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In the photo Alfred has chosen, Dick’s smile is terribly lovely; framed by jasmine and wilting rose petals and wearing a suit that felt more appropriate than the tattered jeans Tim had shown up in, Damian is reminded of his mother.
It’s only the 8 of them at the funeral, and Damian finds himself instinctually doing a head count every few minutes. Between the monotonous pull of the priest’s words and Stephanie’s crying, his hand grasps at the empty space beside him, looking for a child that isn’t there.
Tim doesn’t leave the cave for that first month.
Damian lingers on the stairway often, observing what must be a conscious compartmentalisation of overwhelming guilt. Then, calling it overwhelming seems contrary: the guilt has left nothing of them.
“You need to eat something.”
His hair is tied back in the same ponytail it’d been at Dick’s funeral, and Damian’s willing to bet those jeans are the same pair too. He avoids Damian’s question with a quick flourish of his pen in the margin of his notebook.
“I spoke with your grandfather last night.”
Damian does well not to flinch.
“Cruel of you to not take my feelings into account.”
“Didn’t seem like you were up to helping me any time soon.”
“What did he want in return, then? You?”
Tim does not reply. Damian does not yell. Damian breathes—breathes—and places a hand on his brother’s shoulder. This must be the worst part of burying an empty grave: you forget that there is no body to dig up, and dip into Lazarus’s arms.
“We’re going to go upstairs,” he says calmly. “You’re going to eat, and then you’re going to sleep.”
Where Tim’s single-minded guilt reeks through the cave’s stalactites, Bruce has drawn further into Batman, and Cassandra into her own moniker, suffocating the grief to its barest. Gotham does not pause for the death of a child: if it did, then nothing would ever get done.
Tim pushes his sleeves against his eyes, knocking his glasses upwards. The hitch in his breath sounds awful and young, reminding Damian to check on Jason later.
“He can’t be gone.”
Perhaps they need to start taking comfort in the fact that Dick can’t be anywhere else.
7 years pass before Dick is a topic of conversation again. In the interim they become a disguised memorial, jarring in their jagged teeth and distant expressions. They become a unit, and much like Dick’s room, they become impenetrable.
(Damian has found Bruce there exactly once, standing by the door with a frown and a key.)
Amusement Mile is perversely quiet this close to October and the grass of the Fairgrounds is mudded with day-old rain. Shrike throws quips at Batman, and he has the decency to appear affronted when their father taps him upside the head. Far too long ago now, he remembers Tim not being able to even look them in the eye; taking off his cowl and placing it over that child’s face had seemed strange, then, but necessary, and watching Shrike today is only proof of that. Tim has turned his mantle into something decisive and strong rather than the blood-soaked mockery of the Batman it had been.
“Rukh,” Batman snaps, and Damian unsheathes his katana without pause, the steel glinting beneath the park lights. Whatever Batman sees is still too far out for Damian to spot, but Shrike extends out his staff, readied to fight.
And then Damian sees it.
The man—the talon—is hunched grotesquely over itself, though there is no disguising the threat he poses. He wears a skin-tight and mobile armour, reminiscent of Damian’s own but draped in weaving, black cloth and embellished with hard plates of gold. The mask he wears is the same dreaded caricature of an owl they are used to but his hair catches Damian off guard; long and thin, it’s whetted down on his scalp and patchy in some places, even tangling on the blades strapped to his chest.
“Hood,” Batman says.
“2 minutes out. Spoiler and Black Bat on standby at Burnley.”
A pair of stiletto knives drop down into the talon’s waiting palms.
Batman strikes.
The sheer intensity of damage the talon can make in one movement is close to performance art. Blood gushes beneath Batman’s eyes and Damian grunts as shuriken lodges in his calf; Shrike’s staff cracks hard against bone but the talon swipes out, unaffected, slamming Tim into the dirt and forcing a push dagger down into his collarbone. Shrike grits his teeth and bucks upwards, brass knuckles connecting sharply with the talon’s mask—he falters, just enough, to land straight into the arc of Damian’s waiting katana.
The cut should be clean, but the talon is so suddenly immovable. His forearm shakes with the force of his hold and Damian watches as the talon presses harder, his forearm dripping quickly with blood too thick to be natural, but thin enough to soak Damian’s hilt and gloves.
The shot Jason takes rings true, and the talon takes it with no more than a tilt of his head, before he drops.
Damian takes the hand-crafted bullet Jason offers with some admiration. Adapted from a tranquiliser dart and what they know of Victor Fries cryogenic endeavours, it’d been a near perfect solution to a situation they may not have survived.
“They’re going to want him back,” Jason points out.
