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Chapter Text

Two weeks after the start of her second year at Gotham Academy Maps receives a very neatly written letter on what looks like some seriously expensive stationary with the Wayne family insignia sealing the envelope in wax.  She tears into it without hesitation, assuming it to be a suspension letter – or worse – finally acknowledging all of the illegal things she’s participated in on school grounds in the past year.

To whom it may concern,

              This letter is to formally announce my arrival back in Gotham city after one year of studying abroad.  If you are receiving it, I have deemed you worthy enough to be informed of my whereabouts.  Father told me not to include that sentence, but I felt it pertinent to expressing my intentions and so have left it in against his will.  Any attempt to contact me hereafter should be made via Wayne Manor’s public address or via my direct phone number if I have chosen to give it to you (if I have not chosen to give it to you please assume that you will never receive it as this letter is likely a formality forced upon me by Father and I have no intention or desire to contact you now or in the future).  I have decided to leave this statement in as well as I do not share Father’s sentimentality that the feelings of others should be spared at the expense of the truth.

              Sincerely,

                             Damian Wayne

Underneath the signature in much messier handwriting that is suspiciously and drastically different from the rest of the letter is what appears to be a hastily scribbled phone number.  Maps lays down on the marble floor of Gotham academy right in front of her mail box, and clutches the letter between her fingers so tightly that it rips slightly.  She doesn’t get up until someone trips over her legs and begins to loudly complain.

Maps thinks about calling Damian almost as many times as she thinks about optimal party combinations in her Serpents and Spells campaign, that is to say: almost constantly.  But she doesn’t call him, not right away at least.  It’s been almost a year, but Maps still remembers Damian’s crappy personality.  He’s probably the kind of person who only wants to be contacted in an emergency.  So Maps waits until there’s an emergency, and then she calls Damian while she and the rest of the detective club are hunkered down underneath a barricade of tables and chairs separating them from the giant barn owl Pom summoned that’s currently trying to peck its way through their meager defenses.

“Who are you calling?” Pom asks from behind the desk chair she’s carrying across the now mostly empty classroom.

“I don’t think this is the time, Maps.” Olive is helping Colton move the teacher’s thick oak desk onto the rest of the barricade.

“I’m calling in re-enforcements!” Map yells at the same time the barn owl outside the door screeches and Damian answers the phone with a clipped, “Who is this?”

“Damian!” Maps says.

“Tell me who you are or I’m hanging up,” Damian says while Olive and Pom turn to mouth Damian’s name at each other.

“Damian Wayne?” Colton says, shoving the desk into place.

“It’s Maps!” Maps says.

“How is Bruce Wayne’s spoiled, ten year old son going to make this situation better?”

“I don’t know who that is.  I’m hanging up.  Do not call-,”

“Wait, wait, wait!  It’s Maps Mizoguchi!”

Damian is silent for a moment before he says, “How did you get this number?”

“Um… you wrote it on the letter you sent me?”

“No I didn’t.  Delete this number from your phone and shred the letter.  Do not contact me again.”

Maps groans in agony as loud as she can. “Damian, it’s an emergency!  Pom summoned a giant owl and now it’s attacking me and my friends!  We can’t get rid of it!”

A balled up piece of paper comes flying past Maps’ head and Pom says, “Don’t tell him that!”

“How big is the owl?” Damian asks.

Map thinks it’s a stupid question but answers anyway.  “It’s a big owl, Damian!  It’s as tall as Batman! Maybe even taller!  It’s pecking through the barricade as we speak!”

“Where are you?”

“At the Academy, in the north hall.  You’ll know which room we’re in because there’s a giant owl outside of it.”

“-tt-, fine.  I’m on my way.”

Damian hangs up and Maps yells, “He’s coming!” to a chorus of snorts and disbelief from everyone else.

“By the time he gets here we’re gonna be owl food, Maps!” Olive says.

Colton says, “Not to mention, like I said earlier, he’s a ten year old billionaire?”

“He’s twelve now!” Maps says, not that she’s been keeping track.  But she has.

“And that makes a difference?” Pom pushes against the barricade with her back even as it jolts dangerously with every cry of the owl outside.

“You guys don’t know him like I do,” Maps says.

“Oh,” Colton rolls his eyes, “Sorry I forgot you’re personal friends with Bruce Wayne’s only biological son.  Silly-,” before Colton can finish his undoubtedly patronizing sentence, a window across the room shatters and Maps gasps in anticipation as Damian comes rolling gracefully through it like a swan viciously about to defend its young.  Thick beams of pale moonlight cast wings against the chalkboard in his wake.  He’s wearing a quite frankly oversized sweatshirt and what look like leggings and suspiciously familiar green combat boots.  It’s a drastic change from the formal school uniform Maps saw him in last time.

“Damian!” She says, running towards him intent on delivering what would have probably been the world’s greatest hug, but he aptly distracts her by pulling a grapple gun out of his sweatshirt pouch and thrusting it at her.

“Quell your excitement, child.”

Maps is caught in a horrible pit of indecision between wanting to scream because she’s holding a grapple gun, and wanting to kick Damian in the shin and tell him that she’s two and a half years older than he is and he can suck it.  She ends up just screaming, but it’s a short scream.

“I trust you remember how to use it?” Damian says.

Maps laughs maniacally in reply and mostly ignores the concerned look Damian gives her.

“I’ll take your deranged laughter as affirmation.  Get your…” Damian pauses to look at Olive, Colton and Pom, who are all pathetically attempting to hold their barricade together.  “…friends out of here.  I’ll take care of the owl.”

“What the hell?” Colton says as Maps salutes Damian and runs to the window he just came flying through.

She shoots the hook towards the roof of the building and says, “You heard the guy!  Move it, people!”

Pom is the first to leave her position.  “Don’t have to tell me twice.” She says, and then mutters, “Let the giant Hell owl kill the small rich boy,” as she moves to the window.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Olive asks Damian, standing slowly.

Damian scoffs and rolls his eyes.  The owl outside gives a particularly shrill screech before throwing itself against their barricade which all but falls completely to pieces.  Its beady eye peers through a large hole that has been exposed between a table and two chairs.  The eye swivels crazily before it pulls back and thrusts its beak through, squawking and burrowing its head to force the hole open wider.

“Oh-kay.” Olive says.  “Colton, lets book it.”

“Way ahead of you,” Colton, who is literally ahead of her, says.

Maps perches on the window sill and holds onto the grapple with both hands. “Okay everybody, grab on tight!”  Pom and olive both wrap their arms around her waist while Colton scrambles to take hold of Olive’s leg before he’s dragged through the window after Maps jumps.

The grapple lowers them down two stories and then releases itself automatically from the roof once their feet touch the soft grass of the academy grounds.

“That kid is crazy,” Pom says, dusting off her skirt.

“Yeah no kidding.” Colton looks like he’s trying to pretend that Olive didn’t just kick him off of her leg at the same time that Damian comes flying through the other window of the classroom two floors above them, emitting some kind of war cry with his arms around the neck of the owl.

“Holy Sh-,” he crashes the owl into the ground yards away from them and Maps immediately takes off running towards him, Olive’s mortified screams chasing her the entire way. 

As soon as she’s close enough to the owl she brings the grapple up to eye level and takes aim.  Damian is performing adept flips in every possible direction to avoid being pecked to death, which makes aiming kind of hard because Maps doesn’t want to hit Damian, but she figures he’s probably good enough at this to avoid being hit no matter how bad her aim is, so she does her best to crack down on her focus and then she shoots.

The claw of the gun soars through the air, metal rope uncoiling as it stretches farther and farther towards the owl’s head.  When it finally makes contact, the prongs of the grapple imbed themselves deep into one of the owl’s eyes.  “Oh my Crap!” Maps says just before the owl lets out a deafening shriek and jerks its head in an attempt to escape the grapple.  She gets pulled face first into the dirt and dragged a few feet before a gust of wind hits her and she looks up to see the owl flying.  Then she looks down to see herself flying, and Damian leaping through the air.  He collides with her hard, holding onto her around her waist as they swing back on the grapple’s line, yards above Colton, Pom, and Olive, who are all yelling incoherently below them.

“Did you see that?” Maps says.  “I flippin’ got it!”

“I saw an idiot trying to shoot a giant owl in the face with a grappling hook!” Damian says.

“Yeah and I nailed it!”  Maps says and whoops repeatedly until she sees the roof of the girls dorm quickly approaching at which point she changes her mantra to, “Building! Building! Building!”

“I see it, you imbecile, quit yelling!” Damian says and manages to swing them backwards enough that he can plant his feet on the brick wall of the dorm and run them up the side and over the roof.  Maps keeps her legs tucked in tight to avoid getting the worst rug burn of her life and grips the handle of the grapple gun tight when Damian, running across the shingled roof, tells her not to let go.  They sail over the peak of the building and the owl flies the straight for the forest on the edge of campus.

