Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Good luck at school, nerds,” Jason says, in his customary saccharine, bitchy tone.

Drake flips him off. His second try at high school, following Bruce’s return, has been a sore subject for months now. The blow had been softened, barely, by the promise that he wouldn’t actually have to board at the school, but Drake is still mourning a loss of independence. 

Damian would feel the same way, but he’s had longer to adjust. He was forced to give up the luxury of homeschooling in exchange for a normal teenage experience last year while Bruce was dead. His time boarding at Gotham Academy hadn’t lasted long, but he’s been readmitted as a commuter student with a promise that he’ll be on his “best behavior.”

“Maybe you should come with us,” Drake says, matching Jason’s energy. He looks pretty terrible, as do the rest of them--a result of patrol ending at five this morning and none of them getting more than two hours of sleep. “Dropout moment.”

“I died,” Jason says, “what’s your excuse?”

Damian, contained to the backseat and still bitter about the arrangement, rolls his eyes at both of his brothers and slides out onto the sidewalk in front of the school, pulling his backpack with him. As much as he wants to engage in the same childish conversation they have every single morning Jason drives them, Damian has better things to do. Namely, to be the first Wayne to get through both high school and college without giving up and fucking off.

“Look at little Damian,” Damian hears Jason saying as Damian leaves the car. “He’s so eager to learn. Why can’t you be more like him?”

“I hate you so much,” Drake says. 

“Many children want to go to school so badly,” Jason starts, speaking with the dry mock-Bruce cadence that everyone has started to pick up to make fun of their father behind his back, “can you--”

Damian slams the door behind him so he doesn’t have to hear Jason’s voice anymore. He’s been working on taking deep breaths to curb the unspeakable violence that Drake and Jason inspire in him, but there’s only so much breathing he can do. If he sticks around much longer, the sharpened pencil in the side pocket of his backpack will finally be used for the shivving purpose he placed it there for.

Putting a physical barrier between him and his siblings immediately makes him feel better. The clawing, dried-out sensation of too little sleep that’s shrinking his brain lessens, or at least it’s easier to ignore it now that he’s not subjected to Drake’s whining. Damian starts towards the steps up into the main building, resigning himself to another first-period English class spent trying to keep himself awake.

Two steps up, and Damian suddenly feels like he’s being watched.

It’s not an uncommon feeling. On patrol, it’s a comfort to know that Oracle has eyes on him in case something goes wrong. In school, Damian can usually chalk it up to the fact that he shows up with weird injuries sometimes, ones that got child protective services called on Richard during the first few months of Damian’s time as Robin. 

In a worst-case scenario, it’s some of the upperclassmen zeroing in on Damian as a target, though that’s become less common since Damian finally gave up on his demure act and broke one of their noses. 

In a best-case scenario, it’s Talia paying a visit. Damian hasn’t seen her in a while.

Today, when that pinprickly feeling hits his neck, Damian turns his head and, still venturing up the steps, begins to scan the crowd around him. The rush of people is hard to get a read on, so Damian instead darts his gaze up to the roof of the nearest building--the gymnasium--so that he can rule out non-peer surveillance first.

He doesn’t see anyone. Another quick scan of his surroundings yields nothing. Despite himself, Damian feels hope unfurling in his heart, because a lack of evidence means it might be his mom. It’s her M.O. to appear when he’s at school, which is the only time when no Waynes are keeping a direct eye on him. 

He checks his watch. If he hurries, he’ll be able to see her before school starts, and she won’t have to wait around for him to sneak out of some unimportant class.

This quick deduction means that he’s only just reached the front door of the school by the time he’s ready to start making a break for the gym roof, which is where he and Talia met last time. Damian moves with the flow of students going in through the front door, and then meanders sideways to gracefully extricate himself from the foot traffic, edging towards the exit door in the side hallway.

Damian has just left the entrance hallway when he hears Drake’s voice near his ear. “Where’re you going?”

Damian stiffens. 

While he keeps most things as close to the vest as possible, Damian has taken extra-special care not to bring up his brief visits with Talia around his family. For some of his family members, talking about parental figures other than Bruce is a depressing affair. For others, they’re too predisposed to snitching for Damian to want to let anything slip. Add to that the fact that Damian doesn’t want to share Talia with anyone, and it’s a no-brainer.

Though, given his history of rebellious behavior, Drake might be understanding if Damian explained the situation in the right way. 

…No, it’s too big of a risk.

“Class,” Damian says curtly, resuming his stride, now with the grim acceptance that he isn’t going to be able to lose Drake without bringing suspicion to himself.

Drake keeps pace with him. Damian’s just started a growth spurt, and he takes solace in the fact that soon, Drake will have a lot more trouble keeping up with him. “Really? I thought you had gym third period.”

“And I thought you had a meeting with your advisor before school,” Damian says coolly. 

“Are you cutting class?”

“No. I’m not inclined to repeat your mistakes.”

Drake huffs. Maybe it’s an amused noise, but Damian doesn’t look over to check. More likely, Drake’s pissed off now, because everyone’s got a short temper today. Damian’s already sensing that this could become an argument soon and he himself might be the instigator, all because he wanted to see his mom and now he can’t and also his head is starting to hurt.

“Hey, Damian!” greets a different voice, and Damian gratefully looks towards the interruption. He finds two classmates, Maps and Olive, walking close together to hide the contraband EMF detector that Maps always has in one hand. Maps is the one who greeted him, beaming and sporting new purple bracelets to match the non-dress-code-appropriate socks that she’s wearing instead of the knee-high dark navy ones of the girls’ uniform. Olive, as always, is more reserved, but she has butterfly clips in her hair that aren’t exactly dress code-compliant either.

