Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was his right to stand at his father’s side.

Mother told him so, as he trained, over and over and over, each time getting a little closer to perfect. It was his right, heir to two empires, child of demon and hero both. He would stand at his father’s side, and nothing would get in his way.

At ten years old, Mother determined he was ready.

Father was everything and nothing like he’d imagined. He was powerful, and unstoppable, and he did not bend or break, not for anyone. And he was also kind, and soft, and he looked at Damian- an assassin, a killer, a child soldier, someone who by all rights should have been anathema to every ideal he stood for- and he called him a songbird.

Slowly, they found their place, settled into each other. Father learned to watch for Damian in fights, learned to teach, learned to say what he was thinking in a way he had not had to, when he was alone. Damian learned to be kinder and softer, in a way the League would never have allowed, learned to smile at children and bruise without breaking and pull Father back to earth when the shadows lurking behind his eyes grew too dark.

They were amazing together. They were a legend, a force of nature, a pair of humans who fought gods, a pair of people incredible apart and unbelievable together. And when they weren’t on the streets, fingers held to Gotham’s pulse as they kept the city from eating herself alive, they were family. Father and Damian and Pennyworth. They didn’t need anyone else.

At sixteen years old, Damian met Duke Thomas for the first time.

The boy was tall for his age, but that wasn’t saying much- he was just over five feet tall, dressed in bright yellow, of all things. He was young, and untrained, and more of a child than Damian had ever been. He saw things no one else could see but that would not be enough to save his life, not without the bone-deep skill Damian had broken and bled for since infancy. He was an orphan, and then he wasn’t, because Father took him in and gave him a suit and a home and a title.

It wasn’t Damian’s title, but that didn’t make him feel any better.

“Father,” he said.

“Damian.”

“What are you doing?”

Father’s eyes flicked away from the monitor to Damian’s face for a brief moment, then back again. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“About Thomas.” Damian watched his father’s face intently, noting the infinitesimal expressions he’d learned to read with time.

“I’m adopting him,” Father said simply.

Damian’s jaw clenched. “He’s not your son.”

“He is now,” Father said, voice like iron. “We’ve discussed this, Damian. Duke needs a home and we can provide one.”

“We don’t need Signal,” Damian insisted, something fluttering in his stomach. If he were anything less than he was, he might have called it anxiety, or maybe jealousy. “You and I manage Gotham fine on our own.”

“This isn’t up for debate.”

“Aren’t Batman and Robin good enough?”

Something made Father pause, turn to face him for the first time. “Nothing about us will be changing, Damian. Adopting Duke doesn’t make you any less my son, and Signal does not make you any less my partner.”

Damian looked away, the stirring in his gut morphing into something like shame. Was it really so easy, to read his insecurities? And had he really thought that his father would discard him so easily?

They were partners. Batman and Robin. Nothing could change that.

“I suppose I can learn to tolerate his presence,” Damian said, and was proud of the faint flicker of a smile that earned.

Thomas was untrained and young, but he was a quick learner, and determined enough that he was… passable, as a fighter. His meta abilities were useful in battle and as a detective. And while Damian would not call them brothers, he learned to accept Thomas’ presence.

Brown, too, when she arrived. She, too, was less skilled than Damian had been at that age- less skilled than he had been since he was five, at least. But she got up every time she was knocked down, and didn’t let Father’s demeanor drive her away, and he begrudgingly respected her for that.

Thomas called Father “Bruce.” Brown called him “boss.” Neither one of them called Damian their brother, and he was grateful for it.

He adjusted. They didn’t need Signal and Spoiler, but they were admittedly useful. He did not see them as family, but neither did they try to convince him otherwise. Things were… okay, even if Father refused to see him as anything other than the child he had once been, even if they couldn’t be in the same room without shouting anymore. Even if his partner didn’t trust him.

It was… unexpected, in the end, that Father was the one who drove him away, rather than the interlopers he had so disliked. But he didn’t need Father any longer, didn’t need his hovering and condescension and stubbornness, he was nearly an adult and he could take care of himself.

He packed his bags, tore the trackers out from his clothing and disabled the ones in his phone, boxed up the Robin uniform, and left a week before he turned eighteen.

When he was far enough from Gotham that he judged it safe, he called, “Flamebird!”

The Kryptonian arrived within seconds, with a familiar rush of wind, and before Damian could register it he was sitting beside him on the bus stop bench.

“Are you okay?” was the first thing Jon said.

“I’m uninjured.” Damian stared out over the street, suddenly regretting calling.

“That’s not the same thing. What happened?”

“I left,” he bit out. “Father no longer trusts me, and his hovering is… demeaning. My proper place is no longer at his side.”

“Dami,” Jon said, brow furrowed in what he thought was confusion. “Are you-”

“Don’t ask me if I’m sure,” he growled. “I did not make this choice in a moment. Father doesn’t need me, and neither does Gotham. There are other cities that do. In a week I’ll be eighteen.”

Jon studied him for a moment longer, reminding Damian uncomfortably of his mother- reporters did have a way of uncovering everything you were trying to hide, even if they were your best friend.

“Do you want to stay with me, then?”

“If that’s okay.”

“You know you’re always welcome, Damian,” Jon said, standing and pulling him up from the bench. “And- well. I don’t know what your plans are, but… in the original legend, Flamebird always had a partner. Nightwing.”

“I suppose Bludhaven is too much for you to handle on your own?” Damian asked, arching an eyebrow. Jon just laughed.

“Come on. Let’s go home.”

Home. It was… odd, for that not to mean the Manor, after nearly eight years.

He thought he might learn to like it.

Batman and Robin took down Riddler. Damian stared at the headline as if it would suddenly make sense.

Batman and Robin took down the Riddler but Batman-and-Robin wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. Robin was tucked into a box at the back of the Batcave and hadn’t been in Gotham for months. Robin was dead and Nightwing was what he became and Robin wasn’t supposed to exist anymore.

The newspaper noted that this Robin was smaller. Paler. A different uniform, slightly, but still indisputably Robin. He and Batman worked together like they had been doing so for years and Batman clapped him on the shoulder and smiled at him with pride in his eyes the same way he’d done a thousand times before except this Robin wasn’t Robin. He wasn’t his son. He did not deserve Damian’s name, Damian’s suit, Damian’s place. He had stolen it and no one even saw fit to inform him, to give him the chance to say no.

How dare he. How dare they both.

Damian’s fists clenched so tightly that the newspaper tore in his hands, ripping right through the picture of Batman and Robin, swinging high over the city, looking like gods, a triumphant return.

He dropped the paper on the bed and grabbed his motorcycle helmet, something bitter rising in his throat.

“Where is Father,” he demanded, as soon as Pennyworth opened the door.

“Master Damian,” he said, surprised, taking a step back. “You-”

“Where is Father,” he repeated, and Damian would have been ashamed of interrupting if he weren’t still shaking with the urge to scream.

“He’s downstairs. As is Master Timothy.”

Master Timothy, he thought viciously. Like he was really family.

“Thank you,” Damian said, and brushed past him.

“It is good to see you,” Pennyworth called after him. Damian stilled for the tiniest moment, but didn’t look back. Just continued to the study, opened the door to what had been his favorite place in the world for so long.

The clang of staff on staff echoed throughout the cave, and Damian watched for a long moment as Father and the new boy sparred. They moved carefully, Father pulling his blows more than he had ever had to do with Damian, even when he had started as Robin.

Timothy was pathetic. Slow, and sloppy, and useless.

“Good,” Father said, and the warmth of his tone made Damian’s blood boil. “Try with Batgirl.”

Brown said something to the pretender that made him laugh, and she grinned too. She was taller than he’d last seen her, and more skilled, with a different uniform, and all of the anger he’d learned to put away about her presence returned with a vengeance and in that moment he hated her more than he ever had.

How dare she accept this boy, this faker, this thief.

The pretender missed a block and Brown knocked him back, making him fall. He thumped the mat with his fist, then accepted the hand she offered.

Damian stepped forwards, down the stairs. “I see Father has found another untrained, undeserving child to put in a uniform and call a soldier,” he said, the words curling like acid in his mouth. “How unsurprising.”

“Damian,” Brown said, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. “Still as much of an asshole as ever, I see.”

“Language,” Father said. “Welcome home, Damian.”

Damian looked him up and down for a moment, cataloging the scars he didn’t recognize, the white bandages wrapped around his shoulder. Then he turned away.

“Your footwork is abysmal, your reaction time is pathetic, your blows lack precision,” Damian said to the pretender, spitting each word as if it burned. “You’re not Robin. Robin has skill.”

The boy blinked, mouth opening stupidly, then held out a hand. “Tim Drake. Nice to meet you.”

“The sentiment is not mutual,” Damian said, ignoring it. “Who gave you the right to wear that suit.”

“No one gave it to me,” Drake said, studying him with a sharp, precise gaze. His accent was upper Gotham, the same as the pathetic, sniveling sheep he’d spent so long tolerating at galas. “I took it.”

Damian scoffed, anger rushing harsh in his chest. What a pathetic, childish thing to say.

“Then show me that you’ve earned it,” he said, snatching the staff from Brown’s hands, who was still watching with undisguised concern. She let him, even though she glared.

Drake considered him for a moment, then settled into what could have passed for a fighting stance, from a four-year-old.

It was almost ridiculously easy to knock the staff from the pretender’s hands, throw him off balance so he toppled to the mat with a wheeze, and jam the end of the staff at his throat. The boy stilled, watching him.

“You’re not Robin,” Damian said quietly. “You’re a child playing dress up, stealing what is not, and never will be, yours. You have no right to that uniform and that name. Stop before you get someone killed, pretender.”

“Hey!” Brown yanked her staff back, and even though he could have stopped it, he let her. “Why are you being such a jerk?”

“This doesn’t concern you, Spoiler,” he snarled, turning on her. She didn’t back down, even when he towered over her.

“Yes, it does,” she said, fire in her eyes. “And it’s Batgirl, asshole.”

“Batgirl,” he mimicked. She lashed out with a fist, and he blocked it, turning it into a hold and dumping her on the mat.

“Damian!” Father snapped, harsh. “Stop this. Tim is Robin, as little as you may like it, just as he is my son. As much as you are. That is not something you have any say in.”

“So you’re going to give away my name and my place to this- this-”

“You have a place here,” Father said. “You always have and you always will. But you’re not Robin anymore, and you’re not my partner. That was your choice.”

Damian resisted the urge to punch him, and stalked toward the stairs instead. Signal scrambled out of his way, dark eyes wide, and he glared.

“You’re right,” Drake called. Damian stopped.

The pretender was sitting up, but hadn’t gotten off the mats yet. “Robin isn’t mine,” he said. “It’s yours, and if you want it back I won’t try to keep it. But Batman needs a Robin. It doesn’t work without one.”

“I’m not Robin anymore,” Damian spat. “It should stay buried.”

“No,” Drake said. “It shouldn’t.”

“You’re a liar, Replacement,” Damian said, hands curling into fists so tightly that his fingernails cut into his palms. “You are a liar and a thief and you are not Robin. You are not a Wayne and you are not my brother and you will never be anything. You will never be good enough for Robin.”

“Damian,” Father said. “That’s enough.”

“Don’t call, Father,” Damian said, opening the door. “I won’t pick up.”

He slammed the door and stalked back out to the driveway, ignoring Pennyworth calling his name. He grabbed his helmet off his bike’s handlebars, turned on the engine, and left, gravel spitting behind him.

For once, Father must have listened, because he didn’t call. Pennyworth called once a week, but they did not speak about Father or Drake, and Damian refused the invitations to dinner every time.

Damian returned to routine, working and living with Jon, leading the Teen Titans, having dinner with the Kents every fortnight, although the youngest- Conner, a clone of Superman according to Jon, the second Superboy- disliked Damian fiercely. He didn’t go to Gotham, and though the Titans occasionally worked with Young Justice, he let Jon lead those missions.

Things were okay, if he ignored the stories of Robin coming from Gotham, and the headlines about Timothy Drake-Wayne. The Bats worked in Gotham, and Nightwing and Flamebird worked in Bludhaven, and though they were sister cities neither one tried to cross their boundaries.

It was okay. Even good, almost. Damian turned nineteen and Jon got him a cat and he named it Alfred. He got a job at a vet’s clinic, and Jon told him about how his boss at the paper was a menace, and once a month Alfred came and they cooked together, the traditional meals that Jon had never really gotten the hang of. Damian turned twenty, and Jon got him a puppy and he named it Titus, and Signal followed a case to Bludhaven and Damian didn’t stab him because Batman and Batgirl made their opinions clear but Thomas had never said a word, and somewhere along the way they fall back into an uneasy truce. Conner Kent never really stopped hating him but that was okay because Damian never stopped hating Drake, either. Damian turned twenty-one and had dinner with the Kents, and Lois treated him like a son like she always had, and no one said anything about Father or Drake the whole evening.

Two months later, Damian came home from work and Jon stared at him like he was volatile, something heartbroken in his eyes. Two months later Jon was telling him quietly that the Joker had escaped and Batman hadn’t caught him in time.

Stop before you get someone killed, Damian had said, three years ago. He hadn’t thought that it would be himself. Hadn’t imagined Father would ever allow that.

Maybe he should have. Father wasn’t infallible, he’d learned that long ago.

A month after the funeral he hadn’t attended, the Joker escaped again, and he didn’t kill another of Damian’s- of Damian’s- another Bat but it was still another life irrevocably changed.

“I have to go to Gotham,” he told Jon one afternoon, who nodded like he’d been expecting it. Maybe he had.

“I’ll take care of Alfred and Titus,” he said, and pulled Damian into a hug he pretended he didn’t need.

He stopped at the Manor first, hugged Pennyworth though he could count the times he’d done so on one hand, said hello to Thomas. Bullied Father into bed, or tried to. Stared at the monument to a boy he had never accepted.

Then he went to the hospital. It was night, and visiting hours were over, so he slipped in the window.

Brown was awake, lying in her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her eyes slid over to him when he entered.

“Damian,” she said, dully.

“Brown.”

He sat in the plastic chair at her bedside, folded his hands in his lap, stared at the wall instead of her face, drawn and pale with pain even through the meds.

“You’re an asshole,” she said, without heat. Maybe she just didn’t have the energy to be angry.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Look at that,” she said, with a bitter chuckle. “The great Damian Wayne, apologizing for once in his life.”

He said nothing. Her anger, much as it stung, wasn’t undeserved.

“I’m not the one you need to apologize to,” she said, breath catching in her throat.

Damian’s gaze dropped to his lap. “I know. But the one who I need to apologize to the most won’t- can’t ever hear it, now. And you deserve an apology as well. I was never kind to you.”

“I don’t care about that,” she said. “We figured it out. We were almost friends for a while, even. But I care that you made Tim think he wasn’t good enough.”

“I know,” Damian said, voice barely more than a whisper.

“If you had been better to him he might still be alive.”

“I know,” he said again, throat tight enough he could barely get the words out. “I know. I’m so sorry, Brown.”

“I always hated when you called me that,” she murmured, eyes closing for a moment. “It’s not my name, you know. Legally. Stephanie Brown-Wayne. But you just- every time, it was like I was nothing more than the criminal’s daughter.”

“I’m sorry, Stephanie,” Damian said, and she looked him in the eye, blue eyes rimmed with red. “I regret- I regret a great many things. I wasn’t your brother, but I should have been.”

“I shouldn’t be your greatest regret.”

“You’re not.”

She stared at the ceiling again. “You’re an asshole. And I hate you.”

“So do I,” he said.

After a long, long moment, she lifted her hand from where it was clasped over her stomach. She held it out.

Damian took it.

“Are you staying?” she asked.

“Flamebird can handle Bludhaven without me for a while,” he replied.

“I meant- I meant are you staying, here. Now.”

He looked down at where their hands touched. “Yes.”

They were silent for a while, before Stephanie spoke up suddenly.

“They say I’m never going to walk again,” she said. “I’m paraplegic. Wheelchair bound, once I get out of this bed.”

Damian didn’t say anything, but, hesitantly, he rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand.

“I’m never going to be Batgirl again,” she whispered.

“You’re more than that.”

“Am I?”

“Yes,” Damian said. “You are Father’s daughter, and you are brave and strong and smart, and you will continue to be even from a wheelchair. You’re Stephanie Brown-Wayne.”

Stephanie stared at the ceiling, eyes glassy with tears.

“You know,” she said. “If you wanted to be my brother. Now’s as good a time as any to start.”

Damian looked at her for a long moment.

“I’ll stay,” he said. “As long as you want me.”

Her mouth quirked in a tiny smile. “Good.”

Damian held her hand until the hospital started to wake up again, watery sunlight filtering through the window. Then he stood and kissed her forehead.

