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Eventually, Jason wakes up.
It’s a kind of conscious Kon isn’t envious of though, because Tim keeps him sedated and they all watch as the older man’s bright green eyes follow shadows along the ceiling. Even with the bruises faded to a light yellow, and the wounds no longer held together with stitches, Jason seems worse off than when he first arrived, battered and beaten.
Dick doesn’t leave the room. Tim doesn’t leave the tower.
There’s a call from the league, only a few days later- a large scale meta crisis in Star City with possible nuclear consequence. Tim sighs, and looks around the room.
Cassie doesn’t make him say anything. “Alpha,” she says, voice suddenly in charge as soon as the call ends, “Let’s move.” No one questions it. Kon even feels himself follow her without needing Tim to direct him, which is now a big thing, anymore.
“Damian,” Kon hears Tim say, “Go, please.”
Kon feels Cassie stop next to him as they both turn to were the younger Robin sits. He’s not in uniform, but Kon has seen Damian incapacitate a meta with his bare hands. There’s a tense shift in Damian’s shoulders, his eyes still on Tim in front of the control panel, before he stands quickly. Without addressing either of them, he passes Kon and Cassie and moves toward where the rest of the team is waiting.
Robin hasn’t been a part of the team in years.
In true Robin fashion, it takes Damian less than five minutes, even on a moving plane, to fully suit up in the small bathroom.
When he rejoins the rest of the team everyone’s watching him.
Steph- Batgirl- smirks at him and Kon watches as, even though Damian takes the seat right next to her, he doesn’t really acknowledge her. “Nervous,” she asks him, quietly. Damian scoffs. Steph giggles at him a bit, “You don’t work well in a team.”
“Most teams,” he corrects her. It’s not an admonishment, like Kon expects, but more of an agreement. Then Kon watches the quick sharp smirk tick up the corner of Damian’s mouth, “But if you can function with them, I’m sure I’ll manage.”
Steph doesn’t retaliate like Kon expects either, just smiles a bit more and leans so that her shoulder bumps his lightly. Affectionately. “You’re getting soft on us, brat.”
Damian just scoffs again, but says nothing.
It’s all wrong, Kon thinks. For some reason, everything he knows about Damian is all wrong.
And Kon wants to know what that reason is.
Damian does not work well with the team. Kon watches and has to catch him a few times early in the fight. Each time the other man, grudgingly acknowledges it. A small nod before unflinchingly jumping right back into the action- with a zip line and a dive off a building or a running charge back into the enemy.
Kon hears Steph laugh over the chaos, “He’s used to watching for falling birds, from what I’ve heard.” He doesn’t hear Damian reply, but Kon feels it like a slap in the face.
But then, it’s like something clicks, and in the spaces where Kon expects Tim to fall out of the sky and deliver that precise hit Kon leaves open for him, Damian is there. Stepping back from the fight, Kon can see it in the way the other man moves- that he can fit into the space the entire team is used to leaving for their leader.
Damian is around four inches taller than Tim, his shoulders wider and his arms a bit longer. He fights with a sword and a daggers, whereas Tim fights with his bo staff primarily-
-But when Cassie kicks one of the henchmen back Damian is there, just like Tim would be, to make the final hit, knocking him out. Cassie laughs, after a moment of surprise, “Is there really a school where they teach you guys to be Robin?”
“No,” Damian answers her, like it’s the more ridiculous question he’s ever been asked, “We just make it work.” Looking to where they are, Kon watches Cassie give him an amused look, before they both move to take on the next closest threat.
Kon nearly scratches his head in the middle of a fight, because he doesn’t get it.
This smirky, smart-assed version of that little brat doesn’t make sense to him.
The meta, unsurprising, gets rounded up less than an hour later. Kon watches Cassie ruffle Damian’s short hair and smile at him, and he tries to not glare as she commends him on a good fight. “You got the hang of us pretty easily,” she observes as Kon arrives near them. Impulse, Beast Boy and Blue Beetle are trailing not far behind him, and Steph drops from a ledge above them at nearly the same time.
“You all leave ridiculous openings,” Damian grumbles, and Kon knows he’s glaring behind his domino. “It’s wasn’t difficult.”
Steph fake laughs and elbows him sharply in the rib, drawing Damian’s glare solely onto her, “Don’t mind him. Etiquette escapes him sometimes.” Damian’s lip turns up in a growl, and Kon can understand this petulant version of him. The one that’s battle ready and watching all of them like they could be a threat.
It’s the one that’s placated and takes orders that Kon doesn’t get- the Damian who’s been sulking around the tower whenever he sneaks out of Gotham. That one who follows Tim like a shadow, who talks to Jason’s sleeping figure when he thinks no one can hear him. The one who wakes Steph up when she falls asleep on the couch and who’s footsteps Kon can’t always follow.
There’s something about Damian Kon’s knows he’s not seeing.