“Trees!” Maps yells and Damian groans.

“Hold the reel trigger!” he says.

“The what?”

“It’s on the side, where your thumb would be if you could hold onto things like a thinking person!”

“Oh!” Maps moves her thumb to the other side of the handle and finds a small thumb sized button, which she immediately presses.  They begin to ascend rapidly towards the owl’s head, well above the clearing of tree’s below.  She lets go when Damian starts yelling at her.

They are quickly approaching the edge of academy grounds now and Maps asks, “Where’s it taking us?”

“To the court I presume,” Damian says.

“The court? What court?”

“Of Owls.”

“I thought that was just a nursery rhyme.” Maps says.

Damian snorts.  “It’s not.”

“Is this thing a talon?”

“No.” Damian says. “Just an old relic that needs to be put down.  I’m going to climb you.”

“What?” Maps says.

“I need to get to the owl’s head.  It’s a machine, so theoretically I should be able shut it down somehow.”

“Oh okay. Climb away, valiant knight!”

Damian makes some kind of noise like he’s been physically wounded and then hooks his arm around Maps’ shoulder, hauling himself up like a monkey so he can grab the grapple’s line.  Maps watches him climb the rest of the way up, hand over hand, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, until he reaches the head of the owl at which point he swings himself onto its back.

Time had definitely dulled Maps’ memory.  Somehow she had forgotten the full extent of how totally, unbelievably cool Damian was.  Mostly what she remembered was his crummy attitude and his arsenal of bat gadgets.  The bat gadgets were sort of the most important part though.  Speaking of…

She looks up just in time to see Damian jamming what’s probably a batarang into the underside of the Owl’s skull.  It lets out one last pathetic wail that devolves into an unsettling, low pitched gurgle as it begins to lose altitude.  It only takes seconds for Damian to swing down the length of the grapple line and back to Maps.

They’re gliding past buildings now on the edge of the city when Damian says, “Hold onto me,” and grabs the grapple from her.  As soon as she’s got her arms around his neck, he detaches the line and then they’re freefalling.  Maps thinks she would probably scream if the air weren’t being sucked out of her lungs.  She settles for squeezing Damian’s neck tight enough to choke.  Amazingly he doesn’t choke, and manages to shoot the line off again and catch it on a gargoyle.  He swings them around a corner and onto the roof of a shorter building as the owl careens past them and crashes into the empty street below.

Once they hit the top of the building, they roll, Damian trying and failing to cushion Maps’s impact by letting her land on top of him.  He ends up just getting his breath knocked out and wheezing for a minute while Maps pats him on the back and runs her mouth about how that was the coolest thing she’s ever done in her entire life and Damian and her are clearly the perfect superhero team up of all time, to which Damian rasps, “It doesn’t count if you’re not a superhero.”

Maps snorts in reply and once Damian’s got his breath back he grapples them down to the street and fiddles with something underneath his sweatshirt which is torn across the top revealing a bright read undershirt.

“What are we gonna do with that owl?” Maps asks.  “You think the school would let me keep it?”

“Batman will collect the remains and analyze them to ascertain if there are any others hidden around the city like it.”

“So… I probably can’t keep it,” Maps says.

“No,” Damian says, “You can’t.”

“Hmm.” Maps puts her hands on her hips and listens to the distant roar of a motorcycle approaching them from somewhere down the road.  “Well, thanks for saving me.  Even though you were so rude when I called you.”

Damian makes some kind of noise and starts pulling on the ends of his sweatshirt sleeves.  “Yes, well… You… clearly would have only gotten yourself killed had I not come to your aid.”

“Aww,” Maps says and play punches him in the arm.  “You don’t want me to die!”

Damian flinches and gives her the same look food aggressive dogs give you when you steal their bones from them. 

The distant motorcycle roars ever closer and then suddenly rounds the corner of their street and comes to a screeching halt.  Whatever Damian was about to say gets drowned out by Maps yelling, “Is that the R-Cycle?” and then upon closer inspection, “It is! Damian it’s the R-Cycle!”

“I know what it is, idiot,” he says, and Maps’ mouth drops straight to the grimy Gotham asphalt as he strides over and mounts the bike.  “We’re taking it back to the Academy.”

“You’re just… You’re just going to take the R-Cycle?”  She says, “Does Robin know?”

Damian coughs and says.  “Robin is… a close personal friend.  He won’t mind.”

“Introduce me!” Maps shrieks.

“Absolutely not.  Get on the motorcycle or you’ll be walking back to your school alone.”

“But-!”

Damian revs the engine ominously and Maps huffs and runs up to the cycle, leaping over the back wheel and landing behind Damian with a shaaaa.

“Hold on,” Damian says seconds before the cycle heaves forward with roar.  The thrust would have pulled Maps right off the rear end of the bike if she hadn’t flung her arms around Damian’s waist.  They have to be pushing ninety as Damian zips down the dimly lit Gotham streets which are almost entirely devoid of traffic or pedestrians at this time of night.

It seems like it takes less time for Damian to drive her back to the school than it did for them to fly out to the city hanging from that owl.  To be honest it’s kind of disappointing.  Maps wishes she could just sail through the streets like this for hours.  Except if it were up to her she’d be the one driving, and Damian could sit on the back seat clinging to her like a damsel.  Something deep in her gut tells her that Damian would never let her drive the R-Cycle (much less cling to her like a damsel), but the thought is nice and it brings a grin to her face as Damian comes to a screeching halt just past the gates of the Academy.

With reluctance, maps swings off the back of the bike.  Damian is making no moves to follow suit so she rounds on him as soon as she’s got both feet on the ground and says, “I know I already said it, but thanks for helping my friends and I.”

Damian hisses his signature, “-tt-,” and says, “You aren’t welcome.  Do not anticipate me coming to your aid like this again.  And put a leash on those rabid dogs you keep calling friends.”  He points severely at her.

Maps snorts.  “No way, I live for this stuff!”

“This isn’t a game!” Damian says.  “You’ll die for this stuff if you don’t -,” he rummages around in his apparently bottomless sweatshirt pouch, “-cease this reckless behavior!” Before Maps knows what’s happened Damian has pulled the grapple gun from his sweatshirt and is thrusting it at her.  “Take this!”

Maps chokes on air and cradles the grapple gun like it’s a small child, staring at it with wide, wondering eyes.

“If you insist on gambling with your life at least learn how to play the game.”  Damian revs the engine of the R-Cycle.  “I have to go.  Bat… Father is waiting.”

“Bat-Father?” Maps says.

“I have to go!  Do not contact me again!” Damian does a really frickin’ sweet donut in front of the gate, kicking up mud and leaves in all directions, and then tears off down the narrow path leading back to the city.

“Wow,” Maps breathes, and gazes lovingly at the grapple gun in her arms.

-----------------

The next time Maps calls Damian, she and Olive are in the hidden corridors beneath the school, wading through sewage and muck in search of a giant spider that’s been plaguing the student body for the past few days.  Maps is pretty sure she’s never seen so many spiders in her life.  There are more spiders in the underground hallways of Gotham Academy than there were in that spider farm she went to for her biology class in middle school, all the Spiderman movies, and the second Harry Potter book put together.

Anyway its really impressive and Maps has already used up all the jars she brought along to catch them with so now she and Olive have mostly just succumbed to squishing as many as they can and shaking their RAID cans threateningly (as their cans ran out quite a while ago).  The shaking doesn’t really work, but Olive manages to burn a decent portion of them with her weird fire powers so that’s alright.

She groans loudly and clambers her way through another thick of webbing.  “What did your crazy friend say?  Is he coming or what?”

Maps sighs and fits herself carefully through the hole Olive made in the web.  “Well, his exact phrasing was, ‘I told you I wouldn’t come to your rescue again, lie in the nest you’ve made for yourself,’ which I thought was kind of weird phrasing, but it was a great set up for a spiders nest pun so I-,”

“Maps,” Olive says.  “Is he coming or not?”

“Unclear?” Maps says.  “Probably not.  Maybe though?”

Olive groans again, louder this time and throws her hand out, burning straight through the next clumping of webs.  “We’ve got to get to that spider before it burrows any further into these tunnels.”

“Well we’re in uncharted territory now,” Maps says, marking down the new passages on her map of the tunnel system.

Olive pauses at an intersection and then turns left, incinerating another web. “I think the spider might be hollowing these tunnels itself.  Some of this soil is really moist and still loose.”

“We are dealing with a seriously huge spider then…” Maps looks up at the ceiling of the passage which is still several feet above her head.  “This is like twenty different dreams come true…” Maps says, following in Olive’s singed wake.  “We’re just like Frodo and Sam in Shelob’s lair.”

