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The first time Bruce sees his son, he’s as bloody as the day he was born. It’s not his mother’s blood that covers him now, but the blood of his adoptive parents, dead beside him. Their throats were cut open by sai blades thrown before Bruce could stop them. Before they could duck, either. They were too focused on protecting their precious child, sandwiched between them. The child who is also Bruce’s child.
With all the assassins in the house incapacitated, Bruce is free to stop and stare at his baby. The only word that comes to mind is ‘beautiful’. He’s a bloody, crying miracle with big green eyes and shiny black hair that curls slightly at the ends. And he’s so big, far bigger than Bruce expected. Maybe it’s because part of him was expecting the newborn baby he’s seen in his dreams so often instead of the one year old that’s in front of him. A lot happens in a year. So many of his milestones are already passed. He’s probably already said his first word and learned how to crawl. Maybe he’s even started standing up on wobbly legs and attempting to take his first steps, only to fall down flat.
And Bruce has missed it all, because his baby hasn’t really been his since he was still growing in his mother’s womb. The couple whose blood he sits in have been his parents since his birth. They’ve sheltered him, nurtured him, loved him in a way that Bruce should be grateful for but he can’t stop himself from resenting because it should have been him, goddammit.
Bruce has some base knowledge of his son’s adoptive parents. They’re from Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, both in their early 40s with no other children. The woman had fertility issues, so they turned to adoption. They’re not affluent, but they’re not poor either; they’re a comfortable, anonymous family. It would have been a good environment for a child to grow up in. Bruce is certain, from the ferocity with which they tried to protect their baby, that they were good parents. He knows that his son was better off with them than he would have been with him. Their deaths, a casualty of his war with Ra’s, are proof of that.
But he is a selfish man, and he doesn’t care that his baby is better off without him, because he wants him. He’s never wanted anything more in his life. For over a year, he’s suffered in silence, unable to tell anyone what he was feeling because what would they say to him? “Sorry for your loss”? He didn’t want to hear it.
He’s had to feign happiness and congratulate friends and colleagues on the birth of their babies even when he really wanted to shout, “why can’t I have that, why did I not deserve that?”. He’s kept his mouth shut while overhearing conversations in the watchtower about the perils of potty training and sleepless nights, wishing more than anything that he could be complaining about the mundane, messy parts of parenthood too.
His instincts tell him to reach down and snatch his child up, to wrap him up tightly in his arms in case another assassin lurks nearby. But he can’t. Not while his son has the blood of his adoptive parents all over him. It would feel wrong, holding his baby for the first time with the slippery reminder of how he got that baby soaking into his gloves. He can feel the dead couples’ eyes staring at him, condemning him.
You did this to us, they seem to jeer. You should have been more careful what you wished for.
Bruce spots a hamper across the room and strides over to it. He grabs the first shirt he sees on the top of the pile and then makes a few cautious steps towards the wailing baby. He pauses just short of stepping in the pool of blood before him, hesitates for half a second, then reaches up to pull his cowl off. A confused, crying infant who just saw his parents killed doesn’t need to be scared further by a giant bat looming over him. And Bruce doesn’t want to properly meet his son for the first time as Batman. Being Batman is why he couldn’t keep him.
Bruce kneels down and wraps the shirt around his squirming child. He gently lifts him out of the pool of semi-coagulated blood and begins scrubbing him off. When the shirt is soaked through and tossed aside, the baby quiets. Bruce brings his son close to his chest and holds him properly for the first time. The weight of him in his arms is unfamiliar but wonderful.
He’s a near carbon copy of Talia, and Bruce finds that he doesn’t mind that one bit.
“Damian,” he breathes, speaking his son’s name aloud for the first time.
When Talia came to him breathless and frantic to ask for his help, Bruce was angry. She lied to him. No matter how noble her reasoning had been, that didn’t erase the year Bruce spent mourning a child who never actually died. There was no explanation she could give that would make up for the time he spent walking around like a zombie, holding in a secret that was killing him inside. The days he would hear a baby’s cry while in a store and have to duck into the bathroom to compose himself. The night he finally broke into that bourbon hidden in his closet and wished his baby a happy birthday while pouring a glass in the dark.
Then she said “Damian needs us, beloved”, and all his feelings of anger and betrayal dissolved. Knowing his son’s name – Damian – made it real. His baby was real and alive and out there somewhere, in danger. Ra’s knew about him now, and he wasn’t going to rest until he had his heir. Bruce and Talia had to get to him first.
He cried that night, for the first time in a long time, in Talia’s arms. He cried for a million different reasons; relief at knowing his son was alive, grief for the year he’d never get back, anger at the prospect of losing him again. Talia didn’t make a sound as she held him. She didn’t cry with him, and Bruce thinks maybe she cried all her tears away a year ago when she handed her baby over to strangers.
In the present, Bruce taps his ear to activate his comm.
“Your father’s assassins are taken care of. Our boy is safe.”
He hears Talia’s sigh of relief from the other end.
“I’ve bought us a few hours,” she says. “Meet me at the rendezvous point in 30.”
He promises to be there and turns his commlink off. It should only take him 10 minutes at most to reach the rendezvous point, which gives 20 minutes to stop and revel in this moment. He’s holding his son for the first time. Damian stares up at him with those big green eyes framed by long dark lashes, both of which he got from his mother. Bruce is mesmerized.
He’s perfect. Everything Bruce has ever wanted.
“Hello, Damian,” he speaks softly. “I’m your...”
He stops.
Damian had probably just learned to call the dead man at Bruce’s feet “baba”. Now Bruce is taking that from him. He hasn’t earned that title.
“... your father,” he finishes weakly.
Damian tilts his head a bit, almost as if he’s trying to understand. Then he reaches up and tugs hard on Bruce’s cape, babbling nonsense. Bruce’s heart is so full he feels like it could burst out of his chest.
He presses a kiss to that soft, curly hair.
“I love you,” he whispers, as if it’s secret. “I’ve loved you since the day I found out there was going to be a you to love.”
Damian can’t understand him of course, but one of Bruce’s greatest regrets was that he would never get to say these words aloud. Now they come tumbling out.
“I loved you even when I thought you were gone. You’ll never know how much.”
His son curls up against him, making Bruce tighten his hold. He ghosts his fingers across Damian’s chubby little cheek.
Now, he thinks. I’m finally complete.
He allows himself 5 more minutes to stand in that pool of blood and hold the new center of his universe. Tomorrow, he goes to war with Ra’s. But today, all that matters is Damian.