“I’ll come back,” he said, putting the chair back where it had been and sliding the window open.

“I know you will.”

Damian closed the window and nodded goodbye to her before he headed for the Manor. More specifically, for the small graveyard behind it.

Damian stood in front of a gravestone and traced out the edges of where the too-small coffin lay with his eyes. A mistake he would never get to make right.

He was Damian Wayne, and he had two younger siblings. He should have had three.

“I’m sorry for how I treated you,” he said to the empty air. “I can’t fix that, and you can’t know I’m sorry. But I’ll do better with Duke and Stephanie. I promise.”

He stopped for a moment, stared at the plot of earth, at the fresh grass starting to grow.

“You were always Robin,” he told the ground. “I am sorry I never told you so. I’m sorry I was too angry to see it.”

Life moved on. Stephanie got better. Father got worse. Damian called Duke by his first name for the first time, and hated the surprise on his face almost more than he hated himself. He split his time between Bludhaven and Gotham, had dinners with the Kents when he could and avoided Conner who never stopped being angry, had dinners with his own family and tried to pretend that there wasn’t someone missing. He helped Stephanie with her physical therapy and Duke with his art class and learned to carry the weight of his guilt.

He learned to carry the weight of his father’s, too, learned to live with the way he would hide himself in the Cave for hours, the way he would stare at the stupid, horrible memorial, with its disgusting engraving.

A good soldier. As if that’s all that Timothy had been.

Damian had been taking care of his father since he was ten years old, and maybe his memory had been distorted in the years he’d been away, but he didn’t remember it ever being this hard.

He held Batman back when he tried to lose himself in the breaking of bones and pounding of knuckles on flesh. Carried him away from unwinnable battles that he’d never meant to walk away from. Drugged him into unconsciousness on the days that the Joker was out, and called for Flamebird instead. Held his hand when he was hallucinating, let him attack him rather than let him near Stephanie and Duke, let him call him Tim with a voice like his heart was missing. Covered up the bruises to avoid his guilt.

Father didn’t get better, not really. The others did- the dull lifelessness in Stephanie’s eyes was less, the times Duke would wake up screaming were becoming few and far between, the shattered look in Alfred’s eyes started to mend, slowly. His own guilt and regret didn’t, the mourning for the should-have-been, but it was easier to breathe through.

Damian had been taking care of his father for ten years. Now he just took care of the rest of his family, too. He teased Stephanie until she laughed again, carried her through the hopelessness when rebuilding her life seemed too hard, helped her with the schoolwork she’d fallen behind on. He listened for Duke’s nightmares and sat with him until he could sleep again, learned to play the games that he and Timothy had used to, stitched up his injuries when Father would not. He learned to make breakfast so that Alfred could sleep into the morning when he laid awake too long, cleaned up whatever disaster his siblings had created, tended to the grass in the graveyard, planted flowers there.

He couldn’t do much for Father, but he stayed, even when he screamed at Damian to leave.

Three months after Stephanie was injured, Gotham fell apart.

They held the city together as best they could. Which wasn’t very well, but… they did what they could, and Damian could not afford to focus on the negatives.

Stephanie organized information, recruited the street children to help, and though he knew it cut not to be able to go out as Batgirl anymore, she seemed more alive than she had been since Timothy’s death.

The rest of them tried to keep things together. And when the dust had settled, there was a girl who did not speak but shadowed Stephanie’s every move.

Cassandra, her name was. She didn’t speak, and the reason why made Damian burn with the injustice of it, but she could see, more clearly than most.

Father took her in, and he could see his own surprise reflected in Stephanie and Duke.

“She’s not my daughter,” Father told Damian when he asked. “But I won’t leave her on the street. I don’t want another child.”

Something about Cassandra made Father’s eyes look clear again. Damian smiled, and called her little sister.

They adjusted. Cassandra was kind, and perceptive, and quiet. In the end, it wasn’t hard to learn to live with her.

“I want her to be Batgirl,” Stephanie said one night.

“Batgirl,” Damian repeated. “Cassandra?”

Stephanie rolled her eyes. “No, Selina. Of course Cass.”

“Why?”

Stephanie looked away for a moment, then spoke. “Batgirl is a symbol. The same as Batman and Robin and Signal. It seems… wrong, that it should die forever. And Cass, she wants to help, I can see it. She wants to do good.”

Damian started to speak, but she didn’t stop talking. “I think- I want to keep doing it, helping, however I can. I can’t be a vigilante anymore, but you have to admit having me during No Man’s Land was helpful. I can help with the detective side of things, run comms, and I’m the best hacker we have right now, without- without Tim here. And I did always want to be a nurse. I can do that too.”

“I think that sounds like a good idea,” Damian said. “So Cassandra will be Batgirl, and you’ll be…”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I was hoping you would have ideas.”

Damian thought about it for a moment. Thought about her never backing down from Batman, thought about her refusing to be cowed by Cluemaster, thought about her telling him that he was an asshole without softening the blow, thought of every time she had said what she thought without any care for the consequences.

“Oracle,” he offered. “One who tells truths others cannot.”

Stephanie grinned. “I like that. Oracle.”

Damian smiled. “I thought you might.”

“Alright, smartass,” she said dryly, leaning over to punch his shoulder lightly. “Want to help me tell Cass about my idea?”

“If you insist,” he said, heaving an exaggerated sigh, and Stephanie’s laughs lingered in the air long after they had left.

It had only been a few months before Jason arrived.

He was brash, and passionate, and he trusted none of them, and Damian didn’t know what to do with him. Father obstinately insisted he wasn’t a Wayne, wasn’t even a permanent resident, but the look in his eyes was the same as it had been with Cassandra, was reminiscent of the way he’d looked at Stephanie and Duke. Father might not see him as a son, but Damian knew better.

“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted to Jon, staring at the ceiling of their apartment. “I… Little sisters, I can deal with. And Duke was my friend first. But I just- I don’t-”

“He’s not Tim,” Jon pointed out.

“I know that,” Damian said irritably. “Jason is more like I was at his age than he is like Timothy.”

Jon sighed, running his fingers through Damian’s hair gently. “Just… be kind to him. Be there for him. He’s not Tim but he’s still your little brother.”

“What if he wants to be Robin,” Damian asked through his hands.

“I don’t know,” Jon admitted. “Cross that bridge if you come to it, I guess.”

Damian groaned, scrubbing at his face. “I don’t like that answer.”

“You and your plans,” Jon said, smiling down at him. “Dami… for what it’s worth, I’m proud of you.”

Damian resisted the urge to say I’m not and asked, “What for?”

“You’re a good big brother,” he said simply.

“I wasn’t.”

“But you are now,” Jon said. “You can’t change the past, but you decided to do better, and I admire that.”

Damian let his hands fall, staring at the cracked white paint on the ceiling. “Is it bad, that I still… mourn, I suppose?”

“It’s only been six months,” Jon pointed out, leaning on the back of the couch. “I’d be more surprised if you weren’t.”

“I didn’t even know him,” Damian said, chest aching like it was cracked open and raw, like it could never be fixed. “He wasn’t my brother. We just shared a father.”

“You can grieve what should have been, and you can grieve him because your family is still hurting,” Jon said, blue eyes soft and kind. “That isn’t wrong. Just because you didn’t know him well doesn’t mean you can’t know that something’s missing.”

Damian reached up and tangled their fingers together, something harsh and choking in his throat. “If he hadn’t died, I don’t know if I would have ever gone back,” he rasped. “If I would have ever learned to be good. It was my fault, and I benefited from it.”

Jon sighed, squeezing his hand. “Change doesn’t come without cataclysm. Maybe it would have been something else, or maybe you’re right, but there’s no way to know. And you say you benefited, but Damian… you’re carrying all this guilt around, and you don’t deserve that.”

“I’m sorry,” Damian said.

“Don’t be.” Jon smiled, draped himself over the back of the couch to reach down and squeeze Damian’s arm. “I chose you, regrets and grumpiness and all, and I wouldn’t give that up for anything. You have nothing to apologize to me for.”

Damian closed his eyes, and pressed his forehead to Jon’s knuckles for a moment. “Thank you. For everything.”

Jon leaned forwards, feet floating up into the air, and kissed Damian’s forehead softly. “Always.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much, lately,” Damian said. “Gotham has… My family needed me.”

“I would never begrudge you that,” Jon said, hovering above Damian. “If you’re worried about us not having enough time together, bring me along.”

“I will,” Damian said, and tugged Jon down until he was lying on top of him, instead of floating a foot above. “If you’re willing to put up with Father.”

Jon laughed, resting his head on Damian’s shoulder. “I think I can handle it.”

Damian closed his eyes, breathed in the smell of Jon’s shampoo.

He would carry his guilt for the rest of his life. But maybe… maybe sometimes, he could put it down for a while.

Jason adjusted to the Manor more quickly than Damian had expected. He was wary around Cassandra and Father, liked Duke and Damian, and adored Stephanie and Alfred. He was brazen and fearless and hated to be pitied and he was traumatized and if someone got him talking about classic literature he would talk for hours and he couldn’t stand to step aside in the face of injustice. And of all of those, it was the last that scared Damian the most.

“He’s going to want to be Robin,” Damian murmured to Stephanie and Duke, watching from afar as Jason chattered away about books to Father.

“I know,” Stephanie said, voice wavering, and suddenly Damian remembered that she was only fifteen.

“We’ll figure it out,” Duke said. “There’s enough of us now, that we can keep him safe.”

Damian swallowed, watching as Jason gesticulated wildly, eyes bright. Father was listening attentively, and almost smiling.

“We’ll figure it out,” Duke repeated, leaning over until his shoulder touched Damian’s.

“We will,” Damian said, and felt the weight of the responsibilities he hadn’t fulfilled as heavily as ever.

Jason cornered Damian eventually, a fire in his eyes that immediately made him nervous. “Okay,” he said. “I have some questions.”

Damian looked up from the sketch he was working on, raising an eyebrow, and gestured to the seat across from him. Jason took it.

“There’s… Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ungrateful,” Jason started, picking at a loose thread on his hoodie. “I’m really glad that you all took me in, and you’ve all been really cool, but- I feel like there’s this whole minefield I gotta navigate here. There’s so many secrets.”

Damian blew out a long, controlled breath. He’d known this was coming.

He flipped to a new page, refocused, and put his pencil to paper again. “What do you want to know?”

Jason hesitated, chewing on his lower lip. Damian paused, looking him in the eye.

“Ask what you like, Jason,” he said. “No one will get angry at you for wanting to know. I certainly won’t.”

“Okay,” he said. “Well. There’s- okay, you know how you all act like there’s someone missing? Like, there’s a seat at the table that no one sits in. And there’s that bedroom across from Steph’s that’s full of some kid’s stuff even though I know no one else lives here. It’s even got, like, his fuckin’ homework on the desk. And Bruce is sad all the time, and sometimes he looks at me like he’s expecting someone else. I feel like I’m living with a ghost.”

Damian paused in sketching out the line of Jason’s jaw and closed his eyes for a steadying moment. “That’s… His name was Timothy,” he said. “Timothy Drake-Wayne. Most people called him Tim.”

“He was… your brother?” Jason asked.

Damian looked down at his sketchbook again, blocked out Jason’s hair. “He was Father’s son,” he said.

Jason’s eyes narrowed at the phrasing, before he decided to ignore it. “What happened to him?”

“He died,” Damian said simply. “Six months ago.”

“Oh,” Jason said. “That’s- I’m sorry.”

Damian closed his eyes, swallowed, then opened them again. “Father has never really recovered,” he said, clipped and clinical. “Having three sons again, he likely assumes you are Timothy on occasion, in his grief.”

Jason pulled on a loose string again. “Oh,” he said.

“Is there anything else you were wondering?” Damian asked, pushing away the choking regret.

“I- Well, yeah,” Jason said, voice going sharp with exasperation. “All of you disappear at night, and Alfred won’t say where you’ve gone. And sometimes you’re injured when you weren’t the day before, and look, I’m not stupid. I’m not gonna fall for all the shit excuses you give the reporters.”

Damian paused, shut his sketchbook. “We were wondering when you would ask,” he said, standing. “Come.”

“Uh,” Jason said. “Okay. Sure.”

Damian led him to the study, spun the hands of the old grandfather clock until the hidden mechanisms clicked and the door opened.

“Welcome to the family secret,” Damian said, gesturing toward the darkened stairs.

“Is this, like, some kind of rich person murder basement?” Jason asked. “Because I’m not going to walk into your rich people murder basement.”

“It’s not a murder basement,” Damian said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “Come on. Let’s not leave the door open.”

Cautiously, Jason followed him down the stairs, and gasped when the Cave opened up before them.

Stephanie spun her chair around when they entered, grinning. “Hey Dami, hey Jason!”

“Steph?” Jason asked. “What- why is there- what is-”

He stopped, shaking his head. “What the fuck?”

Stephanie laughed, bright and loud. “Come take a look, Jay.”

Jason practically ran down the stairs, spinning to look at everything at once. Eventually, his eyes caught on the row of cases with their suits.

“This is,” he started. “This is- you’re-”

He pressed a hand against the glass of the closest one- Damian’s. “You’re Nightwing,” he said. “And Bruce is Batman.”

“Yes,” Damian said.

“That… actually makes more sense than it should.” Jason turned to look at the other cases. “So Duke is Signal. And… Cass is Batgirl? The new one?”

“Yep,” Stephanie said, popping the ‘p’ and rocking back in the chair. “I gave it to her when I couldn’t go out on the streets anymore. For obvious reasons.”

“So you were the first Batgirl,” Jason said. “And Spoiler, before that.”

“And Robin for about a month, but no one really mentions that bit,” Stephanie said.

“And Damian was Robin first, and then the- well, I guess the third Robin was…” Jason turned to look at the memorial case.

“Tim,” Stephanie said, the cheer dropping from her voice.

Jason stared at the case for a long moment, then turned back to Damian. “Is your boyfriend Flamebird?”

Damian blinked. “My- Jon?”

Stephanie dissolved into laughter. “Damian, your face.”

“Are you done,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Stephanie laughed for almost a minute before she broke off into near-silent giggling. Damian ignored her.

“Jon is Flamebird, yes,” he said. “He takes care of Bludhaven when I’m here. And when he comes with me, he pays attention so he knows if he has to leave.”

“Cool,” Jason said. He turned back to stare at the case, gaze going distant.

Oh. Oh no.

Jason asked to be Robin three days later, and Damian’s heart nearly stopped. He was a fighter but he was so small, and young, and even though he had known it was coming for a moment all he could see was the autopsy photos.

Father allowed it, and rage warred with terror, and won. The resulting screaming match sent Damian to Bludhaven for a week, until Duke called to say Father had been insufferable and would he please come back.

He didn’t know what Father was thinking. But now that he knew, there was nothing that would keep Jason away. The best they could do was make sure he was ready.

Damian tasted acid in the back of his throat the first time he trained Jason. He had sparred with Cassandra, before they decided she was ready to be Batgirl, but she was different- as young as she was, as much as he wished she’d wait, Cassandra was skilled. She’d been trained as vigorously as he had been- likely more, from what he knew of her childhood. She could beat him, nine out of ten times.

Jason knew the basics, but he was untrained and it terrified him. He had never been so worried about Stephanie or Duke, though he knew they had been just as raw, and even younger.

Then again, when Stephanie and Duke had been training, Damian hadn’t been their brother.

Still, when a Bat chose to do something no one could stop them, and Jason was no exception. He would be Robin. So Damian taught him what he could, worked with Alfred to modify the uniform, add more armor, less flash. Followed Jason and Father on their first patrol, and for a month afterwards.

Slowly, the apprehension started to ease. Jason fit well as Robin, and as a Wayne. He grew more and more comfortable as time went on- joked with Duke and Stephanie, pestered Damian until he taught him the basics of swordfighting, taught Cassandra to read, learned to cook with Alfred, poked and prodded at Father until he cracked a smile.

Time moved on. Robin became a familiar sight on the streets again, bright and brilliant and laughing in a way Damian had never been. Cassandra’s grasp of language was stronger, and she learned to dance, the soft sounds of her feet and her music filling the empty, tired rooms of the Manor. Damian only lived in the Manor part-time, but Duke and Stephanie stayed, as did the younger kids. There were family dinners on Sundays and for the first time in years, the house felt alive again.

Even Father was smiling.

“Hey, D,” Stephanie called, waving him over. He stopped in the middle of his kata, then sheathed his katana, relaxing.

“What do you think of this guy?” she asked, pulling up a file. Damian looked it over, bracing a hand on the desk.

The Red Hood. One of the Joker’s old aliases, but the methods weren’t his style. Five dead, two of them corrupt politicians and the others dirty cops. All headshots. No witnesses- but not because they had been killed. Apparently, just because the killer was that good.