They press on in their dungeon crawl, the spiders seem to be growing fewer, but the webs thicker, and Maps isn’t sure if that’s a good sign or a bad one (or both), but soon enough they notice the ceiling dripping gobs of corrosive spit, or venom, or something.  It lands on one of Maps’ maps and burns a hole straight through.  Still no sign of Damian though.

When they do actually find the spider, it’s almost by surprise.  Its giant abdomen is at least half again as tall as Olive, who nearly walks right into it as she rounds the corner of their tunnel.  It hasn’t noticed them yet, and seems to be… barfing… or something.  It’s definitely making a retching noise.  Olive tells Maps she’s going to try setting it on fire.

This turns out to be a pretty bad idea.

Seconds later they’re both storming down the tunnel in the opposite direction, feet pounding against the soft, slippery earth as the spider clambers after them hacking up acid.  The one time Maps looks back, it’s thin, spindly legs are reaching out in front of it like an ill coordinated puppet, grasping for purchase against the sodden dirt walls of its burrow.  Frankly the sight is enough to put Maps off of spiders for life.  When she looks back Olive is gone, and Maps barely manages to catch Olive’s form out of the corner of her eye, running down an adjacent hallway.

Their separation confuses the spider for at least a few seconds.  It spins back and forth on its legs, acid dripping from its bulbous fangs, until it decides to head for Maps who yells loudly in frustration.  “Just because I don’t have weird fire powers, it thinks I’m an easy target!”

“Maps run!” Olive yells from across the opening.

Maps is about to run, but before she can turn around and book it, something falls from the ceiling and lands right on top of the spider yelling, “You are an easy target!”

“Damian!” Maps says, too caught up in her joy at his arrival to register his rude commentary.  The spider screeches and whirls around on its stilt legs, trying to buck Damian off or crush him against the ceiling.  Neither attempt is successful as Damian stays the spider like a professional bull rider.  Eventually he pulls something out of his pocket and throws it to Maps.

“Aim for its respiratory system!” he says, and Maps rushes forward to catch…

“Giant Spider Repellent Bat-Spray!” She screams and feels herself start to shake with excitement.  Or maybe the adrenaline is just wearing off.  Whatever.

Damian manages to steer the spider towards her and Maps uncaps the spray and lets the ugly beast get a nice face full of the stuff.

Nothing happens right away but it doesn’t take long before the spider’s efforts to free itself from Damian’s reign start to slow.  Eventually its lethargic movements decrease to an actual halt and it trembles slightly on its legs before its giant body hits the wet ground with a loud smack.

Maps whoops loudly while Damian dismounts the spider and Olive squeezes herself between the spider’s giant abdomen and the corner of the tunnel to get to Maps.

“Are you unharmed?” Damian asks, squinting as he approaches them.

Maps gives him a thumbs up.

“Is it dead?” Olive asks.  “I’m fine by the way.”

Damian snorts.  “No, the spray is a sedative.  It’s not dead.  This spider is a common species native to the lands of my Grandfather’s estate.”

“Mordor?” Maps wheezes.

Damian’s squint increases exponentially. “No,” he says.  “Eth’Alth’Eban.  I don’t know what this one is doing underneath the school, but I can’t imagine Grandfather authorized its removal from his estate.  I’ll have him notified.  Someone will arrive within twenty-four hours to tag and re-locate it.”

“Sure,” Olive says.  “That sounds normal. Lots of people have rich grandpas who collect giant spiders.”

“He doesn’t collect them,” Damian snaps.  “They’re native – and endangered so I hope you weren’t planning to harm it.”

“It was attacking students!” Olive says.

“It was scared and alone!”

“Okay, hey Damian, do you know how to get us out of here?” Maps says, throwing herself in front of Damian to try and break the demonic, hellfire and brimstone glare he was beginning to unleash upon Olive. “Shelob kind of ruined my maps.”

Damian’s eyes flicker to Olive for a brief moment before he says, “Fine, but keep up,” and turns on his heel stalking down the hallway past Shelob like he’s a king approaching his throne.

Chapter Text

After the spider incident, at the conclusion of which Maps received her very own case of Giant Spider Repellent Bat-Spray, “in case your deranged lunatic of a friend decides to hunt any more endangered species”, Damian said, it’s quite a while before Maps sees him again.

In fact, the next time she sees him, it’s not really him.  Well, it is.  But it’s not.

Scarecrow has taken the entire school hostage.  Hostage being a relative term.  Anyone is free to leave at any time, but if they do, they’ll have to wade through a perimeter of motion sensor mines containing lethal quantities of fear toxin.  They’re all quarantined to their class rooms until the situation has been dealt with, but Scarecrows threats to release his toxin through the ventilation system have been on the rise.  It’s pretty much your standard Gotham villain hostage situation and Maps would be bored if she hadn’t been talking to some kind in the classroom on the other side of the chalkboard via Morse code about rumors that Batman was somewhere in the school hunting down Scarecrow.

Maps has very little time to be excited by this however, because it is only seconds after the last dot knocked against the chalkboard informing her of Batman’s arrival on campus that Eric finally runs screaming from the room after a prolonged battle with his fight or flight reflex.  He busts through the doors with a strength that could only be conjured by unbridled terror.  Considering Eric existed in a constant state of fear regardless of villainous threats, Maps isn’t really surprised that this pushed him over the edge.  She does however become a little bit nervous when Scarecrow’s crushed glass and gravel voice echoes over the loudspeakers mere minutes afterwards.

“Gotham Academy, due to the unfortunate timing of the Batman’s arrival, and the attempted escape of one of your fellow students, we’ll be moving disbursement ahead of schedule.”

Several students across the room gasped loudly and scrambled out of their desks as a dense yellow fog crept through the shafts of a floor vent.

“The toxin currently being released into your classrooms, hallways, and dormitories is a special strain.  Non-lethal, but quite potent.  Embrace it, if you can.”

“I warned the school board this would happen,” Professor Macpherson says as she beckons for everyone to gather in the farthest corner of the room from the gas.  “This is what happens when you decide to include central air in your remodel of a two-hundred year old building.” 

Maps looks at her, and then at the gas slowly creepy across the floor of the classroom.  Even as she stands up, launches herself out of her desk, and weaves through the small crowd of moving bodies, she knows this is probably a bad idea.  It probably won’t even do anything, Maps thinks, and shrugs off her school uniform jacket.  But it’s worth a try right?  They’re all going to get exposed to this stuff sooner or later.  Maps tucks her jacket into the vent as tightly as she can.  The gas begins to thin ever so slightly.  It’s still creeping through the fibers of her jacket, but at a much slower rate than before. 

When she looks down, though, Maps see’s the sickly green gas creeping around her knees and through her fingers.  Professor Macpherson is yelling at her somewhere in the distance and she’s pretty sure that her mom’s dead body wasn’t laying between those two desks a few minutes ago, so that’s upsetting.

Somebody kicks open the door of the classroom and Map’s spins around to see who because, while she’s pretty sure she knows her mom isn’t really dead, her racing heart is more or less screaming incoherently at her.  As it turns out, that’s a pretty hard sensation to think through, logically.

Whoever just came into the classroom gives a big box of something to Professor Macpherson and says, “Distribute these to your students.  Quickly.”  Maps can’t really make them out, somethings going wrong with her eyes, but they sound like a boy.

Macpherson says her name again and Maps thinks she probably should go back over to where the rest of her class is gathered, but she kind of can’t stop her eyes from flickering back to her Mom’s body.  Every time she looks back at it her Mom gets more and more mangled.  She knows something’s not quite right here, but she can’t figure out what it is and she can’t think through the missing air in her lungs either.

“I’ll take care of Maps,” Damian says, and Maps thinks, oh, but Robin is walking towards her.  When she looks back down, there’s another body next to her Mom’s but Maps can’t see it right.  She thinks its Kyle.

 “Get up,” Damian says, and pulls on her arm, at the elbow.

“Damian,” Maps says. “My mom…  Can you see her?”

“Your mother is fine.  And I don’t know who Damian is.”  Robin reaches down and hoists her to her feet.  “Whatever you’re seeing it’s not real.  If we hurry I can get you an antidote that will prevent the toxin from further affecting your faculties, but you need to move.”

Somewhere deep in her brain, Maps is pretty sure she already knows this but it feels like there’s a ten ton rock in her chest holding pinning her to the ground. “I can’t see her anymore…”

“Do not make me carry you out of this room.  I will tranquilize you if I have to,” Damian says.  Across the room Professor Macpherson starts screaming but Maps can’t see what happening through her clouded vision.

“Professor!” Maps tries to get out of Damian’s hold but he moves quickly, grabbing her around the waist and throwing her over his shoulder like she weighs nothing at all.

“For the love of God,” he says and sounds frankly bored.  “Stop screaming, your professor is fine.”

