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“Shirt off,” Dick called as he gathered the supplies. “Let’s see what the damage is.”
Damian complied, but Dick could hear him muttering something under his breath. He smiled, knowing the kid couldn’t be too badly hurt if he was able to resort to dramatics.
“I can hear you rolling your eyes!” he called out to his little brother as he gathered the last of what they’d probably need.
“No, you can’t!” Damian snapped back before he went back to his furious grumbling.
Dick left him to it, double-checking to make sure he had all the supplies before heading back to the table that Damian was perched on. He was halfway there when he stopped in his tracks.
It wasn’t the gash on Damian’s right shoulder that froze him in place. As he’d suspected, it was minor. Barely worth stitching up in the first place. What made him stop, hands shaking and anger boiling in the pit of his stomach, were the scars.
They crisscrossed his back in long, dark, angry lines. Years’ worth of injuries layered over each other, writing a horrifying story across Damian’s skin.
Slowly, Dick stepped closer, as if doing so would make him see something different. Turn the scars into a trick of the light. But of course, that wasn’t going to happen. They were there, real and even more horrifying up close. Some of them were old. Damian had only been ten when he came here, and Dick knew none of those scars had been inflicted in the time since.
“What?” Damian asked, sounding even pricklier than usual.
“Who did this to you?”
The question slipped out in a moment of horror, even though Dick knew what the answer must be.
“Who do you think?” Damian asked shortly, that eyerolling tone back in his voice. Like this was something Dick didn’t need to worry about. Like it was normal. “Do I need stitches or not?”
“Y-yeah,” Dick said, the question snapping him back to the task at hand. “Yeah. I think so. Just a few, though.”
His hands steadied themselves the moment he had the needle between his fingers. He’d done this enough times—on himself, his brothers, and Bruce—that he could keep himself from shaking even as he was terrified or furious.
Actually stitching the wound was a quick enough job. It wasn’t that long, only needing ten sutures. And through it all, Damian was quiet. Not the comfortable quiet that came after a rough night that left everyone involved too exhausted to talk but too keyed-up to sleep and they just sat in each other’s silent company. It was the eerie, heavy quiet that came after seeing something you weren’t supposed to see.
The second Dick had fixed a bandage over the wound, Damian slid off the table, snatching his shirt up with a swiftness that felt pointed.
“Damian –”
“We’re not talking about it.”
Dick was at a total loss for what to do as his brother stormed off. He didn’t know whether to call out to him, try to stop him, or just let him go, give him time and space to himself before he pressed the issue. Before he could make a decision (or maybe not choosing was the decision), Damian was gone.
The minute the kid was out of sight, Dick allowed himself to punch the table. Punch it and immediately regret it as cold, unforgiving metal slammed into fragile, already-bruised fingers. It wasn’t like he didn’t know how the world worked, how people did terrible things to kids every day. But Damian… Damian was his kid (no he’s not, not anymore, Bruce is back, he doesn’t need you to be that anymore). His kid who he should have been able to protect.
That doesn’t make sense and you know it, he chided himself. You didn’t even know he existed when it happened.
But in the end, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that Damian had been hurt and no one had protected him. Not even his own mother.
Dick had always been protective of his brothers. It was a natural part of being a member of this family, and the oldest sibling at that. But Damian had always brought forth that side of him more than the others. Maybe because he was the youngest. Maybe because he was the most overconfident and reckless. And absolutely because for so long, Dick had been the only father figure the kid had. For all he reminded himself (and he reminded himself constantly) that he wasn’t Damian’s father, that the kid was his brother and their real dad was finally back, thank God, there were some things that just couldn’t be walked away from. Apparently being a dad was one of them.
For just a few seconds, he let himself think it without taking it back. His kid had been hurt. Abused. Tortured.
The next time any member of the League of Assassins showed their face in Gotham, there would be hell to pay. Dick would make sure of it.