Work Text:
Looking back, it was all Richard’s fault.
He was the one who kept insisting on these asinine “sibling bonding nights.” Damian felt plenty bonded to his adopted brothers and sister – sometimes, he felt entirely too bonded. But nevertheless, Father and Pennyworth had both made it clear that his attendance was mandatory.
And if the date was circled in red on his calendar each month, it was only because he dreaded it. Not because he looked forward to hanging out with his family. Not at all.
Tonight, they were watching How to Train your Dragon. Damian, rightfully so, had voiced his fury at the pick (Drake’s choice, naturally), but he had been outvoted.
“Oh c’mon, Dami, lighten up,” Drake snickered. “You’re the only one who hasn’t had a turn.”
His brother was, of course, alluding to the practice of picking movies with themes revolving around one of their supernatural identities. The point was to make fun of the often vastly inaccurate lore, but Damian found no pleasure in such things. He certainly didn’t wish to watch a film that showed his kind being trained.
“Tim’s right. We watched The Thirteenth Year last month,” Brown pointed out. “And before that, we watched all four of the Twilight movies.”
“Which sucked, by the way,” Todd shuddered.
“No pun intended,” Cassandra giggled.
“You’re just mad because the vampires won in the end,” Richard scoffed.
“The final battle wasn’t between vampires and werewolves, Dickhead. I was referring to the gross ‘imprinting on the baby’ shit.”
Brown wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, that was icky.”
Damian was inclined to agree. Those “movies,” if one could even call them such, were abhorrent. Not only were they horribly wrong in their portrayals of vampires and werewolves, but also, the writing was just juvenile.
“This movie’s actually really good. It was one of my favorites growing up,” Drake defended. He, as usual, was sprawled out on top of the obnoxiously large beanbag chair.
Damian rolled his eyes. “You’ll forgive me if I do not trust your taste in films, Drake. Merfolk, vampires, and werewolves are at least shown to be partially human in your movies. Dragons are more often than not portrayed as evil murderous beasts or, worse, pets.”
“Oh, I don’t wanna hear it,” Todd huffed. “Werewolves are almost always portrayed as evil. So are vamps, for that matter. Don’t act like dragons are the most misunderstood species just to get out of watching the movie.”
“Besides, it’s not like that,” Drake assured. “The goal of the entire movie is to show that dragons aren’t evil murderous beasts.”
Barbara let out a tired sigh. She, too, seemed to tire of his siblings’ idiocy. “Let’s just start the movie so we can get done at a decent hour. Some of us have jobs to get to in the morning.”
They started the movie.
To distract himself from the degradation of his species, Damian dug his fork into his jackfruit curry. At least he had been given the “honor” of choosing the takeout for the night. Eating one of his favorite meals was a small consolation (make no mistake, though; he was still very annoyed).
It was about fifteen minutes into the movie that Damian began feeling sick.
At first, he was convinced it had to be in his head. He had been fine all day. And yes, the film was nauseating, but surely that wasn’t what was currently making his stomach churn.
Had he eaten anything strange?
Not really. Pennyworth took food safety extremely seriously, and the only meal that hadn’t been cooked by the butler was the curry. But Damian had ordered jackfruit from this particular place a million times before with no issues. And surely food poisoning took longer than fifteen minutes to develop.
Bile bubbled up into his throat, and Damian knew he could deny it no longer.
He made a beeline for the nearest toilet, ignoring the shouts of his siblings behind him. He barely made it onto his knees before throwing up into the porcelain basin. His stomach cramped intensely with each retch. It was horrible.
“Uh, Dami? Are you okay in there?” Richard’s voice called from outside the door.
Damian forced himself to stop heaving long enough to respond, “Go away. I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine,” Drake added.
Great. More people to witness his downfall.
The door swung open (he had foolishly left it unlocked), and a steady hand landed on his back.
“Dames, you’re shaking,” Richard said with a frown. “Tim, go get Alfred.”
Huh. Damian hadn’t noticed that before.
By the time he had finished throwing up the entirety of his stomach contents, Damian’s throat felt scratchy and swollen.
“I feel… ill,” he rasped, his voice hoarse. He didn’t have the strength to deny it any longer. His breaths were becoming more labored with each passing moment.
Richard’s lips were moving, but they produced no sound. His brother drifted in and out of focus. Was he doing some sort of vampiric mirage? Or was Damian’s vision simply blurring?
Now, he felt like he was breathing through a coffee stirrer. And not just any coffee stirrer, but one that Drake had used to stir the obscene amounts of chocolate syrup he always put into his morning mocha.
The last thing he remembered was slumping forward into Richard’s arms.
“Damian!” Dick shouted as he caught his littlest brother.
“What the fuck happened? He was fine a minute ago,” Jason demanded, worry shining in his bright green eyes.
“I don’t know, Jay, but I don’t like how his breathing sounds. Let’s get him downstairs.”
Dick gathered Damian into his arms and rushed him down to the Cave’s medical bay. He laid the youngest Wayne down on a stretcher and began hooking him up to monitors.
He did not like what he saw.
“His oxygen is dropping, and his heart rate is becoming slow and irregular,” he reported to the others as they crowded in behind him.
“Is he allergic to anything?” Stephanie asked as she jumped in to help. She, being Leslie’s apprentice, had the most medical knowledge of any of them (at least until Alfred arrived).
Dick shook his head as he placed an oxygen mask on Damian’s face. “Not that I know of. The only thing he’s eaten tonight is the curry, but he eats that all the time.”
“Maybe something different was put into it that he’s reacting to,” she suggested grimly. “Cass, can you go get his container and start analyzing it for abnormal ingredients?”
Cass nodded and turned to run back upstairs.
The alarms started blaring.
