wishes he could rip it out and make it stop.
He takes a shuddering breath, and feels the guilt course through every atom in his body. He acted so stupid today, but he has to control every aspect of himself others cannot see, when they do not do the same.
He hears the homicidal maniac whispers in the background. Mother’s gentle voice, juxtaposing her words, “You are my weapon. With you, the product of you, we can take on the world together.”
Damian cannot bring himself to feel annoyed at Father pressing himself closer to him, he keeps his fractured arm nursed between his legs and chest.
He thinks about how warm and comfortable he feels right now, for a moment not caring if he’s tainted. An unpredictable element in his father’s periodic table, internal energy ready to burst at any moment. Like it did today.
But they’re all still here, and maybe that’s enough.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Damian,” Father whispers, and Damian thinks this is the first time Father has said these words. The warm, steady stream of tears on his face betrays him, and he doesn’t have the patience to hear the implications behind these words. What Father isn’t saying.
Laughter erupts in the distance, with Clark tossing Father’s other kid’s into the air. Typical.
Maybe Damian isn’t as unstable as he thought he was, as he hoped he wasn’t.