Maps struggles but Damian’s hold on her is strong.  He moves quickly into the hallway which is filled with pitch blackness.  Maps can almost feel herself being dragged into it and she cling’s to the thick Kevlar fabric of the Robin uniform beneath her fingers.  Damian’s arm is holding tightly around her waist and the crook of her knees.

“I-I can’t see,” Maps says.

“-tt-, you’re afraid of the dark?” is his cruel response.

“I think I’m going blind…” Maps says.

“Well you’re not,” Damian answers.

“I can’t see.”

“You will.”

“What if this is permanent?”

Damian groans. “It’s not.”

“How can you be sure?” Maps thinks she may have yelled that but it’s hard to tell.  A door creaks open somewhere to her left and then a cool rush of air hits her and the sound of distant yelling fills her ears.

“Would you shut up? I’m sure.  If you can keep your damn mouth closed for fifteen more seconds I’ll prove it to you.”

Something mechanical whirs and there’s a motor roaring behind her.  The wind is gone too.  Damian sets her down in what feels like one of those really fancy ergonomic office chairs and she grips the leather arm rests with both hands and ties to breath slow.

“Has your sight returned yet?” Damian asks.

“No,” Maps says and kind of hates how she can hear the quake in her own voice.

“I’m going to inject the antidote into your arm.  Fear toxin either heightens pain receptors or numbs them, so this is going to hurt very badly, or not at all.”

“Okay,” Maps laughs hysterically and thinks she can maybe feel something brush the inside of her elbow.

“It will be several minutes before it takes effect.”

“Did you do it already?” Maps asks.

“Yes.  Wait here.” The air shifts.  Something else whirrs to the left of her, and Damian is gone.  Maps reaches out with her hands but she just runs into metal and rubber.

“No!  Damian, don’t go, you jerk!”

“I haven’t gone anywhere!” Damian’s call is muffled by distance and some kind of physical barrier.  “And I’m not Damian!”  His voice grows quiet after that but she’s sure he’s still talking.

Something blurry is starting to take form in the center of Maps’ vision, bright blue like a glowing light.  Whatever invisible grip had taken hold of her brain and her chest loosens just barely.

When Damian comes back she can make out the fuzzy frame of his face and the green domino mask he’s wearing.

“Scarecrow is in custody and Batman is checking over the rest of the student body, but it appears that you’re the only idiot who came into direct contact with the gas.  He’s having me take you back to the Batcave to run a full diagnostic and rule out any adverse reactions you may have had to the toxin.”

By the time Damian stops talking Maps has gone pretty much catatonic because this… this is the Batmobile.  Maps is sitting in the passenger seat of the Batmobile.  The details are still a little fuzzy but that blue light she saw earlier is absolutely a holographic projection of Gotham City and that steering wheel is definitely in the shape of a Bat.  Holy crap. Holy crap.

“Maps!” Damian says and snaps his gloved fingers in front of her face.  “Focus. Can you see me?  Are you still suffering blindness?”

“Damian!” She yells.

“What?” He sounds annoyed.  “I mean, who is that?”

“This is the Batmobile!  We are inside the Batmobile!  Oh my crap…”

“-tt-,” Damian says.  “I can see you’re recovering adequately.”  The driver’s seat hums when he adjusts it forward to reach the wheel.  If Maps weren’t still halfway terrified out of her mind she definitely would have laughed at him.

The awe of being inside the Batmobile never wears off, but Maps is pretty sure the fear toxin does. Halfway through the city Damian takes a sharp turn into a tunnel that opens right out of a wall in some underground parking garage. From there on the drive is almost boring.  Maps can’t see a whole lot outside the windows, just the tunnel lights rushing past her, and concrete.   Every few miles the tunnel branches off but Damian stays on the straight and narrow path, only turning to follow the curve of the tunnel itself.

Eventually the passage empties them out into an enormous underground space which Damian drives straight through.  They pass a myriad of vehicles, planes, jets, other Batmobiles, there’s even a hover craft, and eventually come to a screeching stop in front of what looks almost like the control panel from the bridge of the starship Enterprise.  A weak, trembling noise comes out of Maps’ mouth as she whispers, “Is this the Batcave?”

“Get your nose off the window, you’re going to smear the glass,” Damian says, “and yes.”

Maps flings herself out of the car as soon as its motorized door opens wide enough for her to squeeze through.

“Don’t wander off!” Damian says seconds before Maps is about to wander off.  Sighing, she halts and Damian stalks past her.  They don’t even go anywhere near what has to be the Batcomputer (a device that Maps has only heard about theorized in the dank dark depths if internet forums), and instead Damian guides her around the corner of a cave wall, past a set of lockers, and through a pair of double doors which lead into what is for all outward appearances is a fully equipped hospital emergency room.

“Do you know how to use all this stuff, Damian?” Maps asks, looking at a tray of scalpels and drills next to the bed.  For a minute she wonders if the fear toxin hasn’t worn off at all and this is just the precursor to an elaborate hallucination of horrific medical torture, but she’s also pretty sure if that were the case Damian wouldn’t be hopping up onto one the counters and swinging his legs back and forth, banging the cabinet doors with the heels of his boots.

“Of course-,” Damian is interrupted by another door off to the side of the room opening.

“Ah, you must be Miss Mizoguchi.”  The man who enters the room is tall and old, dressed in hospital scrubs with little puppies on them, and wears an easy smile across his face.  “No one made me aware that Robin was in the habit of giving out his secret identity to every attractive girl he meets on patrol.”

Damian’s boots smack the linoleum floor across the room when he leaps off the counter and points an accusatory finger at the man.  “Shut your filthy mouth, Pennyworth, I did no such thing!”  Pennyworth raises a single grey eyebrow and Damian says, “She figured it out on her own!”

“You didn’t really make it hard,” Maps says.  “I mean when you saved me from that owl you were literally just wearing a sweatshirt over your costume.”

“What would you have had me do?  You called Damian.  I was on patrol and had a limited window of time to reach you.  Should I have just arrived as Robin?”

“You might as well have,” Maps says, and even as she does it’s still beyond surreal to have this conversation with him in the Robin costume in the Batcave.  As soon as she gets back to school Maps is marking this day on her calendar as the official best day of her entire life, horrific fear toxin induced hallucinations not-withstanding.

Damian snorts and Pennyworth rubs his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, muttering to himself.

“I believe you and your father are going to have a chat when he arrives home about the etiquette involved in preserving one’s secret identity,” Pennyworth says. “Lucky for us, Miss Mizoguchi seems like a sweet girl who’s probably very good at keeping secrets.”

“You have no idea,” Maps says.

Pennyworth smiles at her. “Ah good, how encouraging.”

For several minutes he fusses about preparing medical equipment and explaining to her the various tests that he’s going to run.  Most of them are pretty normal check-up tests, but one or two are a little bit more extensive like the EKG and blood tests.  Pennyworth tells her it will be about fifteen to thirty minutes for those ones to come back but Maps manages to pass the time by coercing Damian into a game of twenty questions.  Or well… she thinks she coerced him.  He answers every question “No,” so it’s unclear whether or not he’s actually participating fairly, but he does give her a sucker out of a jar on the counter when she correctly guesses that Bruce Wayne is Batman.  Then he says, “I’ll give you another if you can guess my Grandfather’s name.”  He’s sporting a smug smirk but his smile falters when Maps says, “Sauron, Lord of Barad-dûr?” at which point Damian actually laughs and says, “Close enough,” tossing her another sucker.

By the time her test results come back and she receives a clean bill of health from Mister Pennyworth, Batman has arrived on the scene and Maps thinks maybe they should run some more tests on her because she seems to be having trouble breathing in his overwhelmingly intimidating presence.  That is, until he takes off his cowl to reveal the sweaty face of Bruce Wayne.  After that Maps just sort of feels like she’s in the twilight zone.  Or a really bad Nicholas Cage movie.

Either way, Bruce-Man insists on taking her back to the Academy much to Damian’s vehement and loud protests that he should be the one to drive Maps back as he was the one who rescued her.  He shuts up pretty quickly after a look from Bruce, one that Maps is sure she can envision all too well in the form of her own parent’s faces.  It’s kind of reassuring to know that Damian is still subject to the wrath of parental judgment the same as any other kid his age.  She was starting to feel like Damian was some kind of Old God trapped in the body of a child, which would be undoubtedly cool, but also hard to relate to.

The ride back is silent and it isn’t until they pull up to the gates of the school that Batman, or Bruce, says, “Mia, I want you to know something.”

Maps feels her heart leap right into her throat and if she maybe casually imagines Batman telling her that he thinks she’d make the best Robin in the entire world, even better than Damian, well, so be it.

“He’d never say, because he’s stubborn and quite frankly takes one too many cues from me, but Damian was impressed with your actions tonight, and so am I.”

Maps thinks she might have just squeaked but she’s also stopped being able to register time or space so who knows, really.

