Chapter Text
Damian’s first gifted soulshard came from his mother, when he turned five. It was a beautiful orange-red dagger, with flecks of gold here and there, and he wanted to hold it more than anything in the world.
Then his mother put it in his hand, closed his fingers around it and held a kitten by the scruff and hind legs in front of him, as an offering. An order. A mission. And, once it was carried, the slightest hint of satisfaction in her eyes.
Those were the feelings the dagger was imbued with; expectation, and pride. Not for who he was, but for what he did. A heavy weight, and a cold one, right until the moment the mission was complete; after that, a short-lived warmth crept up his arm, the starting point the dagger in his hand.
Or maybe it was the kitten’s blood what chased the cold (and his sleep) away. It should have been comforting.
It wasn't.
When Grayson chose him as his Robin, he sealed the deal by giving Damian an R shaped soul shard in the form of a brooch. It should have been an ecstatic moment for him, his second ever soul shard being gifted to him by his Batman.
It wasn’t.
While warmer and lighter than his dagger, it felt… off. Their bond was just growing then, no trust nor love giving shape to the soul given away. Instead, Damian was presented with Grayson’s feelings of responsibility (to the city), despair (because they both have just lost their father) and reluctant resignation (because even when Grayson choose him, it was obviously not what he wanted, it couldn’t be, not when there was already a Robin fully indoctrinated in The Mission perfectly available and… more loved), as well as the barest hint of hopeful fondness.
He doesn’t hold it against him; that was just their beginning, and it was the gesture what was important, a gift from the soul that Damian hadn’t yet earned, a trust at giving himself away to the child he had just decided to take under his wing. Were Grayson to give him a new soul shard, he was sure the feelings wouldn’t be so harsh now that they had formed and nurtured this bond between them. Still, he treasured his brooch for what it was: a chance to prove himself, a chance at a home.
Drake’s soul (not a shard, not a piece, but the remainings of his actual soul; his core) was an entirely new phenomenon. The moment he received it, clenched it in his hands for the first time, it was imbued with a rage and contempt that didn’t surprise him, as those were the grounds of their relationship. But, with every passing minute, the feeling just… calmed down, like… forgiveness? Acceptance? It was like a pat on the back after a hard patrol with Grayson, after he made a mistake and the man would just sigh and tell him ‘do better next time, but let’s just put this behind us’. But… from Drake?
It- that was- there weren’t actual words to explain it. Damian had never heard of it, of a change on the emotions inside the soul, but, he supposes, this wasn’t something Drake had sharded with an idea in mind, this wasn’t a love confession or a methaporical friendly hug. Drake had just… given himself away, entirely.
Damian wasn’t sure what it meant, but the mystery of that pushed him relentlessly to the batcave, to the monitors where he would watch and rewatch old footage of Drake’s training, read old reports, dig as deep as he could in search of information that might clear things up for him.
That might explain the clench in his heart when he held the tiny soul.
---.---
He is missing.
Bruce can't process it at first. He has every camera, every metahuman, every genius hero at his disposal… and nothing.
No one could find Tim, and he's been gone for over a week. Seven days and twelve hours, if he was counting. Which he was, because seeing the pretty ice blue watch on his wrist, warm with admiration, respect and adoration, slowly turning cold and black was high on the list of the scariest moments of his life.
He was holding his son's soul, but soon it wouldn't feel any different than the Rolex he might wear for a charity.
It terrified him.
The only piece of Tim's soul (and it had taken him a while, to track down everyone Tim ever gave a shard to, even going so far as to dig Janet and Jack's graves, because there were so many pieces; too many) to remain icy blue was Damian's. Which would be fantastic for testing, for figuring out what was wrong, maybe even for tracking Tim down…
If Damian weren't so dead set on keeping it in his direct line of sight, on the little leather pouch by his hip or dangling from his neck.
The twelve year old had proven willing to stab any hand that tried to take his soul shard away, accepting only those tests that were safe and could be made in front of his eyes.
"We could try to, like… mesh my piece of soul with Damian's?", had suggested Dick, once, earlier on the week.
"And how, pray tell, would you do it? Drake himself is the one that shaped your necklace. This are his soul shards, no one but him can bend them to their will."