“Do you have any footage?” Damian asked.

“A little bit, from one of the security cameras.” She showed a still. It was grainy, in black and white, but the figure was clearly there.

“The mask is unusual, unless they’re a particularly paranoid citizen,” Duke said, coming to lean on the back of Stephanie’s chair. “Everything they’re wearing is a little… eccentric. Not criminal, though.”

“Except for the guns,” Stephanie pointed out. They were hidden under the long coat they wore, but the outline was clear.

“Hold on,” Jason said from behind them. “That’s- I’ve seen them.”

“You have?” Stephanie demanded. “When? You weren’t around any of their kills.”

“I think they’ve been following me on patrol.” Jason joined them at the computer, staring up at the picture.

“And you didn’t think to mention this before now?” Damian demanded, turning on him. Jason shrugged.

“I mean, B knows about it, ‘cus he’s B. I figured he’d tell you.”

“Father tells us very little,” Damian growled. “If there is someone following you on patrol, particularly someone who has any association to the Joker, then that is relevant information.”

“I didn’t know they were called the Red Hood,” Jason said defensively. “And I wasn’t even really sure they were actually following me, I’ve only really gotten glimpses.”

“Wanna-be vigilante, do you think?” Stephanie asked. “If they’re going after corrupt officials. No one they’ve killed has been innocent.”

“Potentially,” Damian said. “Jason. Are you certain they’ve been following you, rather than Father?”

“When we split up, I still see them,” Jason confirmed.

“I’d prefer if you stayed together for now,” Damian said, studying the image again. Roughly five foot six, dark hair with white streaks towards the front, thin-

“What?” Jason demanded. “I’m not a baby, Damian. I can take care of myself.”

“Be that as it may, this is an unknown element and we have little idea of the threat they pose,” Damian said flatly. “Until we know more, you will stay with Father, Signal or I on patrols.”

“Dames-”

“Jason,” Stephanie interrupted. “A bad guy with an obsession with Robin is never a good thing. Trust me.”

Jason’s eyes flicked to the memorial case.

“I’ll stay with B.”

“Good,” Damian said. He committed the rest of the file to memory, then returned to the mats.

“Spar with me,” he told Jason. The boy followed eagerly, eyes brightening with anticipation.

The Red Hood was… troubling, certainly, not least because they had no clear idea of their motivations. But they were aware, and with all of them looking out, they could keep Jason safe. They had to.

Barely two weeks later, Stephanie texted him.

come to gotham asap, ive got something in the basement you need to see

Jon leaned over his shoulder. “Want me to come with?”

“I’ll call if I need you,” Damian said, pushing him off. “Keep an eye on the-”

“The warehouse on Fourth, yes, I know,” Jon said. “Go, Damian, Bludhaven will be fine.”

He nodded. “I know.”

Forty minutes later, he parked his bike in the Cave garage, and before he had even taken his helmet off, Stephanie said, “Two dead in Arkham.”

“Guards?” Damian nodded to Cassandra, who waved, and came to stand behind Stephanie.

“Prisoners,” she said grimly. “And the guy who did it didn’t care about being seen.”

She played a clip from the security cameras, audio muted, and paused it when one of the guards started to move. Peeking out from under the standard-issue helmets was black and white hair, and Damian frowned.

“Is that-”

“Yeah.”

“Cassandra,” he said, voice sharper than he was intending. “Please go upstairs.”

There was a long moment’s hesitation, then a huffy sigh. “Okay.”

She paused on her way to the stairs, studying Damian. “Worried,” she said finally. “Is… important?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s important.”

“Help?” she asked, gesturing to herself.

“Not right now.”

Her eyes flicked between Stephanie and Damian for a moment, before she nodded. “Okay.”

She walked up the stairs, and they waited for the door to shut before turning back to the screen.

“This was an hour ago,” Stephanie said, gesturing to the frozen image of the Red Hood. “He posed as a guard, walked in, walked out. And didn’t bother covering his tracks. I mean, the Arkham cameras aren’t hard to hack, and we know he can, practically every kill he’s made that wasn’t a sniper he’s messed with the cameras. He wanted us to see him.”

“The Joker?” Damian asked.

“Still there. Didn’t even go near him.”

Stephanie rewound the footage, unmuted it, and hit play.

The Red Hood walked deliberately through the halls, passing between security cameras. He wasn’t wearing the mask he had been before, but the guards’ uniform covered most of his face, leaving just his eyes exposed. He walked to one of the cells, said something quietly to the guard outside, then opened the door.

Stephanie shifted to the camera inside the cell, showing Cobblepot, sitting on the bench. Hood shut the door, muffling the noise from inside. Then, without ceremony, he drew a knife.

Ten seconds later, the Penguin was dead. Hood wiped his gloves on the man’s jumpsuit, tucked the knife away again, and left.

“He’s a trained killer,” Damian said.

“Definitely. And he’s not scared at all, he just walks out again. Leaves the guard alive.”

Hood nodded to the guard as he left, and continued down the hallway to another cell. One of the other guards stopped him, and he flashed some kind of identification, then kept walking.

Hood opened the door to Bane’s cell, and they watched as he repeated the same calm, unhurried process. This time, he stopped, looking up at the camera, and waved to them with the hand not holding the knife. His glove was spotted with blood, which he wiped away again, and then left.

“He’s League,” Damian said, finally putting a finger on what was so familiar about him. “Trained by them, at least, and the knife is League.”

“That explains how good he is, at least,” she muttered. “He walks out, steps into one of the blind spots outside the walls, and never comes out again. He must have modified the footage, but he’s better than I am.”

“I’ll go to Arkham,” Damian said.

“Take Signal with you. I’ll try to see if I can find anything about the guard he was impersonating.”

Damian nodded. “We’ll find him.”

“I sure hope so,” Stephanie sighed. “I can’t help thinking he’s worse than he looks.”

“He’s planning something,” Damian said, looking at the screen, which was frozen on an image of Hood waving at the camera. “Playing a longer game, I believe.”

“A regular old chess master,” Stephanie muttered. “Those are never good.”

Damian stared at the screen for a moment longer. “No. They’re not.”

Damian collapsed into bed with a sigh, staring up at the ceiling of his Manor room. The entire day’s investigations hadn’t proved useful- none of the Arkham guards had noticed anything unusual until the Penguin and Bane were discovered dead, and the Hood, as little as he had cared to hide the security footage, had been good at covering his tracks. Stephanie had found the guard who was supposed to have been at the prison- left unconscious but unharmed, by a League toxin. He knew nothing about who had attacked him or why.

If the League of Assassins was in Gotham, they needed to know why. Unfortunately, the Hood was good at not being found. And he wasn’t anyone Damian recognized, nor anyone Mother had mentioned, the last he’d heard from her.

Damian lay in silence for a moment longer, then got up, heading down to the kitchen.

Jason was already there, sitting on the counter with a mug in his hands that he grimaced every time he sipped at.

“Hey, D,” he said. “Want tea? It’s awful ‘cus Alfred is still asleep.”

Damian shook his head and pulled a glass from the counter, padding over to the sink.

“Can I ask something?” Jason asked.

Damian sat on the counter beside him, taking a sip of water. “What do you want to know?”

“None of you really… want to talk about it,” Jason started, slow and uncertain. “But- the Red Hood. He’s worse than we thought, right? Like, we’ve known he’s around for weeks and everyone’s just getting more and more worried about it. Cass can see it too but it’s not like you talk to her any more than you talk to me.”

Damian sighed, and Jason watched his face. He’d convinced himself, somehow, that Jason and Cassandra would be fine with being kept in the dark. At least they had decided to ask directly, instead of sneaking around.

“I believe he’s a member of the League of Assassins, or at least trained by them,” Damian said, turning the glass of water in his hands. “He is concerningly skilled at covering his tracks, and unless he wants to be seen, we can’t find him.”

“Does he want to be seen?”

“Apparently he does when he’s posing as a guard to break into Arkham and murder Penguin and Bane,” Damian said dryly. “He even waved.”

“He-” Jason whistled. “That’s ballsy.”

“Very.”

“And you just… what, decided not to tell me and Cass about it?” Jason asked, voice sharp with irritation. “We’re not helpless. I mean, I know I’m not as good as you and Duke and B, but Cass is, and I’m still good. I’m the same age Steph was when I became Robin and you trusted her.”

“I know,” Damian admitted. “We’re simply…”

“Nervous?” Jason suggested.

“I suppose that’s not entirely inaccurate.”

“I mean, I get why,” Jason said, swirling the dregs of tea in his cup. “After what happened to- to Tim. But I don’t like you guys hiding things from us.”

“You’re right,” Damian said. “Keeping this from you and Cassandra does very little to keep you safe. Knowing you, you’ll find a way to get into trouble regardless.”

Jason grinned, unrepentant. “At least I asked you.”

“That you did,” Damian said, dropping to the floor again. He dumped his glass of water into the sink and rinsed the glass. “Are you planning on going back to bed?”

“I don’t think I can sleep,” Jason admitted. “I was just gonna go read for a while.”

“Neither can I,” Damian said. “I could use a sparring partner.”

“Really?” Jason brightened, then poured the half-empty tea in the sink. “Swordfighting?”

“Tomorrow,” Damian said. “Hand-to-hand tonight.”

Damian listened to Jason chatter about one of the criminals he’d beat two nights ago as they walked to the entrance to the Cave.

The doors slid open, and the back of his neck prickled. Something was wrong.

He clapped a hand over Jason’s mouth, cutting off his explanation, and pressed a finger to his lips. Jason’s eyes were wide, but he nodded.

Damian let go of him and crept forwards until they could see the main cavern. There was someone at the computer- not Stephanie, and not any of the others, either. Someone in a long coat, hood pushed back, with black-and-white hair tied up in a ponytail.

The Red Hood turned towards them, realizing he was being watched, and Damian reacted instinctively.

Father, in his perennial paranoia, had installed a store of batarangs at the top of the stairs for this very situation. The Red Hood shot the first out of the air, the bang ringing in the open space, but the second sunk into the back of his hand, knocking the gun away.

Hood growled under his breath, turning back to the computer, movements frantic. He yanked a flash drive out and stuffed it in his pocket, grabbing another gun with his left hand. The bullets hit stone a foot above their heads.

Interesting. Either he was right-handed… or he’d meant to miss.

Damian snatched up the nearest weapon- a pair of escrima sticks, Stephanie’s by the purple wrapping around the base- and attacked. Hood lifted his gun, but Damian knocked it out of his hand before he managed to get a shot off, and kicked it towards Jason.

Hood snatched up a bo staff discarded nearby and spun it, blocking Damian’s next blow, then attacked. He was good, even with an injured right hand, moving like he’d had years of practice with it.

Odd. Assassins didn’t generally use staffs, and Hood was clearly just as comfortable with the guns and blade.

Damian focused on the fight, hoping Jason wasn’t about to do something reckless. There was something off about the entire situation, and Damian didn’t know what it was. He didn’t like not knowing.

For one thing, why was there a League assassin in Gotham, if he was working with the League? The last he had heard from Mother, nothing was planned in Gotham, and while it wasn’t unusual for her to keep things from him the contacts he still had agreed. For another, why would the League have any problem with Penguin and Bane? Or with the corrupt officials Hood had killed?

And stalking Robin didn’t make sense for a League assassin, either- most of them were more interested in himself or Cassandra. Plus, the majority of them didn’t use guns, although it wasn’t entirely impossible.

On top of all that, there was something… familiar, about the way he fought. Something more than the obvious assassin training, something almost…

Damian saw a weak spot in the Red Hood’s guard, caused by the injured right hand, and pressed his advantage. His escrima stick smashed into the side of Hood’s face, breaking the mask and making the lens of his domino mask crack and fuzz.

Hood cursed, low and dark, and jammed his staff into Damian’s stomach, apparently just earning himself a few feet of room while he ripped off the mask and domino with his injured hand.

Damian’s breath caught.

“You-” he started, staring up into the face of his dead brother.

“You’re dead,” he managed, but his eyes were poisonous green, the white of his hair, no, no, it couldn’t be-

“Don’t try to follow me,” Timothy snarled, drawing a knife from beneath his coat. Clearly League of Assassins-made.

Grandfather, what have you done?

Damian instinctively brought his guard up again, even through his surprise, but Timothy was faster, and he brought the knife down, leaving a long cut down Damian’s bicep.

Timothy grabbed a batarang from the console and threw it past Damian with practiced precision. Jason yelped, but he sounded more surprised than hurt.

Timothy- the Red Hood- he grabbed his ruined mask from the floor and ran, stopping at a black motorcycle Damian didn’t recognize. The engine roared to life, deafeningly loud. Damian took a step after him, but the world tilted, and he stumbled.

Jason was at his side in an instant, blue eyes wide with fear. “Damian!”

“He poisoned me,” Damian managed, and passed out.

When he woke up, his mouth felt stuffed with cotton, but he wasn’t in pain. It took a moment to recognize the floaty, distant feeling of heavy-duty painkillers, and another to realize there was a weight against his side, and another in his hand.

He opened his eyes.

There was a curly, dark head tucked under his chin, a small body curled up on the medical cot beside him. Jason. Asleep, thankfully.

He tilted his head to see Jon, sitting in the chair beside him. His partner smiled, squeezing his hand.

“You’re awake,” Jon said, voice quiet.

“You’re here?”

“Your heartbeat sounded wrong.”

“Poison will do that,” Damian rasped. “How long?”

“Jason said you were attacked about an hour and a half ago. Alfred drugged him so he’d go to sleep. What happened?”

Damian didn’t respond, just dragged himself up into a sitting position and resettled Jason against his hip. Father, Stephanie, and Duke were clustered around the computer, talking in low voices.

Someone was missing. He frowned, and looked up.

Sure enough, Cassandra was perched on top of one of the lockers, a cape curled around her shoulders that looked too big to be hers- Father’s, probably, since she liked stealing them. “Cassandra,” he called.

She shuffled, then dropped soundlessly off the lockers, padding over to sit cross legged at the end of the bed instead. “Hurt,” she said, pointing to him.

“I am,” he agreed. “It’ll heal.”

She frowned. “Hurt.”

Cassandra leaned forwards, pressing her palm flat above his chest, above his heart. “Hurt here.”

“That will be… less easy to heal,” he admitted. “But I will be fine, Cassandra.”

“You… Scared?” She frowned, making grabbing motions with her hand as if she could snatch the words from the air. “Scared of… hurt. Because-”

She paused, then signed, Lost?

“No one here will punish me for being injured,” he promised. “It isn’t like the League.”

She shook her head. “You are… lost.”

Damian took a breath. “Take care of Jason for me, little one.”

He started to slide off the bed, Jon steadying him as he regained his balance, but she grabbed his hand.

“You can put it down,” she said quietly. “What you’re… carrying.”

Damian pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I know. Thank you.”

She curled up on the bed, draping Father’s cape around herself and Jason, and watched as he moved towards the computer.

There was a batarang lying on the floor. Damian picked it up.

It was the one Hood had shot out of the air. There was a perfect hole punched in the center, clean and precise. Jon whistled.

“He’s good,” Jon said.

“Very.” Damian pocketed it.

“Damian,” Stephanie called. “What the hell happened here?”

“Someone was here, right?” Duke asked. “It was fading by the time I got down here, but- the Red Hood?”

“He was here,” Damian confirmed.

“He’s good,” Stephanie said, turning back to the computer. “I mean, if it weren’t for the fact that obviously the Cave didn’t just sit empty for hours, I wouldn’t have thought the footage was tampered with.”

“He was looking for something,” Damian said, leaning on Stephanie’s chair until his head stopped spinning. “He had a flash drive.”

“He left something, too,” Stephanie muttered. “It’s… oh my god.”

Splashed across the screen in bold red font were the words YOUR JUSTICE WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH.

Damian stared at it and felt sick.

“Guess I was right about the wanna-be vigilante thing,” Stephanie murmured.

Father turned to Damian, eyes like chips of ice. “Report.”

“Robin and I came down to spar,” Damian started automatically. “Hood was standing at the computer. I couldn’t see what was on the screen. I threw two batarangs. The first was shot out of the air, the second knocked his gun from his hand. He shot at us and struck the wall. We fought until I broke his mask, which he took off, and then he injured my arm and left.”

“Your assessment of his fighting skills?” Father demanded.

“Very skilled. Equally capable with a firearm, blade, and staff. League-trained, I’m certain, but that isn’t his only background.”

“You said he shot a batarang out of the air?” Duke asked. “That’s hard to do.”

Damian pulled out the batarang and held it out. The others inspected it, noted the perfect hole in the center. Duke whistled.

“You saw his face,” Stephanie said, strangely intent as she stared at him. “Do you have any idea, or a description-”

Damian took a steadying breath. “I’m… I don’t know.”