“You knowingly subjected yourself to the effects of Scarecrow’s toxin in order to spare your classmates the same fate.  That took a lot of courage.”

“Right, cool, so when should I talk to my parents about putting me up for adoption so I can become Robin?” Maps says, steepling her fingers over the armrest of the passenger seat.

Batman laughs and if Damian laughing was an odd sight, this is ten times weirder.  “I’m afraid I’m not in the business of stealing children from their parents to fight crime.”

“Is that so?” Maps narrows her eyes.

“But,” Batman says, “If you want to learn how to fight, maybe you should ask Damian to teach you.  I’m sure he’d be willing.

“Hmm,” Maps says and squints harder. 

“At any rate, I notified your teachers of your whereabouts, but we shouldn’t make them wait any longer than we have to.”  The car door slides open and Maps steps out reluctantly onto the gravel paved drive in front of the school.

-----------------------

The next time Maps calls Damian, she doesn’t actually mean to.

It’s late, past midnight for sure, and she had stayed up late trying to finish a project that’s due the next day.  Normally Maps doesn’t make a habit out of procrastinating on school work (at least  not this much), but the past few weeks she and the Detective club have been investigating disappearances around the school – kids not showing up to class and then showing up randomly sometime later claiming to have no memory of their whereabouts.  They’re making no ground and have basically no leads, and Maps has been running herself ragged trying to map the whereabouts of the students and their re-appearances and find some kind of a connection.  Suffice it to say, her school work has been falling by the wayside, and tonight she may or may not have fallen asleep on the floor in her room surrounded by mobile parts, Styrofoam planets, and unopened paint bottles.

Apparently when she actually falls asleep, at some point she rolls over on her phone and re-dials Damian’s number because she wakes up to his annoyed voice in her ear demanding that she answer him and explain her reasoning for calling.

Maps snorts into the rug and grabs her phone, rolling quickly into a sitting position.  “Damian!”

“What?” Damian says.  “For God’s sake.”

“Um!” Maps looks frantically around the room and says, “I need you to come to my dorm!”

Damian groans.  “Is it an emergency?”

“Yes!  I might die if you don’t come!”

“What? What’s going on?”

“No time to explain, please hurry!” Maps hangs up the phone and holds it tightly between her hands.  “Oh my crap he’s going to kill me.”  But she’s made her decision.  It was a split second idiot decision, but she’s sticking by it.  There’s no way she’s going to finish this project without help.  She could wake up Olive, but something tells her Olive would just come into her room intending to help and then pass out.  Damian might actually be able to do something and his natural hours of operation are at night, anyway!  Plus he’s smart, he’ll have no trouble figuring out how to put together a mobile of the solar system.

Besides, it’s either death by Damian, or death by her parents when they get her report card if she gets an F this project.

It doesn’t take long.  Damian is clambering through her open window barely twenty minutes after she called, scowling deeply and looking pretty darn murderous.  His opening words are, “If you aren’t victim to some sort of invisible, immediate, life threatening danger right now, I might throttle you.”

“I am!” Maps says.  “I swear!” she gestures to the art supplies scattered around her.  “If I don’t finish this project before tomorrow morning my parents are going to actually kill me!”

Damian squints.  His hair is wet, hanging limply in front of his forehead, and Maps thinks he must have just showered, which means he also probably just finished patrol.  Gotham was either really quiet tonight, or it’s a lot later than she thought it was.

“How do you feel about painting Jupiter?” Maps asks, holding up a large Styrofoam ball stuck to a toothpick.  He doesn’t really respond so she says, “Mars is also an option.  Or Venus!”

Damian crosses his arms. “I want to paint Earth.”

“Uh, sure!” Maps shuffles through her plastic baggie of Styrofoam balls until she finds one that seems earth sized and hands it to Damian.  “Just don’t slack off.  I have a certain caliber of creative standards to uphold at this school.”

“-tt-,” Damian takes the ball from her and sits down cross legged with his back against her bedframe.  “I’ll need a palette,” he says, inspecting the various colors of paints she has scattered about them.  Maps hands him a piece of cardboard and he snorts at it, but uses it none-the-less while she sets about trying to actually put the mobile together.

It becomes immediately apparent to Maps that Damian works in silence.  For the first ten or fifteen minutes this kind of drives her crazy but she’s surprised by how quickly she falls into the soundless rhythm of it.

After she finishes putting the mobile itself together all that’s left to do is paint the planets, so Maps grabs another Styrofoam ball from her bag and a paint brush and reaches for one of the paint bottles by Damian’s knee only to have her wrist snatched right out of the air.

“Hey!” she says, wrenching her arm away from him.

He lets go of her easily and gestures to the planets he has finished painting, impaled on toothpicks and needled carefully through a spare piece of cardboard to dry.  “I will not have you defiling my good work with your mediocre talents.”  He says and plucks the paintbrush from her hand.

“Well that’s rude.”  Although, glancing at the borderline photorealistic Styrofoam planets Damian has so far painted, she can’t exactly say he’s wrong.

“If you want it to be readily apparent that you cheated on your project by asking someone far more talented than you to help, by all means, paint.”

“Fine,” Maps groans.  “But now I have nothing to do!”

“I’m sure you’ll think of some mundane activity to occupy yourself with,” Damian says, squinting at his half painted Jupiter, before dabbing along its equator with a brush.

Maps groans again and leans against Damian’s shoulder, facing the adjacent wall.  When he doesn’t respond, she leans harder and makes a sound like she’s dying.

“Watch it!” Damian says, to which Maps responds by pushing against the wall with her feet.  She wonders if she can knock him all the way over before he retaliates, or if he’s just planning to take it.  “What is the matter with you?” Damian says, and stabs Jupiter into the cardboard next to his growing collection. “I didn’t think it was possible for me to be forced to lower my expectations of your maturity level, but clearly I was mistaken.”

“I’m bored!” Maps says.

Damian shifts behind her and a pair of hands shove her forward, despite her considerable efforts at pushing against them.

“Holy crap!” Maps says after Damian has forced her back into an upright position.  “You’re strong!”

“-tt-,” Damian says, and Maps is pretty sure she can actually hear him smirking.  “Of course I am.”

“Hey!” Maps whirls around to face him.  “Tell me some cool story about being Robin!”

Damian plucks Jupiter out of the cardboard and picks his paintbrush up.  “Those stories are not for children.”

“Oh my crap, you have to tell me!”

“Hmm,” Damian says, and elaborates no further, concentrating intently on his chosen planet.

“Come on!” Maps grabs his shoulder and shakes him, or, she tries to shake him.  He’s pretty sturdy as it turns out.

“Good Lord!  Fine!  Just stop touching me!” Damian says and swats at her hands like they’re obnoxious insects.

Maps immediately retracts her arms and wraps them around her legs, hiding her grin against her knees.

Damian lets out a breath and after a moment says, “one time Grayson and I fought a woman with a hole in her head.  Literally.”

“Grayson?” Maps says.

“Nightwing.  He was Batman at the time.  Father was… indisposed, temporarily.  Anyway, apparently she managed to survive to adult hood with some rare form of Dandy Walker Syndrome without any malformations of the face or seizures, was then shot in the head, and vowed revenge on my father and all of his ex-companions claiming some higher form of intelligence due to the excess oxygen her brain was constantly being exposed to.”  Damian paused to snort and roll Jupiter’s toothpick between his thumb and forefinger, inspecting his work.  “In reality the exposure of her brain tissues to open air is continually decreasing her core brain functions and slowly killing her.”

“That is literally the coolest thing I’ve ever heard,” Maps says.  “What else you got?”

“Hmm,” Damian sticks Jupiter back into its hole with the rest of the planets and picks up another sphere.

For the next half hour Damian regales Maps with tales of being Robin.  There’s the time he and Grayson fought a deranged plastic surgeon calling himself Professor Pig who mutated people beyond recognition in his quest for the perfect person.  There’s the time winged angels kept falling from the sky and to their deaths.  There are apparently a thousand stories about Man-Bat which Damian eventually says he’s not going to talk about anymore after Maps demands he tell her absolutely everything.  She does manage to find out that Batman has a strategic measure known as ‘Man-Bat Tactics’ which quite frankly blows Maps’ mind.

She’s still pretty sure he’s holding back though.  Every story he tells her seems to be about equal in gruesome details and Maps knows there’s no way Damian hasn’t seen worse than some lady with a hole in her head.  Damian wouldn’t be so weird if that was the most grotesque thing he’d ever been exposed to.  But Maps doesn’t push.  Honestly she kind of can’t believe she’s gotten him to tell her this much.

Eventually Damian finishes the mobile and leaves.  At least, Maps assumes that’s what happened, because she wakes up the next morning, sprawled across the floor and drooling on her rug but with the added benefit of a blanket haphazardly thrown over her and the finished mobile dangling above her head, pinned to the ceiling by some string and a batarang.