"I mean… Cass's father, Cain, he made dents and bumps in her soul, so it’s not like its impossible…"
"...after years of abuse, from which her soul has yet to recover! Of all the stupid/!"
Dick, on very little sleep and with worry and guilt battling it out inside his heart, rolled his eyes at Damian’s objections.
"We won’t hurt him for the hell of it, but he could be in danger, or lost, or who knows what! There’s little to no precedent about soulless people. Since when do you care so much about Tim’s wellbeing, anyway?"
"And since when do you not?"
That had ended the argument quickly. Guilt had won in Dick. Damian’s gifted little piece of soul remained at it’s pouch.
And Tim was still missing. Bruce wanted to pull at his hair, yell and throw fists.
He did none of these. Damian needed him. He had already failed one son.
----.----
12 - 17
Life goes on, after a tragedy. And this tragedy in particular was a silent one; there was no blood, no screaming, no tears. Just someone that left it all behind and disappeared on the wind. And, as much as the Bats wanted to find him, Tim going on a solo trip wasn’t alarming enough for them to ignore the day to day dangers of Gotham, the multiverse threats, the alien invasions. As concerning as multiple soul shards changing color and losing emotion had been, the fact remained that it… just wasn’t priority. Timothy could look after himself; the civilians of Gotham and the world at large couldn’t.
At least, that was what father said.
Damian was of a different mind.
He noticed it at first during a Justice League meeting. He had taken to playing around with the little ice blue ball when lost in thought, or was nervous, a habit developed after hours, days and months sitting by the cave’s monitors studying his predecessor. So there he was, idly rolling it between his fingers, careful to not drop it, when he catches sight of Superboy…
(The Titans were a mess, Wonder Girl, SB and Impulse running around like headless chickens, dropping everything, no matter how mission-important, at the slightest mention of anything Red Robin related, recruiting the help of old fiends from their Young Justice days, hurting so much not even him, usually indifferent to his peers' drama, could remain untouched by their pain)
...being scolded by Superman. Which, would normally not even phase Damian, impartial about the clone outside of his relationship with Drake as he was.
But. But . When Superman layed a condescending hand on Kon El’s shoulder, something spiked inside Damian, a sudden and strong desire to slap that hand away, to growl at the man, to protect his/
...his best friend ?
That thought it’s what gives him pause, stops him mid step, where he was unthinkingly approaching the aliens.
Those weren’t his feelings, but Drake’s.
At the realization, the little soul in his hand glowed and warmed and almost jumped right out of it.
It seemed to say ‘finally’.
Damian couldn’t breath.
----.----
He kept quiet about this new knowledge, but it nagged at him. He had to test this out.
He held the small soul while watching Grayson train by the Cave's trapeze. Rolled it between fingers with little to no trouble while covertly listening to Cain and Brown tease each other. Made a protective fist around it when he stumbled across Red Hood during patrol, catching the -now reformed- antiheroe mid flight.
Admiration and yearning (teach me, choose me, love me).
Fondness and familiarity (bond with me, laugh with me, stand by me).
Trepidation and want (please look at me, please stop hating me, please let me watchadmirelove you).
Those weren't his feelings, so. Confirmed then.
Holding Drake's soul, he apparently had an open door to the man's feelings. An insight to the deepest parts of him.
Weeks into his discovery, he learned a few things. For example, how annoyingly emotional the young man was. Did Drake always feel everything this intensely? It was exhausting, and Damian at least had the option to put the soul away at it's pouch, stopping the flow of emotions. Drake… well, he did leave it behind, after all.
Which made him wonder, if he had Drake's emotions at hand, what did it leave his predecessor with?
----.----
13 - 18
It pained Damian to admit this, but Drake was… good. Too good. Unbelievable so, for someone that started his formal training way later in life than Damian.
The footage in front of him was one he had viewed already dozens of times, and he still couldn't believe his eyes. A gift requested to his mother, footage from the Cradle, about two years before.
At first, Damian had just wanted to uncover the mystery of Drake's time away during Father's absence. What happened during those months, to drive one like his Gradfather from mild admiration to almost obsessive, possessive desire? What elevated the, by the time, teenager to a spot previously occupied by none other than The Batman , and even beyond?