“Damian,” she said flatly. “What is it.”

He swallowed and looked around, scanning the ground. His second batarang was lying on the ground, one sharp end still bloody and mostly dried. He picked it up and held it to her, careful not to cut himself.

“What am I looking for?” she asked, already rolling over to the bank of machinery to test it.

“Matches in our database,” he said. “And Lazarus traces.”

“You think he’s been resurrected, and that he’s in our database,” she said slowly, staring at him, fear and hope warring in her eyes. Hope was winning.

“I don’t want to say until we’re sure,” Damian said. Stephanie stared at him, then nodded.

“Damian,” Father said.

“Father, just-” He breathed. “Don’t ask me. Not until the results come back.”

Father looked like he wanted to push further, but finally, he nodded.

Damian sat on one of the benches, feeling abruptly as if the rug had been pulled out from under him. Jon sat next to him, silent but steady.

“You alright?” Duke asked, brow furrowed with concern.

“Fine,” Damian said, and they all knew he was lying.

“Want me to ask Alfred to make tea?” he asked.

If I drink tea right now I’m going to throw up, Damian thought about saying. He shook his head instead.

“Okay,” Duke said. “Well- let me know if you need anything, dude. And we’ll figure it out.”

“Thank you,” Damian rasped, and was grateful when he left.

Jon put his arm around Damian’s shoulders. “Do you want me to stay?”

“I- Would you?”

“Of course,” Jon said, holding him a little tighter. “I may not be a Bat, but you’re my family, Dami. I’ll be here until you want me to let go.”

Damian curled his hand around Jon’s free one. “Thank you.”

The Cave was oppressively still, silent but for the soft whirring of machinery. Stephanie, Father, and Cassandra were all staring at him, their gazes heavy with expectation, curiosity, worry. It made his stomach churn.

Damian put his head against Jon’s shoulder and closed his eyes, trying not to think of failure.

The machine beeped, and Damian sat up straight, watching the computer screen with his heart in his throat. Jon squeezed his hand.

He wasn’t sure which answer he was more afraid of.

The screen flashed, and Stephanie put her hands to her mouth, a choked sound rising from her throat. The coffee cup in Father’s hands fell and shattered into a thousand glittering pieces.

TIM DRAKE-WAYNE: MATCH, the results read. And underneath that, a line about the Lazarus remnants present in his blood.

What did they do?

“Oh my god,” Stephanie whispered, voice thick with tears.

Father took a hesitant step forwards the screen, uncaring of the ceramic crunching under his foot. Then his face went hard. “Run it again.”

“B-” Stephanie started.

“Run it again,” he repeated.

They ran it again. And a third time.

Damian stared at the screen until his vision blurred, and then for a while after. Stephanie was talking to Duke in the corner, both of their voices fast and trembling with what was either anxiety or excitement. Father was stone. Jason and Cassandra, curled on the cot, were whispering to each other.

“Damian?” Jon asked.

Damian didn’t respond.

“Dami,” he said, slow and gentle, like he was calming a skittish animal. “Your hands are shaking.”

He looked down. They were.

“Oh,” he said.

“Do you want me to go?”

Damian closed his eyes. “Can we go home,” he whispered. “I need- to breathe.”

“Okay,” Jon said, standing. “Uh- I’ll fly us back and come get your bike later?”

Damian nodded, and let Jon pull him to his feet.

The flight back was silent, and Damian closed his eyes against the wind. Everything seemed muffled, distant, wrong.

He sat on the floor as soon as they entered the apartment and buried his face in Titus’ fur.

“Hey,” Jon whispered. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Damian murmured. “I- If he’s alive-”

He took a deep breath. “I never thought I’d get a second chance,” he said. “I thought- I have to live with who I was and what I did forever. I wasn’t a good person.”

“If you get a second chance, then… isn’t that good?”

Damian closed his eyes. “He’s killed at least twenty people. Probably more, but he’s good at covering his tracks. He’s committed murders in cold blood and he’s taunted us and he’s been stalking Jason.”

Jon sat down next to him but didn’t say anything. Alfred came to greet him, paws on Damian’s knees, and he scratched under his chin lightly.

“He’s been with the League,” he said finally. “With my grandfather. In the Pit. And that’s… You don’t come out of that the same as you went in. The League of Assassins chews you up and spits you out and you are never the same.”

Jon placed a hand on his back, warm and steady. “Dami-”

“The League made me,” he interrupted. “And they made Cassandra, and now they have remade my brother, and I do not know what he’s become. Stephanie and Duke and Father want their Timothy back and I think that the disappointment may break them.”

“Your family aren’t stupid,” Jon pointed out. “They know what he’s done.”

“They’re not,” Damian agreed. “But Timothy has always been a blind spot.”

Jon sighed, kissed his temple. “We’ll figure it out. Okay? We always do. For now, you should get some sleep.”

Damian sighed. “Okay.”

Alfred meowed at him, and he leaned forwards to kiss the white spot between his ears.

They’d figure it out.

His phone rang early the next morning, and Damian jolted awake, his arm aching but his head clear. He picked it up.

“You have to come back to Gotham,” Jason said immediately.

Damian stood, immediately going for his gear. “What is it?”

“Croc is dead,” Jason said. “It was Tim. He’s still there and you’re the only one who can get there fast enough if Jon takes you.”

“On it. Twelve minutes.” Damian hung up and opened his door. Jon was already waiting.

Two minutes later, they were shooting into the sky, faster than normal. The wind stung his face, and his heartbeat pounded against his ribs.

They touched down inside Arkham’s gates, and one of the guards waved them over, face breaking into a relieved smile.

“Nightwing! Flamebird!” he shouted. “You heard what’s going on?”

“The basics,” Damian said. “The Red Hood?”

“He’s here,” the man confirmed. “No idea how the hell the bastard got in. He got to Croc and it looks like he’s heading after Joker.”

The Joker, who had killed him. Damian’s blood froze.

“Lock down the compound, monitor the other prisoners, and do not confront Hood if it can be avoided,” Damian ordered, moving to link up his comms with Oracle’s systems.

“Nightwing, there’s something happening in Bludhaven,” Jon said, looking torn. “The drug dealers we’ve been looking for by the sound of it. I don’t want to leave-”

“Go,” Damian said. “I’ll handle this.”

Jon nodded, shooting into the air in a blur of blue and gold. Damian tapped his comm.

“Oracle,” he said. “Tell me what I’m walking into.”

“He didn’t bother impersonating a guard this time,” she reported. “Slipped in through a gap in the cameras and went straight to Croc’s cell. No one else is dead but he knocked some of the guards around when they got in his way. He’s heading for the Joker’s cell.”

Damian started to run, traversing the facility by memory. It was eerily silent, more than it should have been, and it made his skin crawl.

“He’s at the Joker’s cell,” Oracle said, urgency bleeding into her voice. “You’re one corridor down.”

Damian stopped when he caught a glimpse of a figure standing in the entrance to a cell, identifying Timothy at a glance. He turned on his heel, drawing his katana as he went.

The door to the cell was open. Joker was lying against one of the walls, still in the prison-issue straightjacket, his horrible, scratchy laughter like a broken record, loud in the too-small room. Timothy was aiming a gun at his head.

Damian froze when the other, in his right hand- much more healed than it should have been, although the glove was slightly bulky with bandages- swung up to aim at his jaw.

“Nightwing,” Timothy said, voice flat and expressionless. “I was wondering if they would send you.”

“Red Hood,” Damian said cautiously, stepping into the cell. “Stand down.”

Timothy laughed, sharp and derisive. “Really?”

The Joker pulled himself up to sit, laughter breaking off into wheezing. “Two little birds!” he cried, face turning up into a crazed, horrible smile. “Ah, don’t you love family reunions?”

“Shut up,” Timothy snarled. His hands were shaking.

“Red Hood,” Damian tried again. “Murder isn’t-”

“I will shoot you in the head,” Timothy warned.

“I can’t let you kill him.”

Timothy took his eyes off the Joker, glaring at him with acid-green eyes, the lenses of the domino mask slid back. The mask was repaired or replaced, but the edges of a bruise peeked out from underneath. “And what, let him kill another child? Your new Robin? Let him kill however many thousands of people-”

“It isn’t our-”

“It isn’t our place to be judge, jury, and executioner,” Timothy parroted. “We have to give the system a chance to work. I believed that once.”

He turned back to the Joker. “Maybe it was before I was murdered.”

Joker laughed, hysterical and demented, throat damaged by his own gas for so many years. “Shoot me,” he hissed. “It’s a wonderful joke, isn’t it? Batman’s perfect little birdie, fallen so far? Kill me and clip your own wings this time.”

“Okay,” Timothy said. The gunshot echoed in the tiny room, and red misted the wall behind the clown’s head, frozen in a permanent smile, blood trickling down his nose.

Three gunshots went off in quick succession, and Timothy paused to wipe a spot of blood from his mask, smearing it across his fingertips.

“Shall we take this outside?” Timothy said, turning away from the corpse.

“Did he just-” Oracle started.

“I should arrest you right now,” Damian said. There was a sick curl of satisfaction in his gut at seeing the monster’s body crumpled pathetically in the corner.

“Do you think there’s any cell in the world that could hold me?”

Timothy didn’t seem to need an answer to that, because he attacked without another second’s thought, vicious and unyielding. Damian was almost surprised by the ferocity of it.

He shouldn’t have been, admittedly. He cursed himself for losing focus when Timothy’s blade flicked out, catching him on the cheekbone- thankfully, not the poisoned blade.

Blood rolled hot down his face as Timothy started to run, boots leaving bloody footprints on the white floors. Damian followed, not bothering to wipe away the blood that dripped off his jaw.

They ended up on the roof, slick with rain, and Timothy dropped to the ground, disappearing into the shadows. The sound of a motorcycle engine roaring to life was audible over the pounding rain, and Damian cursed.

“He’s heading back to the city,” Oracle said over the comms. “There’s a bike hidden just outside the gates that you can take. Batman and Signal are already out so they’ll try to cut him off.”

“Understood,” he said, breaking out into a run. The bike was nothing fancy, just one of the standard motorcycles that they kept in strategic locations around the city in case they were stranded. Still, it was powerful enough to keep up with Timothy’s.

Oracle quietly gave him directions as he drove, ending at a fire escape in a dingy alley. Timothy’s bike was nowhere to be seen, but he trusted Oracle’s directions, leaving the bike behind and leaping up to the fire escape.

Timothy’s shadow was visible through the rain as he hurled himself between buildings, rolling with an easy grace, unimpeded by the rain. Damian followed, the impact of his boots sending up water as he ran.

A shadow dropped from the sky, blocking the rain for a brief moment, and Timothy stopped short, body going perfectly still in an instant.

Father straightened, slow and careful in a way that meant he was burning inside, and Damian stopped, trapping Timothy between them.

“Tim,” Father said, voice aching. Timothy pulled his gun and pointed it straight at Father’s chest. Everyone went still.

There was the quiet sound of boots hitting waterlogged concrete as Signal arrived, taking in the situation wordlessly.

“Get out of my way, Batman,” Timothy said, calm and flat and emotionless.

“Tim,” Father said again, and the safety clicked off.

Another pair of boots hit the roof, and Damian’s heart dropped to his stomach.

Robin was standing on the roof, grapple gun rewinding in his hand, and beside him was a patch of shadow that solidified into Batgirl when he looked closer.

Of course. Where Jason went, Cassandra was never far behind. Never mind that neither of them should be here.

“Robin,” Damian hissed. “Go home.”

“No,” Robin said stubbornly. Batgirl, beside him, shook her head.

Timothy turned, never taking his gun off of Father’s chest, to look at Jason. “The new kid,” he said, head tilting in a way that made Cassandra’s entire body tense up. “Where’d they find you, then?”

“Crime Alley,” Jason said, his voice betraying none of the fear Damian could see in his clenched fists.

“Really.” Timothy studied him. “I’m surprised big brother even let you near that uniform.”

Damian stiffened.

Timothy turned on him, wet hair swinging with the movement, trailing an arc of glittering droplets. “Don’t act like you ever accepted me,” he said, voice like knives. “Don’t act like you ever gave a shit about me.”

Damian said nothing.

“I’m surprised any of you let him near that uniform,” Timothy said, turning to look at Batman and Signal again. “Considering the last kid died in it. Ah, but of course, you have to- how did you phrase it, Damian? ‘Find another undeserving child to put in a uniform and call a soldier?’”

Damian couldn’t help the choked noise he made at that. Timothy’s head tilted, like a predator scenting prey. Scenting weakness.

“You killed the Joker,” Father said.

“Are you going to tell me it was wrong?” Timothy snarled, rounding on him again. “If you had done something, maybe you wouldn’t have to use children as your cannon fodder.”

None of them said anything, and Timothy scoffed. “Fine. You have your way; I have mine.”

The gun moved away from Father’s chest, and before any of them could react, there was a bang and Jason screamed.

Instinctively, Damian dove for him, catching him before he could crumple to the ground. Timothy used his distraction as an opportunity to leap back to the other roof, firing warning shots that cracked into the pavement at Father’s feet when he tried to follow.

“Consider this a lesson,” Timothy said. “Robin should never have existed. No more child soldiers, Bruce.”

He jumped over the edge of the roof, coat flapping behind him, and disappeared.

Jason groaned, hands pressed to the bullet wound in his thigh. Timothy had found a weak spot in the armor, a half-inch gap that shouldn’t have been a problem, unless you knew it was there.

It wasn’t life-threatening. But only just.

Jason whimpered again, and Damian replaced his hands with his own, holding the boy against his chest.

“Hush, little one,” he murmured, forcing his voice to stay steady. “Easy, it’s alright.”

“I’m s- sorry,” Jason gasped, voice thin and weak with pain. “I’m- I’m-”

“Shhh,” Damian whispered against his hair. “Easy, Robin.”

“The Batmobile is at street level,” Father said. His voice sounded like he’d swallowed nails, and when Damian looked up, his lips were trembling.

He couldn’t focus on that now.

He lifted Jason into his arms- the boy was so small, so light, a lifetime of malnutrition not corrected even by two years of safety- and worked his way down the building, more careful than he would have been without the precious weight he carried.

Father moved towards the driver’s seat, but Duke intercepted him, looking meaningfully towards his shaking hands. After a moment, he acquiesced.

Cassandra opened the door for Damian, who sat down, holding Jason against his chest. She scrambled to sit on the other side, curling her knees up to her chest.

Duke changed gears and started driving as soon as the doors shut, the car moving near-silently through the deserted, rainy streets. Damian hummed low in his throat, barely enough to hear, hyper-aware of the way Jason’s breathing hitched.

Stephanie was waiting for them when they got back, blond hair a mess of curls like she’d been pulling on it, tear tracks etched into her cheeks, face twisted with… anger, grief, pain, despair. With agony.

“Give him here,” she snapped at Damian, so vicious that his grip instinctively tightened. Then he relaxed, setting Jason down on the bed.

“Move,” she muttered, pushing him aside as she wheeled over to attend to him. Damian took a step back, then another, and another.

Cassandra took him by the wrist, mask pulled back to show her face. It was then that he realized his hands were bloody.

“Oh,” he said. “Thank you.”

She pointed at the showers, and he nodded.

He dumped his uniform aside with less care than he should have, then leaned against the wall while water ran down his face. He scrubbed at his hands until they were raw, wishing he could forget the feeling of Jason’s blood on them, wishing he could forget the way they were still trembling.

He scrubbed at his face, hissing as he reopened the cut on his cheekbone. The water stung as it mingled in the cut, dripping pink off of his jaw.

Jason was sleeping when he emerged, Cassandra sitting curled at his feet. Father had disappeared. Duke and Stephanie were hovering over the computer, faces lit blue.

He padded over to look at the screen. The security footage from Joker’s cell was playing.

“It’s definitely him, you think?” Duke asked quietly. “You saw him the closest.”

“How would he know,” Stephanie muttered, and her voice was so enraged that Damian almost stepped away. As it was, his hands curled into fists in his pockets. “It’s not like he ever bothered being around Tim when he was alive.”

Damian swallowed, but didn’t respond. He deserved that.

“He certainly seemed to be,” Damian said quietly. His cheek itched under the dried blood.

Duke took a deep breath. “What do we do now?”

“We bring him home,” Stephanie said sharply. “What else is there to do?”

“That’s… not as easy as you make it sound,” Damian said carefully. “He doesn’t seem particularly…”

“You should have brought him home,” she hissed, turning on him, eyes shiny with unshed tears. “You were there, in that cell. You should have brought him home.”

“And how did you expect me to do so?” Damian said flatly. “It’s not as if he wanted to come with me.”