Chapter Text

“Colin, you are not hearing me!” Damian, who had been standing idly by the mouth of the garage, now begins to follow Colin around as he meanders about, picking up various tools and inspecting them.

“No,” Colin says.  “I’m definitely hearing you.  It’s just that all the words coming out of your mouth don’t make sense.”

Damian snorts. “Grandfather has threatened to attend Father’s Gala with a proposed betrothed for me.”

“Yeah,” Colin says. “I got that part.”  He picks up a hub cap wrench and flips it into the air a time or two before walking back to the Cycle.

“Yes, so I need you to attend with me, disguised as my affianced future wife.  As long as grandfather suspects that I am pursuing capable romantic relations, he will postpone his archaic and ridiculous traditions.”  Damian moves closer to Colin, who is crouched beside the Cycle’s back wheel, and looms.  Colin has in recent years undergone an unfortunate growth spurt which means that Damian is now the far shorter of the two.  He tells himself that he is above being bothered by such petty physical differences, but he also will absolutely not pass up any opportunity he has to take advantage of being taller than Colin, rare though they now may be.

“Yep,” Colin says, and cranks the bolts of his hub cap. “That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.”

Damian opens his mouth to rebuttal but Colin cuts him off.

“To be honest, I would love to do this if I honestly believed I was the only living person you knew on the planet.  You know I love those tiny sandwiches with the raw fish and the um,” Colin makes a vague swirling motion with his hand.  “The fish poop, or eggs, or-,”

“They’re capers,” Damian says.  “And they’re pickled flower buds.”

“Yeah, those.  But you can’t tell me there isn’t one girl you know who would fake marry you in my capable place.  Or like, why can’t I just fake marry you as a guy?  Wouldn’t that be more believable height wise?”

Damian scoffs and silently curses Colin for bringing his accursed height into this.  “Please, Colin don’t be ridiculous.  Grandfather is trying to force me into an arranged marriage.  The man is centuries old and deeply cemented in his outdated, barbaric ways.  He would never allow me to consider any sexuality outside of the heteronormative.” Damian says.  He sniffs and gazes boredly around the garage, plastered with posters of various wrestlers and smeared with grease on every flat surface.  “I am prepared to offer you an entire sixteen ounce jar of capers for this service.”

“Wow,” Colin says blandly. “Jeez, don’t go crazy, Damian.  A whole jar?  That’s just too much.  You don’t have to do that for me.  I know things are tight in the multi-billion dollar Wayne family right now.  I don’t want you spending that kind of money on a poor little orphan like me.”

“For God’s sake Colin, fine, I will get you the capers regardless.  Now are you going to do this for me or not?”

“No!” Colin wrenches the hubcap off of his Cycle and carries it over to a work table which is already so cluttered with junk Damian doesn’t know where he’s planning to actually put it.  “This is your hour, Damian.  I’m pushing you out of the nest.”

Damian makes a loud, perturbed noise.

“What about that girl who’s into maps?”

“Maps?” Damian says.

“Is that – is that actually her name?”

“No, her name is Mia.  She calls herself Maps.  Its idiotic.”

“Wait,” Colin turns around and leans against the table.  “But you actually… call her by her chosen nick name?”

“Yes?” Damian says and picks up several gasoline soaked rags which had been left stupidly next to a Bunsen burner.  “Listen I don’t know what you are trying to say here, but the point is Maps is not a candidate.  She’s an immature child.  She could never handle the pressure.”

“I thought you said she like saved a bunch of her classmates once by sticking her face into a cloud of fear toxin.  And that one time, you said she helped you save her friends when one of the court’s owls was after them.”

“That is not the point.”

“Yes it is?  That literally is the point.  What do you-,” Colin’s eyebrows shoot upwards and Damian cringes internally. “Oh,” Colin says, and then he says it again, louder, and in annoyingly smug tone of voice.

Damian squints.

“You totally like her.”

Damian has the inexplicable urge to turn on the Bunsen burner next to him and light all of the rags he’s holding on fire.  And then light himself on fire.  “Don’t be absurd,” Damian says, but he takes too long tamping down his pyro-maniacal urges and Colin is instantly suspicious.

“Oh man.  You totally do.”

“First of all,” Damian shakes the rags in Colin’s direction.  “I do not.  And second of all, if you chose to pursue this idiotic string of accusations any further I will disembowel you.”

“Oh my God,” Colin says.  “This like-,” he doesn’t actually say what this is like and instead raises his hands upwards as though praying to Heaven and shakes them joyously. “I can’t believe this.”

“Good!” Damian says.  “Because it is not believable because it is a fallacy!”

Colin laughs.  “Dude, you have to get her to go with you.  I bet she’d be all over it.  Oh man, can I come with?”

Something between a scoff and a snarl escapes Damian’s mouth.  “Absolutely not.  You are not allowed to be anywhere near Maps, now or ever in the foreseeable future.” 

“Fine, fine, whatever, but I’m not letting you leave until you call her and get her to go.”

“No,” Damian says.  “Grandfather will tear her apart.”

“Dude.” Colin reaches for his wrench and begins removing the rest of his hubcaps.  “If she’s survived this many encounters with you, she can survive one night with your weird assassin grandpa.  Besides your dad will be there.  In the unlikely event that you can’t protect her from his villainous wrath, Batman definitely can.”

“Hmm,” Damian says noncommittally.

“Call her!” Colin says, and pulls off the second hubcap.

“Fine,” Damian says.  “But it will be a cold day in Hell before you receive any capers in the mail from me.”

Colin snorts and Damian stalks out of the garage onto the moist, cracked concrete of the alley outisde so that he may call Maps in peace without the immediate threat of Colin listening in or, God forbid, making asinine faces at him while he’s on the phone.

When she doesn’t immediately pick up on the first ring Damian is convinced that she will not pick up at all.  Partially because he can’t imagine her not picking up on the first ring with obnoxious exuberance upon receiving a call from him, but mostly because he has just realized it may be well past midnight and the possibility of her being asleep is fairly high.

By the time Maps does pick up, Damian has begun praying to God that she won’t.  God has never been very good at answering Damian’s prayers so he’s not surprised.  She doesn’t speak so much as she does gasp loudly and then barf some amalgamation of words that Damian cannot decipher.

She doesn’t stop until Damian says, “Calm down,” as boredly as he possibly can at which point Maps falls completely silent.  “I require your assistance…” Damian says slowly.

“Oh my god,” Maps says.  “Yes.”

“I cannot give you the details via phone.”

“Oh my God,” Maps says again, this time with considerably more force.

“Are you… Um, free this Sunday evening?”

“I am now,” Maps says.  “Who are we going to fight?  Joker?  Two-Face?  Oh my god, is it Mr. Freeze? Is it Riddler?”

“We aren’t fighting anyone.  Please.” Damian says.  “Just be ready by seven.”

“Hmm…” Maps sounds considerably less excited but says, “Okay,” none-the-less.

“And wear something… formal.”

“Ew,” Maps says. “Is it too late to back out?”

“Yes it is absolutely too late!” 

“This doesn’t sound like the super-secret, super-dangerous superhero fight scene I was imagining in my head.”

Damian pinches the bridge of his nose.  “Just… think of it as espionage.”

Maps hums again and then says, “Fine.”

“Good,” Damian says and then hangs up. 

He returns to the garage and persistently ignores Colin’s relentless teasing and persistent questioning. Roughly two minutes later he receives a text from Maps that says:

              Who taught you to use a phone?  Say goodbye before you hang up, jerk.

Damian snorts at it and intends not to respond until something dawns on him and his thumbs begin pounding against the glass screen of his phone with unparalleled focus.

              YOU HAVE NOT SAID GOODBYE TO ME BEFORE HANGING UP A SINGLE TIME

He adds several exclamation points for good measure before pressing send.  Across the room Colin asks him who he’s texting in a brazenly knowing voice and another text comes through from Maps containing only a winking smiley face.

--------------------------------

“Master Damian,” Alfred says as they pull into Gotham Academy’s gravel drive inside an official logoed Wayne Industries limo.  “I say this with the utmost respect and gentleness:  You must stop fidgeting.”

Damian scoffs and they roll to a gentle stop in front of the main building.  Buttery light filters through the frosted glass windows of its double doors and reflects against the smoky white stone steps.  “That you would even suggest me to be capable of fidgeting is inherently offensive, Pennyworth.”  He leans closer to the window to get a better view of the grounds outside and does indeed fidget with the cuff of his sleeve while doing so. “She’s not here.”

“Be patient,” Alfred says.  “We are nearly twenty minutes early, after all.”

