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Damian felt miserable for a time.
It was one thing to wake up in this alternate world, ten years old again, but it was another to realize he had no place. Damian realized that he’d never joined the family in this timeline – that his mother had never cared for him – that he’d never been given the time of day by any family connection. It’d explain why he woke up in Gotham instead of Nanda Parbat. It would also explain why his mother refused to talk to him, and why, upon calling the manor, Alfred had no comprehension of his identity.
Damian had looked himself up on the internet afterwards. It was the nail in the coffin. Damian recalled making several public, introductory, appearances, and how his face had been widely displayed on the news. He also remembered attending press conferences. Dressing up and being told to behave. Distant memories that no longer could be made applicable.
Damian might as well not exist. He couldn't find any record on himself. Couldn't find much beyond the existing adopted children of Bruce Wayne.
It was a sobering revelation that had him numb for a few days. Damian didn’t know what to do with himself, and he considered approaching his father for some clarity. It was quickly scratched off as a bad idea. Damian realized that there could be benefits to this situation, as much as he yearned to be with his family again, and counted the blessings that might accompany this change. Damian would never strain his relationship with Tim because they’d never had a relationship to begin with. Father wouldn’t have to be involved extensive family drama (he could get married to Selina without having to trek hundreds of miles into desert sands). Jason wouldn’t have to deal with Damian’s antics (breaking into his apartment, stealing, the list goes on), and Dick wouldn’t have another little sibling to worry about. It seemed there was little cons to his disappearance.
Damian tried to convince himself that this was the proper course of action, but there was a reason behind his misguided rationalization.
Damian was scared to do it all over again.
Damian didn’t want to start from the beginning, make bad first impressions, and impose on his family’s lives. It sickened him just thinking about. Damian remembered the difficulties that accompanied his introduction. It hadn’t been easy for anyone to adjust to his addition. In Damian’s opinion, it would be better to avoid revisiting the situation altogether, and that’s what he had decided upon.
It didn’t stop him from checking up on them, though, and taking a page out of Tim’s book.
Damian occasionally tracked down one of his family members to make sure they were okay. Damian couldn’t count the number of times he stalked his father, brothers, or sisters on wayward missions. It put a bad feeling in his gut when they went off by themselves without backup, so he often made it is his own responsibility to keep their back protected.
It was a sorry thing. Damian imagined he must look quite pathetic, trailing after his family members after having sworn off any contact, but he had poor impulse control. Damian didn’t fight his impulsive desires, not when he was anxiously keeping tabs on his family’s adventures, but he also attempted to keep the stalking to a minimum if he could help it. It wouldn’t do him any good to follow them 24/7. Damian didn’t want to deal with the fallout if he got caught.
Damian pressed his lips together as he thought about this unspoken rule.
It would have to be followed within the next day or two. Damian couldn’t find himself abiding by anything, not when he’d come across Dick, sprawled in an alleyway, loudly singing tunes with the wave of his hands. It was as if he fancied himself a composer in front of an orchestra of stars.
Damian didn’t recall Dick ever being a drunkard.
Damian carefully scaled down his building, tugged at the rim of his hood, and hid his eyes. It didn’t do much. It was a hoodie, not a professional costume, but Damian still attempted to conceal his appearance. It was an old habit.
Damian didn’t say anything as he began to search Dick for his emergency signal. It’d call the others bats in. Dick would be taken care of after that.
“Woah,” Dick interrupted his tune, “are you trying to tickle me right now?”
Damian said nothing as Dick attempted to get a good look at him.
“I’m being tickled by a gnome!”
Damian stopped searching Dick after he pulled off his shoe.
“No, don’t steal my feet,” Dick pleaded. “I’ve already lost enough already.”
Damian sighed.
“Grayson, you’re a lousy drunk,” he complained while inspecting the soles.
Dick goes abruptly quiet, blinks, and then struggles to prop himself up on his elbows. Damian ignores him. Dick squints his eyes to examine him.
“I’m drunk,” Dick realized out loud.
“Quite so,” Damian agreed. “It’s a poor look on you.”
Damian activated the hidden emergency signal in Dick’s shoe, plopped the shoe on the ground, and then straightened himself up. Damian rolled his shoulders and eyed the building he scaled. It was within his intentions to scale it again, but then he remembered that he ought to make a quick getaway. It would take far more time climbing up the building than just walking off on the street. Oracle might be able to track him for some time, but she wouldn’t be able to follow him initially. Dick’s situation would be far too distracting to whoever came for him.
“Damian,” Dick called out desperately, snatching his hand, “don’t go.”