“It’s Tim!” she shouted. “You could have at least tried!”

“Do you really believe that he wants to come back?” Damian asked. “After everything he’s done?”

“We don’t give up on family!” Stephanie screamed, tears starting to fall. “At least, I don’t! You should have- should have-”

Damian took a long breath, closing his eyes. “So if I brought him home,” he said, voice sounding dull even to his own ears. “If I made him come back with me. What would we do with him?”

“What do you mean what would we do with him?”

“He’s killed more people than you and I can count on our hands,” Damian pointed out. “He’s killed four Rogues. He shot Jason. He clearly doesn’t want to be here. Where would we put him? Arkham? If he can break in, he can break out.”

“We wouldn’t put him in fucking Arkham, asshole,” she snapped. “Is that what home means to you? A prison cell?”

“He doesn’t want to be here,” Damian said, forcing himself not to shout. “We bring him back to the Cave, or the Manor, and at best he leaves again. At worst, he hurts one of the kids, worse than he already has. He goes and he kills more people and that is on us, Stephanie.”

“You don’t care!” she screamed. “You don’t even want him back! You don’t care because you always hated him and you just don’t want to own up to the fact that you’re a terrible person!”

“Steph,” Duke said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

He opened his mouth to say something, but she snatched up a book lying on the desk and hurled it at him. He flinched and didn’t dodge in time, the sharp corner of the hard cover cutting into his eyebrow, the flat edge slamming into his eye.

He stumbled, blinking static out of his vision, and touched his face, fingertips coming back bloody.

Duke crouched at her side, pulling her into a hug, and mouthed Sorry at Damian.

He looked down at the book, Medical Microbiology printed in plain white text, the laminated cover dotted with his blood.

He took a step back, then another, and another, then turned away, breath harsh and shaky, adrenaline fading, leaving him unsteady.

Cassandra was huddled at the end of Jason’s cot, still in most of her uniform, watching him with wide, worried eyes. He walked over to her, body feeling disconnected, like his wires had worn out, left the connections fuzzy.

“I’m alright,” he said.

“No.”

“I’m alright,” he said again, and wondered if he lied to himself for long enough, would he start to believe it?

She touched her face, over her eyebrow and on her cheekbone, where he knew his cuts were still bleeding sluggishly.

“Find Alfred,” she said, and he nodded.

“I will.”

He leaned over to kiss Jason’s forehead, and wiped away a smudge of blood that smeared onto his face as he did so. The boy was still asleep, face creased with pain.

“I will… keep watch,” Cassandra said, eyes fixed on his face.

“Thank you.”

He moved towards the stairs, ignoring the soft sound of voices by the computer, and pushed the door open.

Alfred was waiting for him, eyes widening at the blood caked on his face. “Master Damian,” he said. “Did Miss Stephanie not-”

“I don’t think Stephanie is inclined to assist me with anything right now,” Damian said, and let Alfred herd him into the bathroom, wipe the blood off of his face, close the wounds with butterfly stitches.

Alfred cupped his face in his hands, tilting his head this way and that, looking for anything he had missed. Damian closed his eyes, leaning into the touch.

“I don’t know what to do,” he mumbled, barely audible.

“Do, Master Damian?”

“Stephanie is hysterical, and Duke is caught in the middle,” he said. “Cassandra is scared, and Jason is hurt, and Father is- Father. We’re all falling apart and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“What do you want to do?” Alfred asked softly.

He wanted to go home and bury his face in Titus’ fur. He wanted to go to sleep and wake up when none of this had ever happened. He wanted to be eighteen again, and do better this time.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Alfred sighed, soft and gentle, and took his hands. “Go to sleep, lad,” he said eventually. “Rest will do you good.”

Damian nodded, and stood.

He paused at the door to his father’s room. He was sitting in bed, laptop casting blue shadows across his face, an odd expression on his face. Something balancing on the edge of broken.

Damian was twenty-three years old, and it had been a long, long time since he’d been the boy thinking he could keep Father’s nightmares away with his presence. A long, long time since he’d even considered sleeping in his bed at night.

But Stephanie’s fury, the torn look on Duke’s face, Jason and Cassandra, Timothy- he couldn’t fix that. He couldn’t even fix this, not really. But he could try.

He padded inside, gently tugged the computer from Father’s hands. He set it on the bedside table, pulled him down to lie in bed.

Father frowned, thumb tracing over the new cut on his brow. Damian closed his eyes at the touch, then settled his head on Father’s shoulder, draping an arm across his chest.

Father sighed, then pulled Damian closer, kissed his hair.

And somehow, they both slept.

When Damian woke up, the sunlight was filtering through the curtains, faint and watery through the remaining rainclouds. Cassandra had joined them at some point, curled in a tight ball.

Carefully, Damian pulled himself away from Father and Cassandra, slipping out of the bed. Cassandra shifted, eyes opening just slightly to peer up at him.

“Go back to sleep,” he whispered, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

Alfred was making breakfast when he slipped into the kitchen. “Ah, Master Damian,” he said. “Would you mind taking a plate down to your sister?”

He raised an eyebrow, wincing as it pulled on the bandages. “Stephanie hasn’t come back upstairs yet?”

Alfred sighed, and Damian took that as a no.

“I’ll take it to her,” he said, picking up the extra plate.

He could hear the sound of computer keys clattering before he even started down the stairs. Stephanie was hunched over the computer, muttering to herself, still in her clothes from the night before.

He set the plate down by her elbow. “Have you slept?”

“Mm,” she said, not looking away from the screen. He sighed.

“Stephanie. Have you slept?”

“I sent Cassie up to bed and then Duke and I took it in shifts after you left,” she muttered, grimacing at an error message that blinked red.

“What is this?” he asked, looking at the screen.

“Tracking Tim. Problem is he’s better at this than I am.” She paused for a moment, taking a long breath.

“We’ll find him,” she said eventually, going back to the keyboard. “We’ll bring him home.”

Damian couldn’t bring himself to argue, not when her face was drawn and lined with old grief.

“How’s Jason?” he said instead.

“Sleeping. He’ll be fine.”

He turned to the medbay anyway, walked over to brush a hand across Jason’s hair, tuck the blanket more securely around his shoulders.

“You are exactly like B,” Stephanie said, voice sharp and irritable. Damian blinked.

“Stephanie-”

“I just said he’s fine,” she interrupted. “I know you don’t think I can do my job, but I know what I’m doing. Ever considered trusting me?”

Damian opened his mouth, then closed it again, electing to say nothing. Instead, he picked up the textbook, still lying on the floor where she’d thrown it, and set it on the desk.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asked, disliking how small his voice was.

That made her look up, and she blinked at him. “I- oh. No, I- shit, Dami, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

She frowned at him. “For yelling at you? For throwing a book at your head? I’ve been completely unfair to you and you deserve an apology.”

“It’s okay,” he said.

“Don’t say that, it’s not okay.” She turned away from the monitor, spinning her chair to face him. “Me missing Tim, wanting him back- that’s not an excuse to act like I have been. I know you care, and I know you want him back too, and you were right that he doesn’t want to come back.”

“It’s okay,” he said again. “You were angry, and grieving, and I understand.”

“Just shut up and come here,” she sighed, holding her arms out. He let himself slump into them bonelessly, hiding his face in her shoulder.

Maybe if the two of them were anyone else, he would have felt silly taking comfort from a seventeen-year-old girl, but he knew the weight she carried, and she knew his.

She drew back and kissed the cut above his brow lightly. “I’m sorry for that.”

“I’ve had worse,” Damian said, and then the computer beeped.

Stephanie turned back to it, brows shooting up. “Something’s happened.”

She muttered to herself briefly, then pulled up a news clip, aired less than two minutes ago. It took a moment to recognize the roof of Wayne Enterprises, and another to recognize the figures standing on it.

Timothy, in full Red Hood regalia. And Black Mask, tied up and bloody.

“He wants to put on a show,” Stephanie murmured.

Timothy waved at the camera, then put his gun to the criminal’s forehead. They were too far away to pick up the sound of the gunshot, or the spray of blood, but not too far to see the way Sionis fell, like a broken marionette.

Timothy holstered the gun and held up his hands. Sign language.

Tell N-I-G-H-T-W-I-N-G I’m waiting.

“How’s your arm?” Stephanie asked, voice strained.

“Workable,” Damian said, already running for his uniform.

“Shouldn’t you wait for B and Duke?” she called after him, syncing up his comm with her system.

“No time,” he said, voice echoing through the speakers. “I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t die,” she ordered, as he revved his bike.

He paused, meeting her gaze. “Stephanie,” he said. “I will do my best to bring him home. I promise.”

She shook her head. “Prioritize,” she said. “As much as I want him back, that’s not feasible right now. Now go!”

He nodded, and left.

Gothamites knew by now, after more than ten years of experience, to get out of his way as he raced through the streets, dipping between cars with a blatant disregard for traffic laws. As such, it took less time for him to reach the base of the W.E. building than it would have taken anyone else.

“Oracle,” he said. “Is Hood still waiting?”

“As far as I can tell,” she reported. “He’s- look out-”

A bullet cracked the pavement to his right, and he looked up to see Timothy silhouetted against the lights of the sign. He swore under his breath.

Father had specifically designed his buildings to be easy to climb in a hurry. Damian crested the roof within minutes and stilled at the gun aimed at his face.

“Hey, Nightwing,” Timothy said. “Long time no see.”

“It’s been less than twenty-four hours,” Damian said automatically, pulling himself to stand on the roof. Timothy scoffed.

“Don’t be pedantic.”

Damian glanced over at Sionus’ body, crumpled against the roof, blood staining the concrete. Timothy followed his gaze.

“Going to bring me in, Nightwing?” Timothy asked, light and friendly.

“Why did you call me here?” Damian asked.

“I thought it was time for us to have a chat,” Timothy said, voice dropping into something dark and vicious on the last word. “Between brothers.”

Damian glanced up at the news helicopter, still circling above them. “Is this really the place?”

“Probably not,” Timothy said, and as if on a silent signal, they started to run.

Timothy led them through a long, circuitous path through the city, even long after the reporters had stopped following. If Damian didn’t know better, he would have thought Timothy was… playing. Racing him.

Getting a feel for him, certainly. Whether it was to size him up for a fight, or something else, he didn’t know.

They came to a stop on a dingy roof not far from Crime Alley. Timothy turned to face him, falling into a fighting stance. He passed over the guns, going instead for the swords holstered at his back.

Damian drew his katana.

“So,” he said. “A chat.”

“We can multitask,” Timothy said, and attacked.

His movements were telegraphed, slow, easy to block. Damian narrowed his eyes.

“You got those from the League,” he said, flatly. “They would have taught you better than that.”

“They did.” They circled each other, each watching for the flicker of movement that would betray an oncoming attack. “Ra’s was most insistent that I learn to use a sword properly.”

Damian’s lip curled. “So it was Grandfather who brought you back.”

Timothy didn’t respond, just attacked, this time a little faster, a little harder to block.

“He tried to manipulate me,” Timothy said, breathing coming harder. “Tried to get me to be angry with Jason, for stealing my title. With Bruce, for not avenging me.”

Damian didn’t reply.

“What Ra’s didn’t realize was that I understand those things,” Timothy continued. “Any child would want to be Robin. I was never intending on being the last, any more than I was the first. I was just expecting that Batman would learn, after he got one son killed. Or maybe Stephanie would realize, after the Joker broke her. No more child soldiers.”

“It wasn’t Father’s choice,” Damian said.

Timothy rolled his eyes, exaggerated the movement to make it clear behind the domino mask. “Don’t try to convince me that you made him Robin. After all- what was it you said? Robin should stay buried.”

“No one gave it to him,” Damian said quietly. “He took it.”

“The last child who took it you called a liar and a thief,” Timothy said. “This one you call little brother.”

“I was wrong.”

Timothy went still, face softening with surprise, then attacked again, scoring a shallow cut across Damian’s hip- not enough to even break skin, but leaving a scratch in the armor.

“I was wrong,” Damian repeated softly, when he’d won a few feet of breathing room. “I treated you horribly, and you deserved so much better. I should have been your brother. I should- I should have been a lot of things, but I wasn’t, and I can’t go back. If I could fix it I would do so. Without hesitation.”

“You can’t.”

Damian stopped, guard dropping. “I know,” he said. “I know. Some things don’t get second chances.”

Timothy tore off his mask, throwing it to the ground. His eyes were almost glowing with rage, shoulders heaving, the black eye almost entirely gone.

He attacked before Damian got the chance to bring his guard up again, and finally, Damian saw the man- the boy his grandfather had trained.

“I don’t want your guilt,” Timothy said, quietly. “I don’t want your remorse. I do not care if you wish you could take it back, because you can’t. You are not my brother and you are not forgiven.”

Damian breathed shallowly, the point of Timothy’s sword digging into his neck. “I know, Timothy,” he said, careful not to cut his own throat.

“Don’t call me that,” Timothy snarled. “Don’t act like I matter to you now.”

“You do,” Damian said, holding Timothy’s gaze no matter how the vicious green made him shiver. “You always will.”

Timothy glared at him for another long moment, then stepped back, taking the tip of his sword away from his throat.

They faced each other as Damian took a deep breath, touching a hand to his neck. Neither one spoke for a long moment.

“Going to bring me in, Nightwing?” Timothy said again, voice dull and listless.

“I should,” Damian said. “You shot Robin. You’ve killed, by our count, twenty-two people. You have blood on your hands, Hood.”

“So do you.”

It wasn’t a lie. It had been a long, long time since he had thought about the things he had done, before Father, before Gotham, before Robin. But the stains never really came off.

Just another thing he could never atone for.

“And it was the same people who put it there,” Damian said.

“So it was.”

“You know who they are,” Damian said, knuckles clenching around the hilt of his katana. “You know what they do. They aren’t good people.”

So why? he didn’t say.

Timothy smiled without humor. “You’re forgetting, Damian,” he said. “Neither am I. I kill people, and I destroy things, and I shot a child to save my own skin. I have no illusions about my morality.”

He sheathed his swords, turned away to gaze over the city. Damian could have attacked him, could have brought him down in a matter of moments, left him in prison to rot.

He didn’t.

“That’s the other thing Ra’s got wrong,” Timothy said, glancing over at Damian as he moved to stand beside him. “He thought I should be angry that the Joker still lived. That no one bothered to avenge me, or even make sure that something like what happened to Steph couldn’t happen. But Gotham needs Batman. He can’t kill. If he does, then everything he’s done, every example he’s set, everything he’s built, is meaningless. He’s just another criminal.”

Timothy watched the city. Damian watched him.

“Gotham needs Batman,” he said. “But Gotham needs a monster, too.”

Damian said nothing.

“This city is safer than it was two months ago,” Timothy said, mild and calm, perfectly rational. “The Joker will never kill another person or ruin another life. Neither will any of the others. The corrupt politicians I’ve killed can’t hurt anyone, and if people like Bruce Wayne do what is necessary, they will be replaced by good people.”

“Do you expect me to agree with you?” Damian asked.

“Of course not.” Timothy turned away from the edge, picked up his mask again, fitted it over his face. “You are your father’s son, down to your bones. I don’t even expect you to get out of my way.”

He turned, drawing a gun. “I’ll have to make you.”

The gunshot echoed over the rooftops, sounding at the same moment as Damian crumpled, fire in his gut.

It wouldn’t kill him, he knew, not if Batman or Signal moved as fast as they could, just barely. Timothy wasn’t trying to kill him.

Timothy stood over him, mask hiding his expression, dark against the pale clouds.

“The system is broken,” he said, voice distorted. “So I’m burning it down.”

He stepped out of Damian’s view, and the sound of a grapple cord unwinding signaled that he had left.

Damian stared up at the slow-moving clouds and tried not to think.

He’d somehow forgotten how miserable being injured was.

Stephanie had confirmed that Timothy hadn’t intended to kill him after she’d seen the wound- either that, or Damian had gotten extraordinarily lucky, and with Timothy’s skill it was clear which was more likely.

Still, even escaping without organ damage, he was kept in bed for more than a week. Jason and Cassandra elected to keep him company, since Jason was benched until his own injury healed, and where Jason was, Cassandra was usually not far behind.

News of the Red Hood’s kills came intermittently- mostly politicians and cops, occasionally members of the mob, and one prison guard, who they found had been organizing a breakout after looking closer. No more Rogues were killed.

It didn’t make any of them breathe easier.

Signal and Batman patrolled the city, Batgirl sticking close to one of them when she went out, and Damian, when sitting in bed grew too suffocating, sat in the Cave with Oracle.

They found a new normal, eventually, where the ground no longer felt as if it was shaking to pieces, where Damian could look at the memorial case again without guilt rising up to choke him. Where they weren’t at each other’s throats, where they could be a family again, without Timothy hanging over their heads like a specter of every failure over the years.