His in into the League allowed him access to the answer. And he understood .
The mixture of recklessly brave plans, creatively executed acrobatics, heart-stopping genius and iron clad morals. Fighting against the Spiders, protecting the innocent at his back, all the while under tight schedule on his plan to land an unprecedented hard blow to the League.
It was breathtaking.
The young detective, that unmasked the man many believed was no more than a myth, the novice hero that when told 'no' started his own team of fighters, that while no one else thought it possible defied Death itself for the life of his adoptive father.
Barely older than Damian himself, with half his years of training, and still so far away. Leagues ahead of him.
Out of his reach ...
A grimace, an unfamiliar tightness in his chest and then Damian was cracking his knuckles and typing away at the computer.
If his Grandfather viewed Drake above Father, then maybe Damian was going about this the wrong way, in his quest to surpass every Robin before him. He needed to succeed where even Father had failed, reaching to a step below Drake instead of the entire flight of stairs he had ahead of him.
...but not for long.
He needed to do what not even the Batman could achieve.
He would bring Drake back.
----.----
It takes some time. He studies for weeks under Gordon, shadows Cyborg's steps for a while, even declines patrol once or twice claiming a stomachache when he feels he's close to a clue. Has the Titans permanently hacked (props of connecting from the Batcave's computer, no one questioned the backdoor on their system, assumed it was Batman checking on them) and an alert programmed on his phone for every time some reporter catches sight of the Drake-Wayne heir (none so far, but, like a voice that sounded like Grayson singsonged, cover all your bases ).
And even after all of that, it was still Drake himself that pointed him in the right direction.
Damian was idly scrolling down some online headlines, mind numb with tiredness barely paying attention to the titles, when the little soul between his forefinger and thumb gave him a spark, so sudden it was like an electric shock, sapping him out of it and forcing his attention to the article on screen.
Serial killer known as The Gardener found tied in the front lawn of his supposed next victims, after seven months evading the Parisian police force. Family claims they never saw nor heard anything until the morning, when the father was about to head for work and stumbled across the handcuffed man, hand clutching his signature weapon, unconscious and still bleeding from, what the police assumes, was a short lived fight...
The soul pulsed again. Disgust, rage, adrenaline... pride, vindictive pride. The same emotions that soared through him when a would be rapist fell to his sword during patrol.
Quick eyes scanning through the article, nothing pointing towards a vigilante, no pattern that he could see pointing to his missing predecessor. And still, Damian knew .
Energy renewed, he scanned through older news, titles. Nothing sparked the soul, until a thwarted robbery on Scotland gave him pause. Again, the article itself was generic, no common points except the mystery of whoever stopped the crime from happening, but… his gut, and Drake's gut, they were both screaming at him.
This was him. What was he doing on Paris? Was he still there? Two articles, separated by a few weeks, was more of a clue than anyone had found this far, but it was still nothing. And the last one, with the Serial Killer, was from two days ago. Even if he told Father and he dispatched a velocist or super, it'd still be too late. Drake wouldn't have been able to evade them this long if he iddled long somewhere.
Sighing tiredly he fell back into the chair, raising the little soul so it was eye level. After all this time, after all his training, after all of father's efforts to track his wayward son, it was proved only Drake could find Drake. A little, sleep deprived smile broke his scowl.
He was too tired to feel frustration.
Not too much for admiration, though.
----.----
That same night, oceans away, a slim figure dealt the finishing blow to some wannabe gangsters on a upper class Venetian neighbour. They had been armed, but only the slightest of scratches decorated his arm. The other guys… weren't so lucky. They'd be lucky if their broken ribs didn't pierce a lung.
The scared girls that he saved from being jumped (or worse) rushed forward once their attackers hit the ground, sobbing between their heartfelt thanks and praises. Trembling hands reaching for his cap-less back, the slippery material of his dark shirt slipping from their fingers. Still, he carefully moved out of range and tonelessly told them to call for the police, letting them comfort each other and waiting only until he could hear the sirens approaching. Then, he was gone, lost to the night that had spited him out to fight the treath minutes before.