They are early, but Damian exits the limo to stand outside anyways.   It doesn’t take terribly long.  Five or so minutes into his vigilant stance, a dark spherical blob bobs up and down behind the right window of Gotham Academy’s double doored entrance.  Seconds afterwards she comes bounding down the front steps and Damian narrows his eyes when he sees her ghostly haired friend following behind.

“What is she doing here?” he demands, stalking forward.

“Oh-,” Maps says, turning halfway to Olive.

“I’m here to make sure- wait…” Olive tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and narrows her eyes in the direction of the limo, and then at Damian. “Is this a… date?”

Some ungodly embarrassing noise comes out of Damian’s mouth.  It’s halfway between a scoff and a terrified laugh.  “Don’t be absurd,” he says.  “This is a highly classified mission of which you were not to be aware or involved in.” He then squints meaningfully at Maps.

“What!” Maps says.  “Like I’m not going to tell my best friend you forced me into going to some lame Gala?  Because it’s obviously the Gala.  Everybody knows there’s a Wayne Industries Gala tonight, Damian.”

Damian sputters again.  “This is a matter of much greater severity than some mere Gala!” he says and then points at Olive, “And it’s not a date!”

“Ah-huh,” Olive says.

Maps rolls her eyes. “Whatever, whatever!” she moves between Damian and Olive and begins pushing obnoxiously against his shoulder.  “Let’s get in the car so you can tell me the secret mission part of this secret mission!  Bye Olive!”

Damian sighs and allows himself to be manhandled back into the limo, ignoring Olive’s loathsome warnings and over protective jibes behind them.

It is only once they are seated against the leather plush of his Father’s chosen escort vehicle that Damian notices what Maps is actually wearing.

“I said formal and you chose to wear a three piece suit?” Damian says, raising an eyebrow.

Maps tugs on the lapels of her suit.  “It’s Armani.”

“It is not Armani.  I am wearing Armani.”

“Wow, way to one up your date, jerk.”

“This is not a date!” Damian is not quite sure if he yells this due to the 747 airliner engine that’s screaming inside of his head, he suspects that he might have though.

“Master Damian,” Alfred says, peering at the through the rearview mirror.  “Perhaps you should inform Miss Mizoguchi about the reasons for her presence at the Gala tonight?”

Damian clears his throat.  “Of course.”

A gasp flies out of Maps’ mouth and she turns toward Damian, sitting at exaggerated attention.

“As you apparently already know, my father’s company is hosting a Gala tonight.  What you have most likely not figured out is that my grandfather has managed to find his way onto the guest list, posing as an esteemed Saudi Arabian dignitary.”

“Oh my crap,” Maps says.  “Sauron is going to be there?”

Damian impressively suppresses the urge to throw himself out of the car.  “… yes.  His name is Ra’s Al Ghul.  You will meet him, and when you do, you must do exactly as I say as he absolutely has ulterior motives for attending the Gala.  Father and I suspect that it is to attempt to woo me back into the clutches of the Al Ghuls, an attempt he will mostly likely carry via some archaic proposition of arranged marriage.  We are hoping to stall him by convincing him that I already have a prospective and adequate candidate with whom I might continue the esteemed Al Ghul lineage.”

“So…” Maps says, “I am your date?”

“No!” Damian says.  “You are… playing a part.  Grandfather is a very demanding individual and if he does not deem you worthy of me than this entire… mission will be for naught.  Which is why you must do exactly as I tell you for this to work.”

Maps makes some kind of dismissive noise and waves at him.  “I got this in the bag.  Old people love me.”

Damian narrows his eyes.  “You definitely do not.  Should this fail Grandfather undoubtedly will employ the use league assassins to apprehend me.  He will fail, obviously, but Father does not wish another of his Gala’s to be crashed by Manbats.”

Maps’ head whips around.  “Manbats?”

Damian suffers for another half hour with questions from Maps, none of them even remotely pertinent to the task at hand – and almost all of them about manbat – until the pops and flashes of Gotham’s impudent media fan fair begin to illuminate the interior of the limo like lighting.

“Holy crap,” Maps says, leaning over Damian to push her face against the glass of the window as the crowd pars for their limo and Alfred drives them through the front gates of Wayne Manor.

At the end of the drive, Damian’s father and grandfather descend the steps of the manor, smiling amicably at each other.  It’s an image so unbearably fake and filled with malice that it makes Damian want to wretch.  He admirably refrains and instead says, “Let’s get this over with.”

Alfred wishes them good luck as Damian opens the door of the limo and yanks Maps by her elbow out into the small crowd of paparazzi with sanctions to be on the grounds of the manor.  She follows easily, bouncing along beside him and grinning at the godless savages flashing cameras on either side of them.  Damian does his due diligence and attempts to offset her exuberance by glaring as viciously as he possibly can.  It may or may not be effective.

They meet his father and grandfather on the steps and Damian receives a grin as flashy as it is fraudulent from his father, and a subdued nod from his grandfather.  Introductions are not made until Bruce guides them through the main doors and into the foyer where a few wealthy bureaucrats are mingling.

“Grandfather,” Damian says, and stares cooly into Ra’s’ aged face.  He truly is due for a dip in the Well.  His eyebrows seem to be melting into his eyelids.

Ra’s smiles at him which makes Damian’s skin crawl and then puts a hand on his shoulder which makes Damian’s skin feel like it might be burning off.  “It’s good to see you, Damian,” he says.

“I’m sure you two have a lot to catch up on,” Bruce grins meaningfully at Damian and completely ignores the horror that Damian is trying to project directly into his father’s brain.  “I should go mingle.”  He waves at them as he jogs backwards into the ballroom.

Damian screams at him mentally and then turns back to his grandfather who has one heavy eyebrow raised impressively high and gestures at Maps.

“Are you going to introduce me to your friend, Damian?”

“Of course,” Damian says, he moves his arm from Maps’ elbow to her shoulders, like he’s seen his father do a thousand times, and says, “Mia Mizoguchi, this is my grandfather, Ra’s Al Ghul.  Grandfather, this is my…” Damian clears his throat, “Betrothed.”

Maps extends her hand to be shaken, and Ra’s decides that’s his cue to lean over and kiss it.  Damian only barely represses a shudder and the urge to drench Maps’ hand in sanitizer for eight to twelve hours.  When she glances at him he expects to see an expression pleading for the sweet release of death, but is disturbed to find instead a look of pure, albeit slightly confused, glee.

“It’s truly a pleasure, Miss Mizoguchi,” Ra’s says.  “I’m pleased to see my grandson seeking company from such a beautiful young lady.”

“Thank… you?” Maps says while Damian attempts to count to ten in his head, only to be repeatedly interrupted by blinding rage.

“Of course,” Ra’s adds.  “I’d love to learn more about you, Miss Mizoguchi.  Perhaps we could chat somewhere privately?”  He turns to Damian.  “Damian, would you be so kind as to fetch us drinks.”

“If you think I’m foolish enough to leave you alone with her you really are going senile, old man.” Damian says.

The gentle smile on Ra’s face falls into an aged frown.  “Hmm.”  He looks at Maps and then at Damian and says, “If you think I do not have the power to take her from you at any time I wish, you really are a witless child.”  He turns his smile back on Maps and rests a knobby hand on her shoulder.  “Shall we?”

She looks at Damian as if to ask for permission and Damian has no choice but to nod grimly.  He knows Alfred is monitoring the whole place.  There’s not a single crevice in this building that Ra’s can hide in.  But being able to see what Ra’s is doing won’t stop him from doing something and no one knows this better than Damian.

He turns and stalks into the ballroom as his grandfather guides Maps into a private parlor off the side of the foyer.

Once he’s immersed himself into the thicket of drunken opulence that permeates all of his father’s Galas, Damian runs into, of all people, Grayson, who is grinning easily by the punch bowl.

“Hey, Little d!” Grayson says, reaching for the ladle to pour himself another drink.  “I heard you brought a girlfriend tonight.”  He doesn’t so much physically wink as he does imply it in his tone.

Damian smacks his hand away from the punch and Grayson emits a pitiful noise.  “Don’t be an ass,” Damian says.  “This situation is dire.  Grandfather has sequestered her in a private parlor and banished me to this godforsaken gilded nightmare.”

Grayson has the audacity to laugh.  “Listen,” he says as Damian hastily pours three cups of punch, and then casts his eyes down table toward the sandwich trays.  “You’ve got to relax, Damian.  I know you and Ra’s have, literally, bad blood, but Bruce isn’t going to let anything happen to your friend.  We’ve got this under control, okay?”

“So you say,” Damian tears himself away from the table and spins around Grayson toward the sandwiches.  “When Grandfather is involved, only one person has things under control, and it’s him.”  He picks up the entire tray of salmon sandwiches and begins weaving his way back through the crowd, ignoring Grayson’s pleas that he leave some for the rest of the family.