Father was…

Not well.

He hid himself in the Cave long after patrol had ended, tracked the Red Hood’s movements obsessively, and avoided everyone else in the house. He didn’t seem to notice the rest of them watching him, careful, concerned.

I’m worried about Dad, Cassandra signed to Damian while he ran through one of his katas. He sighed.

“I know. So am I.”

She hugged her knees to her chest. “He is… angry,” she said, slowly, each word careful. “At himself. Because he did not… did not do enough.”

“I know,” Damian said, sitting next to her. “I don’t know how to fix it.”

“Not fix,” she said, taking his hand. “Just… dis-tract. Distract.”

“What do you suggest?”

“He needs leave… the house,” she said. “Not Batman. Bruce.”

“He needs to leave the house,” he corrected. “I’ll find something.”

“Good,” Cassandra said, patting his hand before she let go. Damian ruffled her hair, then stood.

Get him out of the house. That was… less easy than it sounded.

Duke, in the end, was the one who came up with a solution.

“Someone at my poetry slam gave me tickets to that circus that’s in town?” he offered. “Seems like a safe enough bet.”

Damian raised an eyebrow. “You believe Father will agree to go to the circus?”

“I mean, they’re supposed to have some of the world’s best acrobats,” Duke said with a shrug. “Say it’s a chance to observe or whatever. Or get Alfred to bully him into it.”

It took Damian threatening to lock him out of the Cave, Stephanie making Dracula jokes, Duke giving him the tickets as a gift, and Alfred ordering him to take a night off before Father agreed to go. Damian went with him, just to make certain that he wouldn’t disappear to go patrol halfway through.

Just when they were taking their seats, the comm Damian had brought beeped near-silently and Stephanie hissed in his ear, “Dami. Can you get somewhere we can talk without B hearing?”

“Shall I buy some of the infernal sweetness you Americans call cotton candy?” he asked Father lightly. “We can bring it to Jason.”

“I was raised by Alfred,” Father grunted. “It’s candy floss.”

Damian huffed a laugh. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

As soon as he was out of Father’s sight, he said, “What is it, Stephanie?”

“Tim’s getting into trouble again,” she said. “You need to go get him.”

“Duke can’t?” he asked.

“He’s busy.”

Damian sighed. “Very well. I’ll try to encourage Father to stay.”

“Please do,” Stephanie said. “I’ll tell you more when you get here.”

He bought the candy floss and returned to Father, who frowned at him.

“What is it,” he said.

Damian sighed. “Stephanie called me, she asked me to come home.”

Father went stiff. “Why.”

“She didn’t say,” Damian lied. “I’ll take care of it. Stay here.”

“Damian-”

“Cassandra is worried about you,” Damian interrupted. “She’ll be upset if you go home now. Please, Father.”

“You will call me the minute you need backup,” he said flatly.

“Yes.”

Father glared at the bag of candy floss as if it was the source of all his misfortune and growled, “Fine.”

“Good.” Damian left quickly, barely keeping himself from running, and reached their nearest equipment cache in a matter of minutes.

“Oracle,” he said.

“Red Hood was seen heading for the mayor’s office,” she reported. “He’s making his move.”

Damian grimaced as he finished suiting up, sheathing his katana. This would be fun.

There was a child in the Manor when he returned. A small child.

“Alfred,” Damian said calmly, staring at the boy. “Who is this?”

“This is Master Richard,” Alfred said. “He’ll be staying with us for a while.”

“Dick,” the boy said.

Damian blinked. “Excuse me?”

“My name,” he said. “It’s Dick.”

Damian inspected him more closely. He was small, tiny, even, with dark hair and blue eyes, brown skin. Around eight years old, he guessed. There was a chip on one of his front teeth, and he spoke with a soft accent. He was dressed in clothes that were too big for him- probably Jason’s, actually- and had a suit coat draped over his shoulders. Father’s.

He was crying.

“Well,” Damian said, gently. “I call people by their full names, the same as Alfred. You can ask Stephanie and Cassandra- they’ve been trying to convince me otherwise for years.”

Richard hugged the coat tighter around his shoulders, feet swinging. “Oh.”

“Your father is downstairs,” Alfred told Damian quietly. “Would you stay with the young master while I ready a room?”

“He’s downstairs?” Damian hissed.

Alfred’s mouth twitched in what would be a grimace on a lesser man. “I’m afraid so.”

Damian breathed through the fury, then forcibly softened. “Of course I’ll stay.”

Alfred relaxed marginally, murmuring his thanks before he left.

Damian turned back to the boy sitting on the counter, staring at the ground.

“How long has it been since you’ve eaten?” Damian asked. Richard looked up, blue eyes dull.

“I don’t- I don’t know,” Richard said, sniffing. “Um, before the show. And we don’t eat right before going out.”

He was from the circus? Why would Father…

Damian put that aside for now, and considered his options. The child was clearly upset, and depending on how he reacted to distress, something too large could make him nauseous, but going for so long without eating- it must have been at least six or seven hours now- wouldn’t help anything.

“Alfred makes amazing cookies,” he offered. “I’m sure there are still some around here somewhere. Would you like to help me look?”

Richard wiped at his eyes with the heel of his hand, then nodded. “Sure.”

Damian nodded decisively. “He usually hides them in the high cabinets, so you’ll have to stand on the counters to reach- I’m too tall, I’ll hit my head. Would you like me to hold your hand so you won’t slip?”

“I won’t,” Richard said, getting to his feet and bouncing on his toes with an easy grace. “But okay.”

He held out one tiny hand, and Damian took it.

They worked their way around the kitchen, Richard standing on tippy toe to peek into the highest cabinets. He held Damian’s hand the entire time, even though he clearly didn’t need any help balancing.

Damian didn’t let go, either.

“Found it!” he cried, letting go for a few seconds to pull the jar down from the cabinet, then immediately grabbed Damian’s hand again.

“Good job,” Damian said, squeezing his small fingers. Richard grinned, bright and beaming, before it abruptly fell flat, and he pulled out two cookies in silence.

Damian accepted the one he gave him, and jumped up to sit on the counter beside Richard.

Almost immediately, the boy pressed himself against his side, burrowing under Damian’s elbow. Hesitatingly, he wrapped an arm around Richard, almost mystified by the way his hand dwarfed his narrow shoulders.

They ate in silence for a while. Richard picked at his cookie, taking tiny bites, until he suddenly said, “My parents died tonight.”

Damian looked down at him, at the sudden stillness that seemed somehow wrong. He didn’t say anything, just let the silence stretch until Richard felt like continuing.

“They’re acrobats,” he said quietly. “The best in the world. And I was going to be too, only the wires broke, and they fell and everyone was screaming and they won’t let me stay with Pop Haly and Zitka anymore.”

Damian hesitated, then lifted Richard into his lap. As he anticipated, the boy immediately melted into him, arms wrapping around his torso, face buried in his collarbone.

“I’m here, little one,” he said, because what else was there to say?

“Can I tell you a secret?” Richard asked, voice muffled against Damian’s shirt.

“Yes.”

“I saw a man pouring something on the wires,” he whispered. “And then they broke, and my parents died.”

“Did you tell anyone?” Damian asked, running a hand slowly up and down Richard’s tiny back, his fragile spine.

“I tried t’ tell Pop,” the boy said, sniffling. “To say he shouldn’t let them go. But he didn’t believe me.”

“We can tell the police, and they’ll find him,” Damian murmured against his hair. “Or the Bats will find him. He’ll be brought to justice.”

“Bats?”

“They protect the city,” Damian said. “They don’t always win, but they try very hard, and they’re very good at what they do.”

“Oh,” Richard said.

They finished their cookies in silence, until Alfred returned.

“Are you ready for bed?” Damian asked, sliding off the counter.

Richard hesitated, wringing his hands, then nodded. “Mhm.”

He still didn’t get up, so Damian asked, “Would you like me to carry you?”

“Okay,” Richard said, holding out his arms.

Damian lifted him gently, almost surprised by how little he weighed, although he shouldn’t have been. Richard hid his face in Damian’s shoulder, arms wrapped around his neck.

The bedroom Alfred had chosen was just a few doors down from his own, next to Cassandra’s. One of the rooms for family.

Damian carried the boy inside and set him down on the bed, carefully pulling the covers up to his chin. He brushed the hair from his face, almost unwilling to leave.

“Can you stay?” Richard whispered, catching the edge of his sleeve with one small hand. “Just until I fall asleep.”

Damian sat. “Of course.”

He waited until he was certain Richard was asleep, then for ten minutes after, watching the rise and fall of the blankets and listening to his soft breaths.

Then, he went to find Father.

Father was in the Cave, hunched over the computer. Like he had been for weeks.

“Father,” Damian said. He hummed, not looking up.

“Father.”

“Damian,” Father said, flat and uninterested. He didn’t look away from the screen, which had a list of Red Hood’s kills. Damian saw red.

“Look at me,” he snapped. Father sighed and turned to him.

“Yes, Damian?”

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

Father opened his mouth, but Damian didn’t stop to listen.

“What happened tonight?”

“The Flying Graysons,” Father said. “A family of acrobats. The trapeze broke, and they fell, but the boy survived. He wasn’t permitted to stay with the circus, so I brought him here.”

“And then you left him in the kitchen. While you went to obsess over the same information that we have had for months, and that there is no longer any use to be found in analyzing.”

“Alfred was there,” Father said. “Dick-”

“Just went through an incredibly traumatic experience, and would likely have appreciated someone staying,” Damian hissed.

He took a deep breath, wondering if he was about to cross a line, then continued.

“You told me once that Jim Gordon was the first one to find you. That he stayed with you, for the entire night, even after Alfred arrived. And you told me that made the entire night easier. That he stayed.”

Father stared at him. His expression could have been carved from stone.

“Don’t you think Richard would have appreciated you doing that for him?” Damian asked.

“I needed to-”

“Don’t, Father,” Damian said, sharp and cutting. “You did not need to look at this. You did not need to do anything except stay.”

His hands were trembling, so he curled them into fists.

“I have watched you destroy yourself for Timothy for two years now,” Damian said. “I have not tried to stop your grief, any more than I have tried to stop the sunrise. You have broken yourself and burned yourself and ignored everything else, and I could not stop you, so I cared for the things you neglected instead. But Timothy has made it abundantly clear what he wants, and that we will do no good by trying to change his mind, and there is a child upstairs who has just experienced an earth-shattering loss and he needs you. I have watched this for two years, and I cannot- will not- do so any longer.”

“He is my son,” Father snarled.

“So am I, and so is Duke, and so is Jason, and so too shall Richard be,” Damian shouted. “I know I do not know what it is to lose a son. But in mourning the child you lost, you have forgotten the ones you have.”

He took a deep breath.

“I know my grandfather,” Damian said, more quietly. “I know what the Lazarus Pit does. No one comes out the other side the same person they were when they entered. Nor does one experience Grandfather’s manipulations without change. Timothy is not the same boy you lost, and you cannot make him so.”

Damian uncurled his hands.

“Maybe someday,” he started. “Maybe someday, the aftereffects will fade. And perhaps then you will have a second chance with him. Perhaps we all will. But there is no cure for Lazarus madness but time. You can’t fix this. But Richard, you can do something for.”

Father was silent, the only sounds in the cave the dripping of water.

“I haven’t been a very good father, have I.”

Damian exhaled, shoulders slumping. “No,” he admitted. “Not lately.”

He saw that for the wound it was, but Father merely set his jaw, fierce and stubborn and proud, as he had always been.

“I will… try,” he said, slow and careful, picking each word as if it was a weight. “To do better. I will not… always succeed.”

“I will remind you,” Damian said, a tiny, fragile curl of hope igniting in his stomach.

“I don’t want any of you to think you’re… unimportant,” he said. “To me.”

“We know,” Damian said, the last of his rage draining away. “We always knew.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t been the father you deserve, Damian.”

Damian shook his head. “Oh, Father. You always were.”

Richard’s arrival made the house better, somehow. Grief weighed heavy on his bones, but in his moments of joy, he was bright and young and genuine, full of energy. Perhaps too much energy, admittedly- if he swung on the chandelier one more time, Damian swore he would go grey before he turned twenty-four- but he made the house warm again.

He was not always happy, of course. He would pivot wildly from excitement to despair to a deep, vicious rage, and on some days was unreachable, curled in bed, staring at the Flying Graysons poster on his wall.

Those days, Father went to sit with him.

Father had kept his promise. The obsession with Timothy faded, and though he was still distant and stubborn at times, he no longer went days in the Cave, and he joined them at meals with a surprising frequency. Richard adored him, and, to Damian’s quiet surprise, Father adored him right back.

Timothy had gone quiet again, which Stephanie, Duke, and Damian agreed was not a good sign. He was virtually untraceable, seemingly disappeared from Gotham, the bodies that followed him stopping. As much as they tried, he was impossible to find.

Instead, they turned their attention towards the Grayson murders.

Because it was murder, they found, by Anthony Zucco. He was not a particularly clever criminal, nor difficult to locate, nor difficult to arrest.

Richard cried with relief when he was sentenced, leaping into Father’s arms. They held each other, and Damian watched them, smiling.

Richard dragged Damian downtown to celebrate, the others, regretfully, leaving for their responsibilities. Damian allowed himself to be pulled down the street, keeping a tight hold on Richard’s hand and an eye on their surroundings.

They got ice cream, and Richard chattered away as they ate it, feet kicking wildly where they sat on a bench outside the shop. Somehow, even though it was Gotham, sunlight filtered through the clouds, and Damian could pretend for a moment that they were in a different city, a safe city, and that they were not a vigilante and an orphan, that they were just a man and his little brother.

Predictably, that was where it went wrong.

Damian looked up and around, skin prickling with warning, and only identified the sniper seconds before they shot, not long enough to avoid them. There was a faint whistling, a jab of pain in his neck, and he was… not dead?

He plucked the dart from his skin and stared at it, Richard looking over to see.

“What is that?” Richard asked.

Slowly, sluggish through the beginning of the sedatives, he reached over and pressed the panic button on the boy’s watch.

Then the world went dark.

He woke up on a couch.

That set off alarm bells immediately. If he had been brought back to the Cave, he would be on a cot, or in his bed; if he had been kidnapped by someone looking to ransom the Wayne heir, he would be in a cell or tied to a chair, with his hands bound. If it was a Rogue who had found out his identity, he’d likely also be bound or cuffed.

Instead, he was on a couch, lying with his hands free, with the soft sounds of another person nearby.

Without opening his eyes, he took stock of the situation. His comm had been taken, as well as his emergency signal, and the batarangs he kept on him at all times.

Even if he wasn’t tied to a chair, he was still a prisoner, and he was not safe.

There was no sound of traffic outside, meaning that the room he was in was either far from the streets or soundproofed. There was the sound of someone else nearby. The turning of pages.

Cautiously, he opened his eyes.

He was in an apartment, small and cheap, with stained, broken-down furniture. There was a complex security system on the one window he could see, which had the blinds drawn, and bookshelves stuffed full. On one wall, there was a collection of bladed weapons, at least two of which were League, and all of them looking functional rather than decorational.

“I know you’re awake,” said a familiar voice.

Damian sat up slowly. Timothy was sitting in a nearby armchair in full Red Hood regalia, minus the mask and domino, which sat on the table beside him. He had a book in his hands.

“Where’s Richard?”

“At the Manor, I presume.” Timothy turned a page. “I watched him until B got there, by the way. You’re welcome.”

“They’ll be looking for me then,” Damian said, glancing around the room. Nothing looked particularly unusual for a low-cost Gotham apartment, though on closer inspection it was clear that it was owned by a vigilante.

“You couldn’t find me before, what makes you think that they could find me now?” Timothy didn’t look up from his book. “I threw your trackers in the harbor, if you thought Steph would find you that way.”

Damian looked around. The swords were secured to the wall, and while it wouldn’t take long to grab one, Timothy could certainly shoot him before he reached it. The security on the windows and doors would also take too long to break. Other than that, there was little to use as a weapon- throwing books at him wouldn’t exactly buy him enough time.

“Don’t bother,” Timothy said, though he hadn’t been looking at Damian. “I vigilante-proofed it before I grabbed you.”

“What do you want?”

“Unfriendly,” Timothy commented. “Have I done something to offend you?”

“Only kidnapped me, leaving an eight-year-old vulnerable.”

“I already told you I kept an eye on him,” Timothy said, as if that was the main issue. “He was perfectly safe. If anyone had made a move I would have taken care of them.”

“By murdering them in front of him? That boy’s been through enough.”

“He’ll go through more if he’s Robin,” Timothy said, mild.

Damian jolted like he’d been struck. “Do you really think we would put an eight year old on the streets?”

