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Despite the music in his headphones blocking out most of the noise, Damian distantly wondered if coming to such a crowded place was the right idea. People roamed in all directions around him, twisting and turning and gathering together like a maze of snakes.
But coming here had a purpose, because it was the last place anyone who even remotely knew him would come to look.
The squeaking of worn sneakers alerted him to the hoards of loud, noisy children jumping from place to place, the balloon floor of the play castle rippling in tiny waves with each bounce. Stephanie had taken him here, once before to celebrate a successful mission. He doubted if she still remembered it. Technically, he hadn’t.
He’d run into the amusement park by mistake, having taken the scenic route through the grassy woodlands surrounding the area, hoping the greenery would clear his head. It had, somewhat, and once he’d calmed, hiding in the bouncy castle seemed as good a place as any to take a minute to think.
How would he even begin to explain this to Father? There was no way for him to word things without letting on that he’d gone too far. He’d been the one to throw the first punch, and he’d landed the last one as well out of spite before making his getaway from the dingy alley where he’d been attacked.
He’d suspected it would’ve happened at some point. Most of the suffocatingly blonde and blue-eyed population of the school Father had enrolled him in despised him. Whether it be the teachers, what with him often correcting them on their own source material yet skipping through class every other day out of sheer boredom, or, more noticeably, the students. Spoiled and oozing superiority like a pile of waste gathering flies, with bothersome jabs and constant questions. Damian could count on one hand the few who didn’t irritate him, most of them the school janitors.
There was one group in particular, that the likes of Drake perhaps would have likened to a Mean Girls posse, that infuriated him to no end. There were the stereotypical schoolyard bullies you saw in romcoms, and Damian regretted having dismissed them at first glance on screen, because they were far more annoying in real life.
They were everything Damian wasn’t. Social, impulsive, pop-culture savvy, and ridiculously, overwhelmingly: white. It seemed every well-to-do household of blondes in the country had all flocked to his school with the sole purpose of tormenting him.
He was above them, that much he’d never doubted, and contrary to popular belief, no, he wasn’t being arrogant this time around. There was no need to be. The blatant, overly luxurious displays of face value wealth and face value class were no less fake than pyrite. He didn’t even bother with the notion of trying to be like them.
Yet in a city such as Gotham, he had to admit he was outnumbered. For every speck of melanin in the crowd was a blizzard of blue eyes, and no amount of wealth could make the darkness of his skin evaporate into thin air.
Of the admittedly often times he thought of his mother, in situations like these were when he missed her the most. Talia was an intensely proud woman, standing with her spine as straight as a pencil, chin raised defiantly, looking down at the world that quivered in its attempts to put her down. Imitating that look was what had gotten him through most of the school year.
He’d even enjoyed how angry it made most of his classmates, all their attempts to wipe the pride off his face in vain. Yet however thoroughly he’d enjoyed it, he should’ve known there would eventually be consequences. There was only so much that happened in the actual schoolyard. Once lessons ended there was no one to stop them from ganging up on Damian outside.
Sighing into the artificially flavored sugary drink he’d bought to pass the time, he had to admit that for all his classmates' pink-faced pigheadedness, they’d been meticulous. Damian had made it out the other end unscathed out of his own merit, and he could never prove he’d been provoked.
…He’d promised Father he would try this time, his third school change in two years wearing down on how much Father could defend him from. He’d actually tried this time. Trying hadn’t been enough, his bruised knuckles and the imprints they’d left on his classmates' faces on the other hand- they were enough.
“Are you finished staring at me Brown, or are you having a seizure?” He didn’t look up from his still full cup of soda.
Stephanie stepped out from behind the cake-pop stand, only mildly sheepish.
“When did you notice?”
“When you first arrived twenty minutes ago.”
Stephanie took a seat next to him.
“And how long have you been here?”
“Two hours.”
Neither of them said anything for a long moment afterward. Stephanie eyed his cup.
“You gonna finish that or...”
He silently handed his cup over.
Still, for several minutes they didn’t say anything. Realizing he wasn’t going to talk first, Stephanie’s patience wore out.
“You aren’t going to ask?”
“And receive what? I know why you’re here.”
“Enlighten me then. Why am I here?”
Damian rolled his eyes. Brown may be as close to family as was possible without being biologically related, but how exactly was he going to explain to her blonde-haired, blue-eyed self why he’d been hiding?
“You’re here because Michelson's parents didn’t waste time in getting the news out to every goddamn person they know that I beat up their poor son.”
Stephanie looked at him, her normally overly expressive face strangely soft, yet unreadable.
“No, I’m not.”
If Damian could make a question mark emoji appear next to his head, he would. Nevertheless, Stephanie got the hint.