He believes himself to be home free until his Father appears out of, as is typical, nowhere near the open doors leading back to the foyer.  He directs a critical expression towards Damian’s tray of sandwiches and says, “Where do you think you’re going with those?”

“I,” Damian says, hefting the sandwiches into his other arm and as far away from his father as possible, “Am going to secure Maps’ safety, as no one else in this family seems to be concerned about it in the slightest.”

“And…” Bruce’s mouth quirks in what is probably the first real smile he’s given anyone this entire evening.  “You’ll be doing that with punch and mini sandwiches.”

Damian frowns.  “If I must.  Now if you’d get out of my way, she’s been completely alone in that parlor with grandfather for full minutes.”

“I see,” Bruce says in a tone so patronizing that it rivals Drake’s daily speech patterns (something Damian thought impossible, prior to this moment).  “Well to put your mind at ease, I thought I’d let you know I’ve received word from Alfred that they seem to be getting along pretty well.”

“Hmm,” Damian says and furrows his brow.  “That does not bode well.”

“My thought’s exactly.”  Bruce puts a hand on his shoulder.  “Be careful, Damian.  And… next time try not to take all of the sandwiches with you.”

Damian squints at him as he passes and makes no promises.

-----------

The room Ra’s has taken Maps hostage in is one of Bruce’s favored parlors.  Its decorations are casual with large couches, richly colored rugs, and a wide coffee table cluttered with knickknacks memorabilia.  The walls are lined with book cases and family portraits, and in one corner is an old Victrola that Alfred spends an unhealthy amount of time obsessing over and maintaining.

Map’s head shoots up as soon as Damian comes through the door, precariously balancing their drinks and the sandwich tray in his hands.  As it closes behind him the din of chatter from the Gala outside recedes to a palpable hum and Ra’s sets down the puzzle piece that he had been flipping between his fingers.

“How nice of you to finally join us,” Ra’s says.

“Hm.”  Damian moves to set the sandwiches and drinks down on the table only to be impeded by an array of mismatched puzzles smeared across its surface.  “What… is the meaning of this.”

“We’re doing puzzles!” Maps says, and sweeps several pieces to the side, clearing a space.

Damian sets his things down and slowly sits beside her.  “Why?”

“For fun!” Maps says.

“You can learn a lot about someone by watching them solve puzzles,” Ra’s says and Damian feels like he has slipped into some twisted alternate dimension.  “Miss Mizoguchi has a brilliant mind.”

The smile that Maps sends Damian after this sentence is uttered can only be classified as sinister.  Damian frowns.

“But her training in combat is non-existent, which is not something I would have expected you to allow in a mate.”  Ra’s breathes deeply and then stands.  “If you truly wish to conceive with her, she will need training.  I’ll have arrangements made for her to visit Eth’Alth’Eban.”

These two sentences are possibly the most offensive and abhorrent conglomeration of words that Damian has ever encountered.  Upon hearing them, his brain all but completely shuts down.

“Um…” Maps says.  “I don’t think that’s going to work out.”

He opens his mouth to concur but no words are really coming out and Ra’s says, “Oh?  Why is that?”

Maps looks at him and seems to accurately assume that he is in a state of paralyzed shock and not capable of forming words, so she grabs his arm and holds onto it like it’s some sort of stuffed animal.  “Because Damian’s already teaching me how to fight.  Right Damian?”

“Huh.” Damian realizes that her grabbing his arm was just a cruel and deceitful mechanism for her to be able to pinch the inside of his elbow painfully hard.  “Yes.  That… is correct.”

Ra’s gazes at him for agonizingly long seconds before saying, “Well, if that is indeed the case then I will return in one year’s time to assess her progress under your tutelage.”  A smile creeps across his winkled face as he stands.  “I’m glad that we’ve discussed this, Damian.  With your mother missing as she is, it’s important that we take steps to strengthen the Al Ghul legacy.  I’m pleased to see that you are willing to take those steps with me, even if it must be in the wretched shadow of your father.”  He moves around the coffee table and faces them, nodding towards Maps. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Miss Mizoguchi.  The night is still young, and the dance has only just started,” he says, and winks.

“Oh my god,” Maps whispers at his retreating figure while Damian gags.  “He’s crazy.  I love him.”

“You don’t know him,” Damian says, growing more and more aware of the warmth between his and Map’s intertwined arms by the second.

“All my Grandpa does is sit around in a wheelchair and tell me sexist stuff about the nineteen-forties.”  Maps shakes her fist and scrunches her face, “When I was your age, Mia, girls wore skirts, not pants, and they never cut their hair to look like a boy!”

Damian snorts.  “That’s not even remotely true.  America in the nineteen-forties was rife with radical women’s movements.  Most of which included wearing pants and short hair-cuts.”

“Oh, I know,” Map’s says.  “I’m just afraid if I tell grandpa he might have a heart attack and die.”  She pulls her arm away from him suddenly, says, “So!” and smacks the table.  “Are we going to finish these puzzles or what?”

------------------

For a solid hour, Damian spends his time in the parlor with Maps, putting together asinine puzzles.  There are at least 4 different puzzles on just the one coffee table.  Eventually as some of them grow larger, they’re forced to move them onto the rug.  Damian finds himself equal parts exasperated and amused.  Maps for her part doesn’t really say much.  To be honest, Damian doesn’t know if he’s ever seen her concentrate on something so hard before and he’s not sure what to make of it.  Eventually, and against his better judgment, he says, “How did you convince my grandfather to help you with these?”

“Hmm?” Maps says, hoping over one of the puzzles on the ground to get a better view of the other one. “Oh, it was his idea.”

Damian stares at her but she doesn’t look up so he says, “Elaborate. What did he say to you?”

“I don’t know, he asked me what my strengths were and I said maps and puzzles.  So he pulled out the puzzles. We did some riddles together too.  He’s pretty good, but I’m better.”

Damian nearly laughs.  “He was toying with you.”

Maps looks at him severely and Damian’s never felt threatened by anyone in his life, but he thinks the feeling he has now is as close as he’s ever gotten.

“Nobody’s better than me at puzzles,” she says.

“That remains to be seen.”  He is about to challenge her on her claims but before he can the door to the parlor opens and Grayson steps in.  Damian watches his eyes grow to the size of twin moons as his expression melts into something grotesquely saccharine.  Before he has the chance to make a fool of himself Damian stands and says, “Say your peace and leave, Grayson!”

For several agonizing seconds Grayson is visibly at war with his emotions.  Finally he says, “Ra’s is about to leave.  Most of the guests have already shipped out, but he says he wants to say goodbye to you and Mia.”  Grayson waves at her.  “Nice to meet you by the way.”

“Very well.  Maps?” He says when Maps refrains from moving.

“But… the puzzles…”

Damian groans. “Get up.  We can finish the puzzles later!”  He takes her by the hand and pulls her forcibly to her feet.  Her longing gaze never leaves their unfinished puzzles as he drags her to the door.

Ra’s is waiting on the front steps of the manor, hands behind his back, next to Damian’s father.  They seem to be chatting in that way that they so often do when they’re not physically fighting.  That is to say, they are likely exchanging thinly veiled threats on each other’s lives.

“Damian,” Ra’s hand rests on his shoulder.  “It’s time that I turn my attentions elsewhere.  You Father and I have worked out a deal on your behalf.  We will re-assess the adequacy of Miss Mizoguchi’s abilities when you come of age.  Until then, I suggest you train her well.”  Ra’s nods to Bruce and the motion is distinctly bitter.  “Detective.”

“Ra’s,” Bruce says, in the same horrible butchered pronunciation of Ra’s name as he always does.  Damian is fairly sure his father does know how to say Ra’s name correctly and simply chooses not to out of spite.   Especially considering his father has had full conversations with Damian in Arabic before with impressive comprehension.  It’s an irritating habit, but one that Damian can respect considering his grandfather is the physical embodiment of decrepit evil.

The shadows of Wayne Manor’s grounds engulf Ra’s plateless entourage of black, tinted limousines, as they approach the main gates.  Damian doesn’t trust to take his eyes away until their tail lights finally blink out of sight.

“Hey, Damian?” Maps’ voice draws his attention away from the dim blue lights of the helipad and he turns to face her.  “Thanks for asking me to be your fake date.  This was fun.”  She’s smiling and Damian can feel his heart attempting to claw its way out of his chest as her face inches closer to his.  When she kisses his cheek Damian feels his spirit leaves his body entirely.  That is, until a hoard of his grandfather’s retched bat creatures screeches above them, drowning out the calm rhythm of chirping crickets with the incessant flapping of leather wings.  Then Damian feels the cold, hard stone of Wayne Manor’s front porch as Maps pushes him into the railing yelling “Manbats!” and runs off into the night.

His father is smiling bemusedly down at him while Damian attempts to orient himself and Maps hollers in the distance, “Move it, Damian!  That Manbats are getting away!”