“Shit, he’s not breathing,” Steph cursed. She pressed her finger against his throat. “He’s still got a pulse. Dick, grab an epipen and inject him. If it is some kind of allergic reaction, it will help. Jason, work on getting IV access while I start bagging him.”
Dick scrambled to follow Stephanie’s orders. They kept epipens in all of the medical cabinets (Tim was deathly allergic to walnuts), so it thankfully wasn’t hard to find. He yanked off the lid and slammed it into Damian’s thigh.
Nothing changed.
“What’s going on?” Bruce demanded as he came barreling into the room with Tim and Alfred.
Stephanie ignored the Dark Knight and looked to the butler. “Alfred, he’s not protecting his airway. We gotta intubate him before he full on codes. Tim, take over for me while we get ready.”
“Bruce, call Leslie and get her over here,” Dick directed. “All we know is that Damian suddenly started throwing up. He had no other symptoms leading up to it. Then he started having trouble breathing and passed out. We have Cass analyzing the leftovers from his meal so we can see if something in his food could have caused this. I administered an anaphylactic dose of epinephrine with no improvement, so it’s unlikely to be an allergic reaction.”
Bruce looked at his youngest, pain evident on his face. Dick followed his stare. Damian had grown horrifically pale; it looked so wrong on his usually dark olive complexion. Beside him, Alfred and Stephanie were getting things set up to intubate while Tim continued to ventilate Damian with an Ambu Bag.
His father finally snapped from his gaze. “Right. I’ll call her,” he said before ducking out of the room.
Steph put on a pair of surgical gloves. “Jason, give Damian a dose of ketamine.”
God, Dick didn’t want to watch this.
Half an hour later, Damian was somewhat stabilized. They’d intubated him just in time to avoid cardiac arrest, but they still didn’t know what was wrong. Which meant that they didn’t know how to treat him.
Dick and Bruce remained on either side of Damian, each holding one of his cold, pale hands. Dick would give anything to see his baby brother’s eyes open.
Suddenly, Tim and Cass came running into the room.
“We got it!” Tim exclaimed, waving his tablet around. “Lucibufagin.”
Jason, who had been camped out in the corner, crossed his arms agains this chest. “Lucy-what?”
“Lucibufagin. It’s a substance made by fireflies to protect them against predators. It isn’t toxic to humans in small amounts, but do you know what population it is extremely deadly to? Reptiles, specifically bearded dragons.”
“Shit,” Stephanie breathed.
“How do we treat it?” Leslie asked.
Tim frowned. “Well, all the vet journals I found said there is no current known therapy because the reptiles are usually dead before they get to the vet. But, the compound itself is similar to the steroids produced by the Digitalis species of plant. So theoretically…”
“We could treat it like digoxin toxicity,” Leslie finished. “Bruce, I need to get to my clinic. I have some digoxin antidote there.”
“I’ll go. I’m faster,” Jason volunteered.
The doctor nodded. “Okay. The drug you’re looking for is called digoxin immune fab. It’ll be in the cabinet with the other cardiac drugs.”
Dick squeezed his baby brother’s hand. “Hold on, Dami. We’re gonna get you all fixed up.”
The hope in the room was palpable.
Damian did not enjoy waking up.
For one thing, his throat was sore. In fact, his entire body was plagued with malaise. Had he caught some kind of flu? That didn’t seem right. Drake was the one with the weak constitution.
He forced his eyes to open. To his confusion, he was in the Cave’s med bay. Father and Richard were at his bedside, which he supposed was typical, but Drake and Todd were also present. That was less typical.
“Why are you all staring at me?” he demanded, though it came out as a hoarse whisper.
“Because you almost died, you brat,” Todd countered, though he was smiling.
Father grabbed his hand. “What is the last thing you remember?”
Damian wrinkled his nose. “I became ill when Drake forced me to witness the subjugation of my people.”
“How to Train Your Dragon is an amazing film!”
“Then why did it cause me to almost perish?”
“The movie had nothing to do with it. You were poisoned, jackass,” Drake huffed.
“Poisoned?” Damian questioned.
Richard nodded. “Someone put fragments of fireflies into your curry. Apparently, they contain a substance that is very toxic to reptiles, including dragons. You stopped breathing and had to be intubated, but Leslie was able to give you something to counteract the toxin. Cass and Steph are out investigating the restaurant now so we can find out who did this. Barbara is helping, too.”
Fireflies? That was disgusting. Disgusting and familiar. Damian lowered his eyes to his hands. “I believe I know who is responsible.”
Father narrowed his eyes at him. “Who?”
“There is a small group of zealots within the League. They believe I am a traitor to the al Ghul line and should therefore be put to death.”
“That would make sense. Everyone in the League knows that the al Ghuls are dragons,” Drake pointed out.
Richard looked troubled. “But what about Ra’s? He wouldn’t allow his own men to assassinate Damian, would he?”
Damian scoffed bitterly. “I imagine that in Grandfather’s eyes, if I am incompetent enough to allow myself to be killed by these fanatics, then I deserve to die.”
Father reached over and placed a hand on his shoulder. “We won’t let that happen, Damian. We will find these men and stop them before they try anything else.”
A wave of warmth spread through him at his father’s touch. Damian couldn’t help but feel comforted by it. Even though he would never admit it out loud, he craved his family’s affection.
“I’ll start putting out feelers with my League contacts and see what I can find out,” Drake offered, reaching for his phone.
Father cocked his head at him. “What League contacts?”
“None of you business, Old Man.”
Todd reached out and fist bumped him. “Nice one, Timmy. I’ll do some digging on my side, too. Until then, Dames, stay the hell away from fireflies.”
Damian grimaced. He had a horrible feeling that his brothers were never going to let him forget about this.