On the back of his mind, something told him he should be annoyed. He had been good to keep himself out of the media's attention, dealing with crimes where no one would be able to pinpoint exactly who had been their saviour, or how had they been spared from the danger. Like the Parisian family. Now that was a clean work. Found the killer, guessed his next target and caught him just before the crime. In, fight, out. Easy, untraceable. Two scared girls might not have the clearest memories of their traumatic attack, but 'young, black clothed man fights off gangsters with a staff' would surely make the headlines, which meant hailing ass as far from here as possible before anyone could trace this back to him.
People tracking him raised in his gut… the closest thing to emotions he had nowadays (something he hadn't been bothered with for years now), namely annoyance. He had a goal in mind, rules he played by, things to avoid. Having all that endangered was troublesome, and even worse was how inevitable it was. He couldn't exactly ignore the crying girls, not because he cared, but his body always moved on its own on situations like this, personal preferences overrode by muscle memory.
How inconvenient.
And speaking of…
He barely nodded in acknowledgement when a shadowed figure fell into step besides him, keeping up on his sprint from rooftop to rooftop.
"My Master wishes to extend an invitation to dinner. He demands your company."
Not Pru then, but not so different from what he expected.
He hummed, for show more than anything else, eyeing the leather pouch by the man's hip. A Soul Carrier, nothing flashy but firmly attached. Classic League.
The shadow flinched. They all did. Something in his lack of soul scared them shitless when he payed attention to theirs, as if he would snatch them and steal away with it.
Ha. Please. He didn't even want his own soul back, why in hell would he take theirs?
He'd never feel lighter before. And even if sometimes the emptiness inside made him eye with attention the knife he carried on his boot as a last resort, those moments were few and easily forgotten.
"Depends. Is he ready to pay for the pleasure of it? It's been a while, I'm on need of cash and resources, so my fee has gone up."
A moment of silence while the shadow listened on his earpiece for his answer. Then, a nod.
"Okay then. Tell him to send me directions to the place once I'm out of this country. And that if he wants me to wear something pretty, he better chose a nice, camera-less place. And if he doesn't keep his hands to himself, he'll need one of those shiny green pools of his to regrow a few fingers."
----.----
14 - 19
Todd's emergency beacon called from Tokyo, interrupting their post patrol debrief. Father had programmed all their distress signals so they would always come through, no matter what else was doing on or what Do not Disturb protocols he might have. Nothing would get in the way to saving his sons ever again.
When they answered, tense and (in Damian's case, reluctantly) worried, it was to the sounds of heavy breathing and clang of metal against metal. A fight.
"/ing hell! Fuck! Goddamned little/ anyone copy me?!"
Father, cowless but every bit the Batman, pressed a finger against the keyboard and dropped his voice am octave.
"Red Hood, here cave, we copy you. What's the situation?"
The sounds of fighting never stopped, and whatever could keep Hood on his toes like this and forced him to call for help was enough to have Damian reaching for his Soul Carrier, where two different (in size and colorthen) spheres guarded each other. It was a habit he needed to train himself out of, but for now, a needed comfort.
"I /shit shit SHIT, YOU LITTLE FUCKER/ I found the bastard! Tim!"
A needle dropping could be heard in the following silence. Cain steps as she approached the batconputer could be heard and that was something.
The smallest of the souls in his carriers pulsed at the sight of Brown's distress as she clutched Black Bat's hand, her other going to the almost completely red locket hanging from her neck. If it followed the pattern of both Grayson and Father, it would soon turn dark.
(Unlike the clone and velocist, those two's soul shards still retained the icy blue color, and Damian couldn't help but think it had something to do with the fact that the people that had betrayed Drake the worst were the ones that were losing their connection to him first; Cain's own compass was still mostly blue)
Damian's own soul basically jumped to his hand at the implication of what Todd was saying (he ignored the flash of disappointment that he wasn't the one to find Drake, the little spark of something on the icy blue little ball that still reacted to that idiotic Todd… ).
Grayson was the one that basically pushed father out of the way, so he could lean over the keyboard, as if that would make him be heard clearer, hand fondling with the chain around his neck that was Drake 's first shard, both to be created and to lose it's warmth.