“They won’t.” Damian hands the bullet back and looks to the overhead monitor showing Alfred in the clinic, the talon strapped down on a gurney beside him with Cassandra standing guard in the corner. “He failed his mission. The court may very well have been aware of his failure tonight before it even occurred—replaced before redemption was even an option. They’ll want him eliminated, at the very least.”
“So, we’re just going to ask him what he was up to?”
“Worth a shot.” Tim enters the cave with a weary expression. “Me and Spoiler searched the whole Mile, but we didn’t find much. Looks like he might have gone rogue.” Bruce shook his head turning away from the Batcomputer. His gauzed cheek made him appear more fallible than usual.
“That doesn’t happen,” he said.
“How is your shoulder?” Damian asks Tim, but Tim waves him away.
“Master Bruce,” Alfred calls suddenly, and on the monitor screen, Cassandra is holding down a thrashing, snarling Dick Grayson.
Jason’s hands cradle Dick’s gently, despite the latter’s fingernails digging roughly into his wrists. They’re trailing slowly into the pool, Jason walking backwards and guiding Dick’s hesitant feet. His hair is plaited back, Tim’s shoddy work, and out in the daylight its too easy to see the parts of his body where clear skin and muscle should be. He makes it past the shallow end and looks back with a bright, scarred smile, and for a moment he is just their brother, learning to swim.
“He’s home,” Bruce says. Damian doesn’t startle. “He’s safe.”
“He isn’t,” Damian replies, because Dick’s smile is no longer lovely. It is an alien stretch of skin, torn in two with keloids that separate his expression from something kind to inherently dangerous… then, this morning he’d woken to childish laughter on the grounds outside his window. From the balcony he watched Dick sprint into Jason and Tim’s arms, letting them slingshot him back to the grass where Cassandra clapped excitedly.
It is hard to fall so easily back in time.
Damian glances in his periphery. When Dick had joined him in the lounge, he isn’t sure. He seems distracted by the colours on the television, unblinking at the weather report, but soon faces Damian, head cocking like a listening dog.
“Richard,” he greets belatedly. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
He points to the drawn curtain. Draw the curtains? I need a pen for that, Alfie!
“The rain should let up soon,” Damian guesses. “Do you need help finding your way back to your room?”
Dick curls his hands in his lap vaguely, knuckles cracking under pressure. He sniffs, lifting a hand and drawing in the air with a fingertip. He looks expectant.
“I’m sorry,” Damian says. “I don’t understand.”
Dick frowns and touches his thumb to his forehead, drawing it down to his free hand.
“Again?” Damian asks.
He does the motion again, but this time makes an effort to move Damian’s hands as if they’re his own. His palms are icy, nail beds blue, but he touches Damian with warmth and familiarity, thumb to forehead to thumb.
“Remember,” Damian reads. “What do you remember?”
Dick pinches Damian’s cheek, drawing the motion out.
“Our cat?” Dick nods vigorously. “She died a few years ago, I’m afraid.”
Dick frowns, looking away, and Damian rushes to placate.
“I could bring my cat by the manor tomorrow. I’m sure he would love to meet you.”
“Name?” Dick asks. It’s barely a sound, has no hint of accent or inflection, but it’s Dick, and it’s a word, and it is so much. Damian swallows thickly.
“Alfred.”
Dick’s laughter fills up the room.
“I heard Robin talking to Hood,” Shrike mentions towards the end of an especially gruelling patrol. “Only a few words. His voice really hasn’t changed at all—still has a lisp.”
“What did he say?” Damian asks, and Shrike smiles, an unsettling contrast to his character’s usual disposition.
“He called Little Women boring and asked Jason to read Dr. Suess instead.”
For hours, sometimes, all Dick does is stare.
He doesn’t blink much, barely lifts his chest for breath, and more often than not they find him in the bathtub with the water up to his chin. He gets cold, Alfred reminds. Bruce has to lift him out, and it’s on those nights that he sleeps by the fireplace, drawn up in blankets with a rainforest print and wearing socks that are four sizes too small. Three meals a day. Sleep when you’re tired. Don’t swing from the chandelier again—it isn’t a hammock.
He likes being the tallest one in the room, Jason reminds.
They have him on lockdown two weeks after Christmas when he tries to rip his face off with an oyster fork.
He wakes suddenly. Perched on his stomach is Dick, curled with his arms around his knees and his toes digging into Damian’s ribcage. His hair is a damp, even wave around him, concealing his face.
“Did something happen?” Damian asks hoarsely. “Are you okay?”
He taps Damian’s chin.
“Can’t sleep?” Damian asks.
He hurtles forward, a whirlwind of second-hand skin, and cups his bony fingers to Damian’s ear; a child sharing a secret.
“I killed Tony Zucco,” Dick whispers.