“Michelson, and whoever his parents are, have nothing to do with me being here. I’m here cause you were supposed to be home 4 hours ago.”
Lovely, meaning now there was his own verbal confession to hold against him. He’d gone and opened his stupid mouth and put himself into even more trouble.
“And? I’m late 6/7 days of the week.”
“Not on Thursdays.”
Oh. Right. Today was the day Alfred tended to the greenhouses. Damian was supposed to come home on time today.
Picking up on his train of thought, Stephanie offered him a faint smile. “Made Alfred worry his head off, he won’t admit he worries so much, but the 6 new wrinkles on his face say otherwise.”
“Careful,” Damian muttered, “If he hears you he might think you’re calling him old.”
“And if he doesn’t? Alf isn’t here bud.”
“So? It’s common knowledge that Pennyworth was the real-life inspiration behind Mary Poppins.”
The air almost visibly lightened, with Stephanie snorting ungracefully into her drink.
“Tell Pennyworth I’m sorry for keeping him waiting.”
Stephanie ran a critical eye over him, only stopping once at his purpled knuckles.
“You’re not coming home?”
“Not right now.”
He wasn’t ready to face Father yet, even the crowd at the castle was slowly dying down, leaving him with enough room to listen to himself think. Not a good idea, he kind of missed the noise now.
Stephanie leaned back against a balloon pillar, watching the sky grow dusky.
“Mind if I stay here?”
Damian eyed her warily, “Not going to ask?”
“Nope,” she popped the ‘p’ at the end.
“Michelson's got a couple older siblings just like him. I remember Tim’s academy days enough to know not to ask.”
Damian stared at the scuff marks on his shoes, gathered from the dirt and sidewalk gravel during the fight.
He didn’t know why, but he decided to tell her.
“I’m going to get expelled again.”
“Again?”
“The first time was my fault,” Damian admitted, “I cursed out the principal after he tried to imply that I was cheating.”
Stephanie wrinkled her nose, “So snooty adults eh? Any other time?”
Damian eyed her dryly, his second expulsion was his most famous.
“Taking the blame for setting the chemistry lab on fire to cover for Thomas’s powers malfunctioning after a day fight with Hatter.”
“Hey,” Stephanie joked, “at least this one wasn’t your fault.”
“That’s not what's going on record.”
She frowned, “Isn’t Bruce taking care of that?”
“No, I asked him not to.”
“...Why?”
Damian looked away, watching a pair of siblings playing hopscotch in the sandpit. One of them fell over head-first, the other rushing to pull them back up and wipe away their tears.
“Regardless of the actual reason behind it, if Father had it wiped off the record, that doesn’t make me any better than Michelson, assuming everything I do wrong will be absolved with money.”
“If anybody asked, I wanted to deal with it myself.”
“You don’t want to hide behind money,” Stephanie shook her head, “even in the situations when you should.”
She looked him over for a moment, something warm and fond tingling in her eyes. The slowly fading sunlight coloring them almost white, unearthly, and almost angelic against Damian’s muddy olive irises.
“Y’know what I like about you bud? That.”
Damian was genuinely confused. “...What?”
Stephanie shook her head, “You’re brutally honest Dames. You don’t like lying, and avoid it even when you could get away with it. Kay’ so you got into a fight, against who I already know is a stupid rich white kid that looks like me. You don’t wanna lie to Bruce that you didn’t throw the first punch, so you’re avoiding him.
You don’t wanna admit you see Michelson in me, so you’re avoiding me.”
“...”
“But I’m not avoiding you.”
Stephanie looked at him, and Damian turned to face her fully for the first time.
“..It felt like you were, a little?”
Damian shrugged, “I was avoiding you at first.”
He looked back down at his feet. “I’m not doing it anymore,” he added.
“Oh.”
Stephanie looked down at her almost empty cup.
“Okay. Thanks.”
Not knowing what else to say, or there even was anything to say, Damian grabbed his backpack off the ground. He’d have to wash it after the amount of time it had spent in the wet grass.
Walking towards the entrance to the amusement park, Stephanie looked at her drink again, “By the way, why’d you order cherry soda? I thought you hated artificial stuff.”
Damian watched a portly man pack up the cotton candy stand, stray cones of pink and blue cotton fluff being handed out to a group of toddlers.
“I do. But it was the thing I saw, and I wasn’t actually planning on drinking anything.”
“Really? Try it, there’s some left.”
Damian eyed what was left of the red-pink liquid.
“You didn’t spit in this did you?”
“I’m not Cass, Dames.”
Eyeing the drink one more time, Damian drowned the final sip in one gulp.
…
He promptly found the nearest water fountain and spat it back out.
Behind him, he could hear Stephanie dying with laughter.
“It’s not funny!”
Steph cackled even harder.
“Yes it was kiddo, yes it was.”