"A-are you sure? Our Timmy?"
"You have eyes on him?", demanded father as he typed away, faster than Damian ever remembered seeing, probably sending some kind of message to the Justice League for assistance.
"Damn right I'm sure, don't know anyone as annoying/ FUCK can't you see I'm on the phone ya lil shit?! I can do you one better than eyes on the bastard, B, I'll put my hands around his weasly lil neck/!"
A window popped on the Cave monitor (of course Gordon was eavesdropping) as Oracle traced the call and hacked the street camera closest to Todd's location.
The figure was all in black, taller and leaner than Damian remembered. Or was that because he spent so much time watching footage of his time as Robin? Drake was smaller then, baby faced and bird-boned. A child. Somewhere along the line, lost in studying his formative years, Damian had forgot the fact that he was a man, now.
He certainly looked the part, now. Graceful as fought Hood off, tough a lot more brutal, if Hood's grunts of pain everyone the shiny staff made contact could be believed. He seemed in a hurry, too, judging by his almost too fast to be seen movements.
The fight moved a little (likely Hood's doing), and they shifted just enough for them to see, in the grainy quality of the camera, a second of Drake's face before before he seemed to sense that he was being watched. Something was thrown the camera's way, a little gadget, and everything turned black. The only connection the Cave had to Drake now was the still going sounds of fighting.
"Hood, tell him to stop! We don't mean him any harm/"
" I do, the little fucker broke my left wrist! Imma gonna show him!"
"Hood!", now not only Grayson, but Brown too, chided.
"Just stall him", commanded Father. "Clark is on his way."
"Easy for you to say! Whatever he's being doing this last few years, it gave him a hell of a boost. I can barely/"
Silence. Not just Hood shutting up, but no more breaths, no more metallic clang. The line had been cut, something that shouldn't been possible after all the upgrades father made to their comms.
By the time Superman arrived to Gotham, an hour had passed, and not even Gordon could re install the connection to either the street camera nor the comm. Not that it would do any good: Hood was unconscious and brutally beated up, and not even a full scan of the city by various metas gave them any hint of Drake 's location.
The icy blue soul pulsed with guilt at hood's state, but also an undeniable pride at the fact that Drake got away. Damian felt like throwing it against a wall. Instead, he cradled it in his hands, against his chest, as he went to sleep that night.
He dreamed of grainy camera footage, the face in the recording handsom and lethal, the coldness on pretty eyes replaced by the emotional icy blue of his soul.
----.----
He woke up in the morning and laid on bed for a while.
Ignorant on the emotional side of things as Grayson might believe him, Damian wasn't about to lie to himself.
There was no denying the clenching on his gut when the camera displayed the video of the dark figure fighting, the disappointment when Hood failed to bring Drake home, the spark of annoyance at the fact that the tiny soul still reacted to the second Robin, the flash of white warmth that crept up him when he saw the results of Drake's power on Hood's battle wounds.
The craving pumping his heart was like nothing he ever felt before.
It was like seeing his mother holding her soul shard his way, like Grayson hands fastening the R brooch on his cape for the first time, like giving Father a ring and Nightwing a bracelet, nervous in a way that was unbecoming to someone of the Al Ghul's household.
It was wanting to receive and to be accepted.
It was more than that.
It was holding Drake's entire soul in his hand, small and battered as it was, and thinking ' I'll fix this' . It was masterfully twirling it in his hand, easy from practice, letting Drake's emotions wash over him, his fierce protectiveness over his friends, his honest fondness over the family, the growing approval every time Damian cracked a case or figured out a mystery on his own. It wasn't Drake himself, but at the same time it was.
Damian dropped his head back into the pillow and raised the hand holding the tiny soul, his own gold, green and blue one laying on the mattress by his hip. It had tiny specs of ice blue on it, influenced against his will by the soul that shared the soul carrier with for so long now, not too different from the way his mother's orange red soul had some dark blue hues dancing near it's core, or how Pennyworth's silver one had the barest hints of yellow, which the butler once told him were remnants of his first love.
He never would admit to be emulating Todd, but in that moment, he couldn't help it.
"Fuck."