Damian’s heart froze.
“I’ve missed you,” Dick’s voice was watery. “I looked for you, told everyone about you, but they all think I’m crazy. Bruce told me to get some sleep. I told him I couldn’t when everyone forgot who you were, and maybe I alarmed him when I told him that he had a biological son. I think I screwed up.” Dick took a breath. “But I’m not crazy, right? I’m not crazy, Damian. You believe me, don’t you?”
Damian slowly turned, crouched himself down to Dick’s eye-level, and attempted to slide his hand out of Dick’s grip. It didn’t work the way he intended. Dick let it go, sure, but only to interlock their fingers.
“I’m going to find you,” Dick promised.
“Don’t,” Damian found himself blurting out. “It would be better if you didn’t.”
Damian stared at Dick after speaking with some amount of amazement. It was puzzling that Dick seemed to know who he was, that he remembered him, when everyone in this world, save his own mother, had no knowledge of him. It made no sense. Dick was a phenomenon. Damian wanted to ask him how he remembered him, but he doubted Dick currently had any coherence for answers.
“No,” Dick insisted, “you can’t tell me what to do. I’m your older brother, it’s my duty, my responsibility, to make sure you’re safe.”
“It isn’t your responsibility.”
“Bruce isn’t going to do it,” Dick inhaled, “so I need to step up to the plate like last time. I need to do what he couldn’t. I need to bring the family together again.”
Damian was further surprised.
“It’s not the same without you,” Dick said. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“Richard,” Damian hesitated, “did you not stop to think that perhaps this might be the better option?”
Dick frowned.
“I’m not welcomed here,” Damian continued, “and that’s a good thing. It’ll save the family a lot of trouble. Father won’t have to go to war for me and…” Damian trailed off in uncertainty. It was as if he doubted his own words. His heart wasn’t quite in it.
Dick stared at him without blinking. Something dawned in his eyes. His fingers tighten Damian’s into a cage. With awe, he asked, “Damian?”
Damian looked him in the eye.
Dick’s eyebrows furrow.
Damian considered Dick for a moment, only to be reminded that Dick was drunk, and that he was probably in no state of mind for proper conversation. It wouldn’t surprise him if everything had been flying over his head. Dick’s eyes had been hazy, after all, and clouded with a drunken fog. Damian doubted he was even seeing him properly.
Dick surprised him, though, when those foggy eyes clear up, and soberness brightened up his blue irises. It gradually approached the longer Dick stared at him.
“Damian,” he breathed, “are you real?”
Damian opened his mouth to answer, but then he heard a scuttle of footsteps.
Damian snatched his hand away. Dick’s hand, stretching out his fingers to retrieve what had been lost, couldn’t snatch him back in time, and Damian took the chance to quickly dart out of the alleyway.
“Damian, wait,” Dick cried out hoarsely.
Damian didn’t wait. Damian ran, skirted the next corner, and continued forward blindly. It was hard to think when his lungs were gasping for breath. It was also difficult to wrap his mind around what happened when his heart was on the brink of collapse. Damian didn’t want to get his hopes up, but that interaction had been enlightening. It almost felt like some kind of trap, or maybe a test to catch him off-guard. It was a cruel experiment.
Damian stopped to lean against a wall and slide down to the ground.
“Impossible,” he muttered to himself as he thought about Dick’s words.
It made no sense.
Damian didn’t find Dick for the next two weeks – didn’t even think to go look for him – having been rendered into a state of dazed confusion. It had made him weak. Damian couldn’t go anywhere without having his mind drift off, and that was dangerous for a ten-year-old in Gotham. Damian had a routine he needed to stick to, and he had to frequently relocate for safety’s sake. It was worrying that he was letting that slip, but Damian’s concerns were no longer focused on mere survival. Damian’s thoughts were engrossed with the subject of his brother’s memory.
Damian couldn’t snap out of it. It was a surprise he was even able to stay out of trouble in his state of mind. Damian could have easily been snatched off the street, caught up in a stand-off, or potentially swept up by the CPS. Instead, he’d been left to roam like a dissociative patient, and he was relatively unbothered until live coverage caught his eye. Damian stopped to look at the television screen hanging downtown, and watched his family engage in a battle between invasive mutant experiments.
Damian itched to help them, but all he could do was watch.
It was envious to see them working in unison. It was nearly effortless. Damian missed that part about vigilante work, about having a family, and now he was finally wondering if this was really a good idea. If he should stay like this forever. Purposeless and lonely.
Damian lingered until the live coverage was cut off, leaving baffled, anxious, civilians on the streets of uncertainty.