“You were ten.”

“And I had also been training with the League of Assassins for my entire life,” he said. “Richard is a child, and he is not Robin. If Jason sees fit to leave the position, and Richard is older and trained, then he may consider it.”

Timothy hummed, putting his book on the table beside his mask, and laced his fingers together. “I talked to Ra’s recently.”

“Did you,” Damian said.

“I did. I may have been in the process of dismantling and blowing up his hideout, but I did talk to him.”

“You what.”

“I dismantled and blew up-”

“I heard you the first time,” Damian said, staring at him. “That’s where you’ve been for the last few months, I presume?”

“Mostly,” Timothy agreed. “It’s kept me busy.”

“And then you decided to kidnap me,” Damian said.

“And then I kidnapped you, yes.”

“Why?”

“First,” Timothy said, holding up a finger. “I happen to have triggered a civil war, and there’s a not-insignificant number in the League who still think you’re Ra’s’ rightful heir.”

“I have no affiliation with the League.”

“Tell that to them,” Timothy said with a shrug. “If I were you, I would convince them to follow your mother. She’ll get power eventually anyway, but having them wouldn’t hurt.”

“How exactly did you start this civil war?” Damian asked.

Timothy’s gaze went distant. “I don’t like being used,” he said. “Particularly when I’m too screwed up on Pit rage to realize. So I solved the problem. He’s not coming back.”

Grandfather, dead. Really dead.

“Why are you telling me this?” Damian asked.

“I figured you should have a heads-up,” Timothy said, getting to his feet and heading towards the nearest door. “Tea? It won’t be as good as Alfred’s, but it should be drinkable.”

“Are you going to poison it?”

“If I wanted you dead you would be dead,” Timothy said lightly. “So no, not this time.”

“Reassuring,” Damian said dryly, watching as he disappeared into, presumably, the kitchen.

Damian took the opportunity to explore the room more thoroughly. The security was sophisticated, and expensive, too- likely, Timothy had taken advantage of the League’s funds before he caused its collapse.

The weaponry, on closer inspection, appeared to be easy to remove, but not without triggering an alarm. Damian left it alone- he didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger anyway.

The apartment, as a whole, was largely plain, with the only major modifications to indicate its less-than-legitimate resident being the security system. There was a water stain on the wall and carpet in one corner, the paint scuffed and chipped, as if someone had thrown a glass of water at it and not bothered to clean it up.

Timothy returned from the kitchen holding two mugs, plain white, and handed one to Damian.

He sniffed at it, then took a small, cautious sip, trying to identify any signs of tampering. Timothy watched him closely, holding his own mug without drinking it.

Damian cupped the mug in his hands, then met Timothy’s gaze. His eyes were a murky blue-green, without the acidic, unearthly color of a body fresh from the Pit.

“Why did you bring me here?” he asked.

Timothy sighed, turning the mug in his hands. “The information that Ra’s gave me was… highly biased, and I wasn’t in a position to know what was real and what was lies or exaggeration. Now that I am… in control, I’m trying to find out the truth.”

“And so you thought to ask me.”

Timothy took a sip from his mug. “If there is one good thing I can say about you, it’s that you’re certainly… direct.”

“Direct,” Damian repeated.

“You did tell me to my face that you hated me.”

Not for the first time, and likely not the last, Damian cursed his eighteen-year-old self.

Timothy traced the rim of his mug idly with a fingertip, humming low in his throat. “You know, I hated you. Even before the Pit. Ra’s tried to make me hate Jason, and Bruce, and Stephanie, and none of that worked. But you…”

Timothy set down the mug and got to his feet, pacing with a restless, dangerous energy. “I admired you,” he said, voice growing faster in his agitation. “When I was just a stupid kid chasing after Batman and Robin, I admired you. And I thought- I honestly thought that you might be happy, that I was Robin, that someone was there to take care of Bruce when you were off with Flamebird. And I met you and you told me everything I was terrified of, everything I hated about myself, was true.”

Damian lowered his head, staring into his tea as if it would tell him how to fix this, as if it would make him any less the man he was, with the regrets he had.

“You were cruel,” Timothy said softly. “You were cruel when all I had ever wanted was for you to be my brother. And try as I might I cannot figure out what it is that is different, about Jason, that makes you so protective of him, makes you love him so much, when you never did me. I would say he’s just a better Robin than I was, only you never even saw what kind of Robin I was.”

Damian set the tea aside, feeling suddenly sick. Timothy stared at him, looking shattered and desolate and Damian hated himself more than he ever had.

“It was never about you,” Damian said quietly, staring at the floor. “I was… foolish and prideful. I thought it was my right to be Robin, to be Father’s partner, and that you had not earned that right.”

He took a deep breath. “You’re right. I was cruel. I didn’t realize it was wrong until it was far too late, and that will haunt me until I take my last breath.”

“I was twelve,” Timothy said flatly. “I was a child. And you saw nothing wrong with telling me I was nothing.”

Damian smiled, bitterly. “I am not a good man, Timothy. I certainly wasn’t then.”

“Why Jason, then?” Timothy’s voice was neutral, giving nothing away, as was his face, when Damian could bear to look at him. “What makes him so special?”

“My little brother was dead,” Damian said, pretending not to notice the way Timothy flinched. “From my inaction and my cruelty. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do better.”

“So you’re kind to Jason because of your guilt complex.”

“I am kind to Jason because he is my brother and I love him,” Damian said. “But I only learned to because I had done wrong, and I would never get the chance to fix what I had broken.”

He closed his eyes.

“Change doesn’t come without cataclysm,” Damian said. “Your life was the price I paid for my awakening, and every moment that I am alive I wish it had not been so high.”

He swallowed, and opened his eyes.

Timothy was staring at him, eyes glassy, breath coming in shaky puffs, and he looked as if someone had pulled his heart from his chest, as if he was breaking apart, and Damian loved him more fiercely than he had ever thought possible.

“I know I cannot possibly hope to make up for who I used to be,” Damian whispered, his voice shaking with every word. “Sometimes there are no second chances. All I can do is try to be better.”

Timothy exhaled, shaky.

For a moment, there was silence.

“Leave,” Timothy said.

Damian looked up.

“Leave. Get out of my apartment.”

Damian took a shaking breath, stood, and walked towards the door. He hesitated for a moment, looking at Timothy’s devastated face, then left.

He walked toward the stairs, past the other apartments, which all seemed to be empty. Timothy must have bought the entire floor.

The building wasn’t far from one of their equipment caches, and Damian could barely keep from running as he went.

He picked up one of the spare comms as soon as he entered. “Nightwing to Oracle.”

“Nightwing!” Stephanie shouted, voice frantic. “Are you okay?”

“I’m- I am uninjured,” Damian said.

There was a long, weighted pause before she said, “Not what I asked.”

“I will be fine,” Damian said. He wasn’t sure if he was lying.

“Also not what I asked,” Stephanie muttered, but she apparently let it go, as she said, “I’m sending Duke to come get you, he’ll be there in… like fifteen minutes, why are you so far out?”

“Not by choice,” he said with a sigh. “Thank you, Stephanie.”

“No problem,” she said. “Good to hear from you, D.”

She hung up. Damian sighed and set the comm down.

His knees abruptly failed to support him, and he crumpled to the floor, putting his head in his hands, Timothy’s ruined expression haunting him.

Duke didn’t ask questions when he arrived, just glanced over to check that he was genuinely unhurt before he started to drive. Damian leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.

“You alright?” his brother asked eventually.

“Mhm.”

Damian was barely out of the car before Richard flung himself into his arms, nearly hysterical, clinging to his neck. Damian muttered soothing nonsense in his ear, smoothing down his wild hair, and sank to the ground.

Duke and Stephanie looked down at him with identical worried expressions. Damian let Richard cling to him for a while until Cassandra stepped forwards, arms out.

“Let me breathe, little one,” Damian murmured, gently prying Richard’s arms away and handing him to Cassandra, who bounced him on her hip and leaned forwards to kiss Damian’s forehead before she left.

“Damian,” Stephanie started, hesitant.

“I’m fine,” he murmured. It sounded fake even to him. “I just need… to sleep.”

Stephanie stared at him for a moment longer, then rolled forward and hugged him. It was awkward, with Damian still sitting on the ground, but it made some of the buzzing tension under his skin ease, and he rested his head against her knees for a moment.

“Let’s watch a movie,” she said. “Something fluffy, just the three of us.”

“Like old times?” Duke asked, grinning.

“Okay,” Damian said, lifting his head. “I- okay.”

Duke held out a hand, and he took it.

Damian didn’t process the movie that they chose, the dialogue or the bright colors that flashed across the screen. Stephanie took his hands and pushed him down on the couch, then levered herself out of her chair, while Duke closed the door and turned off the lights.

They settled on either side of him, warm and solid and present, and Damian closed his eyes.

Softly, Duke kissed his temple, and Stephanie pulled him down to lay his head in her lap.

“Sleep,” one of them whispered.

Damian did.

The Red Hood was silent for three days. The following night, seven people died.

“I don’t understand why he’s being so erratic,” Stephanie muttered as she hunched over the keyboard, glaring at the screen. “Before, it was one, two people a night, every night. Methodical. Not random bursts like this. You don’t know what might have caused this?”

Damian had told them the basics of his encounter with Timothy, unwilling to go into detail when he still felt… raw. Cracked open, almost. He knew that Stephanie and Duke had been talking, that they were worried about him, but he still couldn’t bring himself to talk about it.

He was carrying too many ghosts in his chest to let them go now. His siblings didn’t deserve to carry the weight of his flaws.

Damian shook his head, bringing himself back to the present. “He seemed… upset.”

Stephanie looked over at him briefly, then nodded. “Okay.”

She turned back to the computer, staring at the map of Gotham with points representing each of Timothy’s murders.

“There has to be a pattern,” she said finally. “He’s not a random person. He doesn’t do spontaneous.”

“He’s too smart for a pattern,” Damian said. “If there was one, we would find him.”

Stephanie scrubbed at her face. “I hate smart criminals. Even if they’re Tim.”

Damian hummed in agreement.

“We just have to wait,” he said. “He’ll slip up eventually, or he’ll change his behavior. We can’t do anything now but wait.”

Stephanie sighed. “I know.”

Damian stared at the screen for a while. Then he turned away, towards the mats.

“Damian,” Stephanie protested. “You just got back from patrol.”

“I know,” he said. “I won’t go for long.”

He drew his katana, steadied himself, and began his kata.

Something in Damian had shattered, at the look in his little brother’s eyes, and he didn’t know how to put it back together again. He didn’t know what to do except run from it.

The others were worried about him, he knew. Even Richard- the boy was clingier than usual, as if he could hold Damian together.

He didn’t want to worry them. He didn’t. But every time he slowed down for too long he heard You were cruel, you were cruel, you were cruel and I admired you and saw Timothy, his little brother, devastated and raw from his words.

“You’re just like B, you know,” Duke said. Patrol had ended an hour ago. Damian stayed in the Cave.

“How so?”

Jason scoffed. “Burying yourself in work to ignore your emotions?”

“I’m fine,” Damian said flatly.

“You’re not.” Stephanie turned away from the computer, focusing on him, and he felt abruptly uncomfortable under her scrutiny. “You haven’t been for a while.”

“I’m fine,” he said again. All of them were watching him, and it made him tense, uneasy.

“You’re not,” Duke said. “Damian-”

“I am fine,” he insisted.

Cassandra uncurled from where she was sitting on the desk beside Stephanie, and came to stand in front of him.

“Fight me,” she said.

He blinked. “Cassandra-”

If you’re fine, fight me, she signed.

Damian clenched his jaw. “Fine.”

Cassandra settled into a fighting stance. The Cave went silent.

They circled each other warily for a long moment, silent and tense. Then, Cassandra moved.

Damian blocked the first hit- the first five, even. He managed to land one glancing blow on her shoulder.

Then, abruptly, he found his feet were no longer beneath him, and Cassandra was grabbing him by the collar.

She lowered him to the ground, gentler than he would have landed, and the ghost of his ten-year-old self whispered, Pathetic.

He blinked up at the ceiling, watching the spiraling movement of shadows above them as the bats moved, and realized he was dizzy.

Cassandra appeared in his vision. How long has it been since you’ve eaten?

“I don’t know,” he said. Someone whispered a curse.

“Dami,” Duke said, crouching next to him. “D, you’ve gotta take care of yourself.”

“This shit isn’t healthy,” Jason agreed, leaning on Cassandra’s shoulder. She wasn’t even out of breath.

“Don’t,” he rasped. “Don’t make me… talk about it.”

Cassandra knelt over his head, cupping his face in her hands. Softly, softly, like a benediction, she kissed his forehead, just between his eyebrows.

“You… carry,” she whispered. “Carry so much. All of us. Always have.”

He closed his eyes. She pressed her forehead to his.

“Safe now,” she murmured, barely more than a breath. “You can... put down, your hurting. Let others carry, for a while.”

Damian breathed, in and out, and hated the way it trembled.

They stayed there for another moment, foreheads touching, her hair soft against his face, before she drew away and kissed his forehead again.

She stood and held a hand out to Jason. “Come.”

“Cass,” he protested.

“Come.”

Jason took her hand, and they left, whispering to each other.

Damian stared at the ceiling. The world was spinning around him, but he could still hear the sound of Stephanie’s wheelchair as she moved closer. Duke took his hand.

“Damian,” Stephanie said quietly. “What’s going on?”

He took another quivering breath.

“I don’t know how to live with myself,” he rasped.

His siblings waited, silent, for him to continue.

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see their faces.

“I hurt my little brother.”

Duke squeezed his hand, and he clung to it like a lifeline, the floor seeming to twist out from under him.

“I don’t get to fix that,” he said. “I was- awful. I didn’t learn to be good until he died.”

Another breath, and another, and he breathed through the feeling of his chest imploding, of his heart crumbling into dust.

“I still don’t know if I’m good,” he admitted. “If I can ever make up for what I didn’t do.”

“Damian,” Duke said, quiet. “You’re good. I promise.”

Stephanie reached down and took his other hand, pulling it into her lap.

“I can’t fix it,” Damian whispered. “There’s no second chances.”

“Maybe not,” Stephanie said quietly. “But you’re a good big brother, Damian. You may not have been at first but- when you realized it was wrong… you did better. You chose to be better. With us, and Jason and Cass and Dick. That matters.”

Duke squeezed his hand, ran his fingers through Damian’s hair. “The amount you’ve changed in the past two years- Damian, it’s amazing. The kids look up to you more than anyone. They adore you, and they’re right to. And yeah, it sucks that you didn’t know before, it sucks that it took Tim dying for you to start, but we’re not defined by our worst selves. We’re defined by who we decide to be.”

“He’s never going to forgive me,” Damian rasped.

“That says more about him than it says about you,” Stephanie said, rubbing her thumb over his hand. “D, I promise, you are a good big brother. The best we could ever ask for.”

“Cass is right,” Duke added. “You carry all of us. Everyone in this damn house, and your own demons, too. Let us carry you for a while, yeah?”

Damian exhaled. It shook. He didn’t mind it so much this time.

“Yeah.”

“Hey, Damian, Duke, come look at this,” Stephanie called over her shoulder.

Damian sheathed his katana and leaned against the back of her chair, looking at the screen, as Duke came to stand with them. “What is it?”

“Tim,” she said. “It’s been, like, two weeks since anyone died.”

“Is he working up to something?” Duke asked. “It wouldn’t be the first time he’s disappeared for a bit.”

Damian grimaced. The last time Timothy had gone missing for longer than a week, he had dismantled the League of Assassins and killed Grandfather, and the ensuing civil war had been messy- as promised, some of them had approached Damian, bringing the messiness to Gotham with them.

He’d taken Timothy’s advice, and sent them to Mother, but not without making it very clear that he had absolutely no interest in taking power.

“Except he hasn’t disappeared,” Stephanie said. “One of the police captains resigned last night, the one that was working with the mobs. He was checked into the hospital with a shattered kneecap and apparently he’s saying he was attacked by the Hood.”

Duke blinked. “Has he… done that before?”

Stephanie shoved her hair out of her face, shaking her head. “Not that we know of.”

“And he’s not lying?” Damian asked.

“No. There’s security footage.”

It was black and white footage, a storefront across the street from the apartment building where, presumably, the police chief lived. A figure that was unmistakable the Red Hood walked in. Stephanie sped up the footage, and ten minutes later, he walked out again.

“Are there any other cases like this?” Damian asked.

Irritably, Stephanie shoved back the hair that had fallen in her face again. “Not that I can tell, let me check the hospital records for bullet wounds, see if there’s anyone he would have as a target.”

Damian picked up a hair tie from the table, pulling Stephanie’s hair back into a ponytail as she accessed the hospital records. She hummed in thanks.