It was then, after he began his trek back to the suburbs, that he thought about changing his habits. It obviously wasn’t doing him any good to wander around Gotham. Damian thought about moving to a different city entirely, creating a new life, and leaving his family behind for good. It’d be better for his mental health if he stopped thinking about them. It’d also make him less miserable. Damian would stop being pathetic, stop being sad, and give himself room to find meaning again.
Damian thought about his next course of action continuously throughout the next week. He put together a plan.
Metropolis didn’t sound too bad.
Batman rarely visited, only because Superman had an invisible jurisdiction there, and Damian wouldn’t have to worry about running into family members on the street. It would give him some time to settle into his situation, and to make a far more extensive plan in the future. Damian could head off to a different country, once he had the funds, and remove himself from potential encounters entirely.
Damian made his decision by buying a bus ticket to Metropolis.
It made his heart ache.
Damian stuck his hands into his hoodie pocket, leaned his cheek against the window, and watched Gotham’s landscape blur by. It would take another twenty minutes before they left the city boundaries – only because they had two more stops to make – Damian didn’t mind the wait. It gave him one last opportunity to observe his home.
It put something melancholic and bitter into his chest. Damian wondered if his decision was the correct one, if putting more distance was the answer he needed, but he couldn’t make any definite conclusions. It was frustrating.
Damian was lost in his thoughts as someone claimed the empty spot next to him.
“You’re getting sloppy,” his neighbor said.
Damian startled, turned his head sharply, and saw his older brother smiling at him.
“I couldn’t find you for three weeks,” Dick continued, “but narrowing you down got easier these last two days. I don’t know if I should be thankful or concerned.”
Damian stared at his older brother in shock.
“I was even beginning to wonder if I’d been hallucinating it all,” Dick said, “but then I would revisit the footage of the alleyway. I knew it was you. I wasn’t about to let you go without a fight.”
Damian was still stunned even as his brother slowly slipped an arm around his shoulders and tugged him in. “I’m guessing we’ll take this trip to Metropolis for some needed catching up. I’ve been wanting to take a vacation anyways.”
Damian’s hand flew to stop his eyes from getting teary, wiped them violently, and then he proceeded to give Richard a practiced glare.
“You had the chance to be happy,” he spat. “I don’t know why you were determined to find me.”
“I never would have been happy,” Dick murmured, pressing his face into Damian’s hair, “and I probably would have died of alcohol poisoning if you were gone for good.”
“Richard,” Damian protested, “my disappearance is hardly worth drinking about.”
“Damian, you were my whole world,” Dick put out sharply. “I don’t think you understand how hopeless I felt. I was nearly sent to a psychiatrist because our family thought I was out of my mind, and I guess I kind of was out of my mind without you. They nearly convinced me you were a figment of my imagination. But that all changed when you found me in that alleyway. Thought I was almost gone until I saw your beautiful face.”
“Richard,” Damian protested again with a tint of blush.
“I was so confused,” Dick continued. “I’m not sure how I ended up in this place, but nothing was right without you around. I tried tracking you down to the League of Assassins, but I couldn’t find even a hint of your existence. I was so scared that you hadn’t even been born. It tormented me.”
“Well, you were wrong,” Damian said.
“Thank God,” Dick said while squeezing his shoulders. “I’m glad you slipped up these last couple of days. I would have been besides myself if I let you go.”
“I didn’t even think you’d look for me,” Damian confessed.
Dick lifted his face out of Damian’s hair, delicately lifted the boy’s face with a gentle hand on the cheek, and then looked him in the eye.
“I thought you’d know me well enough by now to know that I’ll always go after you.”
Damian saw Dick’s unwavering gaze and felt a tint of embarrassment. It was too sentimental of a moment. Damian thought about pulling away to save face, but then Dick was pulling him in again.
“This will be good for us, heading to Metropolis for some time to think,” Dick insisted.
Damian made a noise in his throat.
It was ridiculous that Dick had invited himself to join Damian’s trip, but it was simultaneously relieving to be held like this. Damian snugged himself into Dick’s side and leaned into his warmth. Tried not to think about how much he missed this. It’d make his eyes teary again. Damian wasn’t sure if he could wipe it away this time.
Dick didn’t seem to have a problem on his side of things, smiling like a man who finally found his lost treasure, and holding onto Damian with a heart full of joy. Dick seemed overall content. Damian supposed he deserved it.
"You're unbelievable," Damian muttered.
Dick chuckled, nuzzled his nose into Damian's hair, and inhaled deeply.
"Wasn't the same without you, kiddo," he whispered. "Nearly went mad."