“Nothing,” she said. “At least, that stands out.”

Duke drummed his fingers on the desk. “Police? If they’re still alive to arrest?”

She nodded, already working on it, and clicked her tongue thoughtfully. “Anonymous call about a would-be mugger, arrived to find him with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. What are the chances?”

“Most of the people in this city who carry guns aren’t particularly altruistic,” Damian said dryly. “It’s probable.”

Stephanie made a note of it, adding a point on the map of the Red Hood’s victims- this one in green, rather than red.

She stared at it for a moment. “Why, though?”

“You mean, why not just kill them like he’s been doing for months?” Duke asked. “Is there any reason why he’d want the chief alive?”

Stephanie frowned. “I mean, maybe, but the mugger?”

“Fair enough,” Duke muttered. “Maybe he got bored?”

“Who knows,” Stephanie sighed. “I guess we just have to wait and see.”

“Like always,” Duke said, a hint of bitterness in his tone.

Jason called out something behind them, and both Stephanie and Duke turned. Damian lingered at the monitor.

Staring at those two green dots, he felt something stirring in his chest.

It felt a little like hope.

Timothy’s new pattern continued for almost a month. Abruptly, his victims just… stopped appearing dead. There were bullets in knees, shoulders, hands, yes- but the headshots stopped.

Damian didn’t bring up the idea that Timothy was choosing not to kill because he had realized it was wrong, or the remnants of Pit madness were disappearing. If he was right, they would verify it eventually; if not, he didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.

Still, they were all wondering, quietly, privately.

The wind whistled in Damian’s ears as he leaped between buildings, listening to the quiet chatter over the comms. It was a good night, mild and clear- for a certain definition of clear, it was Gotham- and everyone was out. Robin and Batgirl were patrolling together, playing rooftop tag, by the sounds of it. For once, Father didn’t reprimand them, other than a few teasing admonishments.

“Wait,” Oracle said suddenly. “There’s a new comm here. It’s… wait, Nightwing’s old one?”

There was a heavy silence. Damian hit the rooftop and stopped, waiting.

The other comm clicked as it was turned on. “Bats.”

Timothy?

No one responded. There was a wet, wracking cough.

“If any of you still love me at all, you won’t let me die again,” he said, voice thin with… pain, it sounded like. “I’m not holding out much hope. But I like my life more than I like my pride.”

There was a click as one of the comms switched frequencies, and Oracle said quietly, “N, you’re the closest.”

“I’m coming,” Damian said, then switched to the direct line with Oracle. “Tell me where.”

Where ended up being an abandoned warehouse near the docks. Damian arrived within five minutes, landing lightly on the roof, and crept over to one of the skylights.

It was easy to drop into the rafters, and Damian edged carefully forwards until he could see the scene properly- Timothy, back against a pole, hands chained behind him, slumped into the grip of a man who stood in front of him.

Damian scanned the area. Eight men, dressed in nondescript clothing with the imprints of body armor beneath, each one carrying a gun. The one in front of Timothy, with his jaw in his hand, carried himself like the leader, confident without arrogance.

Damn. Arrogance would have been easier.

He raised a hand, gesturing to one of the men nearby, who stepped forwards. There was the crackling of a taser, and Timothy screamed.

His little brother was screaming.

Damian saw red.

He dropped from the ceiling, unsheathing his katana as he went, and immediately moved into a roll before any of them could fire their guns. The first three were easy to take down before they got over their surprise. The fourth shot at him, missing, striking the concrete instead.

Damian grunted as one of them startled at his attack, driving an elbow into his face, but kept moving. As soon as he was down Damian was moving again.

There was a patter of bullets, and he caught a scream in his clenched teeth when one grazed his leg. The leader was roaring something, but Damian didn’t stop to listen.

Damian made quick work of the followers, ending his movement with his katana to one’s throat. The man blubbered, trying to inch away from the blade, so Damian kicked his head into the concrete instead.

“Do you know how much work you’ve just ruined?” the leader asked conversationally.

“I don’t particularly care.”

The man snarled, expression ugly and dark, and pulled a knife, as long as his forearm.

Fine.

Damian readied himself for a fight, batarang tucked into one hand, katana in the other. The man charged at him- trying to use brute strength to make up for a lack of speed, probably- and Damian threw the batarang, cutting into his knife arm.

The man didn’t seem to feel it, and Damian growled to himself. His katana flicked out, cutting through the same arm, and then he had to dodge the knife rather than have it become rather abruptly acquainted with his ribs.

The man paused, panting, right arm dripping blood, and switched the knife into his other hand.

Damian was too slow to dodge the next strike, which tore a ragged cut down his left shoulder, and yelled, more in irritation and surprise than pain. He kicked out, feeling the criminal’s shin crunch under his boot. The man collapsed.

“Stay down,” Damian spat.

“Son of a-”

Damian stomped on his hand before he could get the knife up. “I said, stay down.”

The man swore at him, and Damian pressed the tip of his sword against his throat. He stilled, briefly, still glaring.

The people of Gotham had long since stopped believing that Damian would kill them. Still, none of them much liked being held at swordpoint.

“Touch my brother and you will regret it,” Damian said, cool and lethal.

The man lunged up at him, seemingly uncaring of the danger of cutting his throat open, and Damian bounced his head off the floor. He paused for a single moment to make sure he was unconscious, then turned.

Timothy was slumped forwards, blood dripping from his lips- they’d managed to get his mask off, though not the domino, and Damian saw the shattered remains of it a few feet away- and hair hanging limp and matted with blood. He coughed, and his entire body shuddered.

“Oracle, send a car now,” Damian snapped into the comm, then picked the cuffs.

Timothy collapsed into his arms, boneless, and Damian ran a hand over his chest, checking for injuries as best as he could through the body armor.

Timothy whined, pained, and Damian held him closer.

“Shhhh,” he whispered. “Shh, little one, I’m here, you’re going to be fine.”

“Didn’t think-” he coughed- “you would come.”

Damian pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I’m here, Timothy, I’m here, I love you.”

“‘M sorry,” Timothy whispered, breaths coming quick and soft. “I’m sorry.”

“Hush,” Damian murmured, kissing his forehead again. “You’re forgiven, little one.”

“Hurts,” he said, coughing. Blood dripped off his chin.

“I know,” Damian whispered. “I’m here, I won’t leave you. You’re going to be fine, I have you, little brother.”

“I want to go home,” Timothy said, his eyes glassy and unfocused, voice thin and scratchy. “I w-want-”

Damian ran a hand over his hair, uncaring of the blood that smeared over his gloves. Footsteps pounded outside, and Damian held his katana towards the door, cradling Timothy’s head in his lap.

He relaxed at seeing Father, sheathing the blade.

“The Batmobile is outside,” Father said. “Shall I-”

“I’ll carry him,” Damian interrupted. Timothy was surprisingly light in Damian’s arms, and it wrenched at something in his chest.

Duke was sitting in the driver’s seat, hands clenched so tight around the wheel that the leather creaked. Father and Damian sat in the backseat, Timothy held between them.

“Dad,” Timothy whispered.

Father took his hand.

“I’m here.”

Stephanie was waiting with Jason and Cassandra when they got back to the Cave, and Damian lifted his little brother into a cot, stepping back to let Stephanie go to him.

“Steph,” Timothy said, slurred.

“Hey, Timbo.” She smiled at him, shaky and strained. “Long time no see.”

Damian swayed on his feet, and Jason and Cassandra grabbed his elbows, leading him away.

“Bleeding,” Cassandra said, forcing him into a chair.

“I’ll get Alfie.” Jason kissed Damian’s forehead quickly and ran, feet pounding on the stairs.

Damian closed his eyes, letting Cassandra pull him to lean on her shoulder. Suddenly, his injuries started to hurt, now that Timothy was in safe hands.

Alfred and Jason returned, and Damian closed his eyes against the anesthetic and the pinch of Alfred’s stitching.

Someone tugged on his hand, and he opened his eyes.

Richard stood in front of him, blue eyes wide.

“Hi,” he said.

Damian frowned, his thoughts feeling sluggish and useless. “You’re not supposed to be down here,” he said.

“Alfie said just this once.” Richard waved a hand at him, and Damian obligingly bent forwards.

Richard kissed his forehead, right on the furrow between his eyebrows. “It’ll be okay,” he said simply.

Damian pulled the boy close briefly, then let go. Jason lifted Richard onto his hip, murmuring something that Damian didn’t bother to parse.

Alfred set down the needle and ran a gentle hand through Damian’s hair. “All set, lad.”

“Thank you,” Damian said. “Is Timothy alright?”

Alfred turned to look. “Miss Stephanie has stopped fussing, so I’d presume so.”

Damian pushed himself to his feet, and Jason and Cassandra were at his side immediately, holding him upright.

“Don’t be an idiot, D,” Jason said. “You need to rest.”

Cassandra nodded firmly, poking his stomach. “Stupid.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” he muttered. “I just want to sit with him.”

They shared a glance, then helped him to limp over to the chair beside Timothy’s bed.

His brother was unconscious, blood cleaned from his face and hair, white bandages covering his injuries. Damian watched his face for a long moment, the rise and fall of his chest.

“It’s a good thing you got there when you did,” Stephanie murmured beside him. “He was… well, it’s just good that you were fast.”

Damian nodded distantly. Then something occurred to him.

“How did he manage to comm us? His hands were chained.”

“It was wired into his glove,” Stephanie said. “Just in case, I guess.”

I want to come home, Timothy had said.

Damian took his hand and waited.

Timothy woke up after a day and a half. Damian was waiting at his bedside, just as he had been since the beginning.

Timothy blinked, confused, eyes taking in the light shining through the window, the ceiling, Damian’s face. “Where am I?”

“One of the spare bedrooms,” Damian said. “We assumed you would prefer it to your original.”

“Yes,” Timothy said, eyes falling on the empty chair beside Damian.

“Father and I have been taking it in shifts,” he said. “He’s asleep right now. Alfred’s orders.”

“You… stayed,” Timothy said, brow furrowing.

“I told you I would.”

“You came for me.”

Damian looked at him, pale with blood loss and pain, lying vulnerable and oh so young on the bed, and thought I love you, I love you, I love you.

“I love you,” he said aloud, cupping Timothy’s hand in his own. “Even if you do not want me to. Even if you don’t consider me your brother. I love you, and that will never change.”

Timothy stared at his face.

“I’m not a good person,” he said. “I’ve killed people. Lots of people.”

“So have I,” Damian said. “We’re not defined by our worst selves, little one. We’re defined by who we choose to be.”

Timothy flashed a faint smile. “Thought that was your name for your pets.”

“No,” he said. “It’s my name for family.”

Timothy squeezed his hand, lightly, then swallowed. “Even if you forgive me,” he started. “Even if you… understand. Bruce won’t forgive me for killing.”

“He forgave me,” Damian said simply. “He can forgive you. We’ll figure it out.”

“That’s… you’re different.”

“How?” Damian asked. “We were manipulated by the same man, Timothy. We were both vulnerable, even if in different ways. You chose to kill, yes, but so did I.”

Timothy looked away, and Damian leaned forwards to kiss his forehead, wincing as the movement pulled on his bandaged arm.

“You’re hurt,” Timothy said.

“It’ll heal.”

Timothy looked at the bandage for another long moment. “Okay,” he said, finally. “Thank you. For saving me.”

“Always,” Damian said. “Every time.”

“Why are you so…” Timothy paused for a moment. “Damian, you don’t even know me. You didn’t know me when I was still alive, so why…”

“Because you’re my brother,” Damian said simply. “I don’t know you, but I’d like to.”

Timothy stared at their linked hands. “I…”

Damian waited, watching his face.

“Okay,” he whispered. “I’d like that.”

Damian smiled, and for the first time in three years, there were no empty spaces inside of him.

Damian knocked on the door, and before the sound had even finished, the door swung open.

“Master Damian,” Alfred said, warm. “Master Jonathan. Please come in.”

Jon hugged him, grinning. “Good to see you, Alfred.”

“You as well,” Alfred said. “Shoes off, please.”

Damian obliged.

“Hey, D,” someone called, and he looked up.

Timothy was leaning over the banister, coffee mug in hand. His hair hung loose, still damp from the shower, and he was wearing soft sweatpants and a shirt that Damian recognized.

“Is that mine?”

“It’s yours or Duke’s,” Timothy said with a shrug. “The brats are too small and B gets all weird and misty-eyed about it.”

Damian eyed him for a moment longer, then decided to ignore it.

If the price for having his family together was Timothy stealing his clothes, he would gladly pay it, now and forever.

“Incoming,” Timothy drawled.

“Oh no,” he muttered, bracing himself. Jon laughed beside him, low and warm.

He heard them before he saw them, feet pounding on wood floors, and a moment later they burst around the corner.

Richard and Barbara reached him first, throwing themselves at him as hard as they could. It wasn’t hard to keep his balance, them being so light, and they hung from his shoulders, giggling.

Jason and Cassandra jumped on him with their full body weights, and Damian steadied himself as Cassandra wrapped her legs around his waist, eyes full of mirth.

“Brat,” he grumbled.

Timothy had come down the stairs and stood laughing at him, open-mouthed and joyful, not bothering to hide it. Damian scowled at him through the gaggle of younger siblings.

“I win,” he told them, then grabbed Richard by his ankles. “Timothy! Catch.”

“No, don’t, I’m holding-”

Richard cheered as Timothy caught him one-handed, spilling none of his coffee, despite his protests. He scrambled up to sit on Timothy’s shoulders.

“Ow- don’t pull on my hair, you monkey,” he said, doing nothing to stop it.

“Hey, Duke,” Stephanie’s voice said from nearby. “I could’ve sworn Damian was coming over, but I don’t see him anywhere.”

“Very funny,” he called, prying Barbara from his neck and dropping her in Stephanie’s lap. The child adored her, even more since she’d figured out their identities within half an hour of the first time Richard brought her over for a playdate- who better to teach her to be Batgirl someday, she insisted, than the original and the current versions?

Damian tried to set Cassandra down, but she shook her head, grinning at him. He sighed, and gave up.

“You’ll be too big for this someday, you know,” he told her.

She shook her head. “Done growing. And Jason-” will be short forever, she signed, taking her hands off his shoulders to finish, trusting him to hold her.

“Will not,” Jason grumbled, but it was said with the resigned tone of someone who knew when he’d lost.

“Short,” Cassandra said, leaning over to tap his nose. “Is your curse.”

Jason looked like he wanted to start a fight, so Damian switched to carrying Cassandra on his back, rather than on his hip like he did his smaller siblings.

Sixteen? Were they really sixteen now?

Duke and Stephanie came closer, and he let them hug him, Cassandra’s hair trailing over his shoulder when he leaned forwards.

“They’ll knock you over one day, you know,” Duke told him. “They’re luring you into a false sense of security.”

Damian scoffed. “Not without tripping me.”

“Maybe we will,” Jason said, kicking at his ankle half-heartedly. “You never know.”

“Against the rules,” Cassandra reminded him. “But we will win.”

Timothy dropped Richard onto Jason’s shoulders, pulling his hair out of the boy’s grasp. “I’m sure you will.”

“Of course you would take their side,” Damian said, but it lacked any real heat, and they both knew it.

“Of course,” Timothy agreed. “Because Cass is better than you in every way.”

They both laughed, and Damian rolled his eyes, but he was laughing too.

At ten years old, Damian’s family was his father and Alfred, and Mother, and that was all he thought he needed. At ten years old, Damian was stubborn and prideful and foolish, and he did not want a family any larger than the one he had.

At twenty-five, Damian’s family was his father and Alfred, and Jon and the Titans, and his younger siblings, who were bright and warm and chaotic and made him bright, too, and he loved them so much he had forgotten what it was like not to. At twenty-five, Damian was still stubborn and prideful and foolish sometimes, but he had family to tell him when he was and knock some sense into him if he needed it, and more often than not, he was kind.

Regret was a heavy weight to carry but he did not carry it alone. He had Duke and Stephanie to tell him he did better, he was better, that eighteen did not define twenty-five. He had Jason and Cassandra and Richard and Barbara, who had never known him as anything but good, to tell him what mattered was now. And he had Timothy, to tell him I forgive you, I forgive you, I forgive you, until it blocked out the sound of his own self-hatred, until it sounded like I love you.

They were amazing together, all of them, more than the sum of their parts. They were symbols and they were fighters and more than that they were family and Damian loved them, fiercely, until it burned in his chest.

His comm buzzed. “Hey Wing,” Timothy said. “The Batburger in Old Gotham, the one next to that old toy store. The rest of us are stopping there before we head back, you coming?”

Damian smiled.

“I’m on my way,” he said, and leapt into the open air.