“Good morning,” Damian says, stepping away from Drake and reversing directions, attaching himself to his friends and ditching his brother in one movement. “Are there any readings today?”

“None at all,” Maps says, and sighs. “We’re going to the East wing, do you want to come?”

Damian nods, falling into step. Olive and Maps don’t miss a beat, continuing to walk and sweeping Damian along with them as they head towards the second-floor classroom where their English class is.

“Bye, Dami,” Drake calls, sounding a little too pleased with himself, as if it’s his responsibility to make sure Damian goes to class instead of sneaking around outside in his free time.

Damian ignores him. He ignores the look that Maps and Olive exchange, too. He’s never asked for their judgment on his familial relationships. 

Even exhausted and sore from patrol, Damian runs a six-minute mile, wanting to get it over with. It usually works out that the mile takes the entire class, so he crosses the finish with a plan to sneak away from class early, having finished his one task. 

He has immense respect for the students who walk the entire way, clocking in around nineteen minutes on average and taking up the bulk of the period, because it lets Damian sidle up next to his teacher and ask, “Ms. Contreras?”

“What’s up, Wayne,” she says, not looking away from where she’s holding her stopwatch to the clipboard with one thumb, scrawling down someone’s time with the other hand. 

“Since I’m done, can I go to the library for the rest of class? I have a test later.”

Ms. Contreras finally gives him a look, brief and assessing, but Damian already knows she doesn’t give a shit. Also, she’s on his side automatically because Jason was one of her favorite students of all time. “...Yeah, sure. There are yellow slips on my desk if you want to take one.”

“Thank you,” Damian says, and then turns and jogs back towards the locker room.

“Wait, can I go too?” he hears a classmate whine.

“Take another lap, Shaw,” Ms. Contreras responds, amusement warming her voice. “You only did three.”

“Aw, come on!”

Damian pushes through the metal doors of the gym and, a few steps later, the wooden one into the old locker room. It’s empty and completely silent, but that’s more comforting than the alternative. Damian makes short work of changing out of his gym uniform, and then gathers his things, slings his backpack onto his back, and steals towards the back of the locker room to find the flight of stairs leading to the storage loft.

The door’s locked, but Damian learned a long time ago by eavesdropping on a couple of upperclassmen that the lock is so shitty that the door can be easily kicked open. When the locker room is occupied, it’s a dead giveaway that someone’s doing such a thing, but it’s an open secret. Judging by the smell, students have been coming up here during class to smoke weed for at least a couple decades.

Today, though, Damian’s just here to pass through the stuffy storage area to get to the ladder at the back wall. It goes up to the roof access hatch, which is usually unlocked because of the shitty state of the ladder dissuading students from using it.

Damian casts a glance around at the stacks of dusty cardboard boxes, filled with old equipment and obsolete sports team uniforms. Nobody’s up here, so it’s safe for Damian to pull the door shut behind him with a grinding noise, then dart across the floor and leap up to the bottom rung of the rusty ladder, which hangs several feet off the ground.

He grunts as he pulls himself up, aggravating the shoulder that’s been sensitive for a couple of months since it was dislocated. Wincing, he plants one foot on the rung and he uses that to push himself upwards instead, giving his arms a break. 

After making quick work of the ladder, Damian presses his palm to the roof hatch and swings it open, letting it hit the roof with a clatter. He hoists himself out and carefully shuts the hatch behind him, and then turns his attention to the roof around him.

It lies abandoned. Damian keeps low, taking careful steps around the HVAC units and other protuberances on the roof. He won’t be caught off-guard, especially not when he needs to keep his uniform pristine. 

His first search finds absolutely nobody up here. Damian frowns, straightening and casting a quick glance around him. Since being out on the roof, he hasn’t felt like anyone’s got eyes on him, which would suggest she’s somewhere else entirely. 

“Mother?” Damian whisper-shouts, to make a last-ditch attempt at contacting her before he has to leave. “I have other things to be doing.”

Nothing but the wind answers him. Several dry leaves rustle by, tumbling over themselves and catching on the rough surface of the roof.

Strange. He and Talia have almost established a routine, meeting here, but something has changed this time. 

Frowning, Damian cuts across the roof, finding the ladder that will let him down onto the top of a shed. He shimmies down and drops from the shed roof to the ground, finding a safe landing in some dying old grass, and straightens his knees.

When he turns his head to orient himself, remembering that he needs to make an appearance in the library before the bell rings, he finds that his descent from the roof hasn’t gone unobserved. A group of four students are camped out behind the shed, in a loose circle with a bottle of something, and all of them are staring at Damian.

“Hello,” Damian says.

One of them gives him a nod of respect. Two of them lose interest and return to carefully pouring vodka into a plastic water bottle. The fourth says, “Sick, man.”

Damian turns and strikes out across the back access road that runs behind the main building. He’ll get to the library and formulate a new plan to find his mother when he gets there. 

If he wasn’t out of unexcused absences, Damian would cut the rest of his classes to comb the campus for Talia. Last time, she’d chided him for being too slow to catch up with her, so he doesn’t know if that means she’ll be more or less irritated with him this time, if he isn’t better.

Either way, he’s failed. Damian slips into the library and makes sure the librarian sees him there so he has an alibi, and then he finds a back table and pulls out trigonometry worksheets to stare blankly at while he thinks of other places he could check.

When the final bell rings, Damian tells his friends that he needs to meet with a teacher, excusing himself from walking with them to the loop in front where the three of them will be picked up by their families. Olive nods, already walking away from Damian, but Maps gives him a smile and a promise that she’ll text later before turning and beginning to talk to Olive at four hundred miles an hour. 

Damian turns and moves in the opposite direction of the flow of traffic, keeping close to the lockers and trying to remain unnoticed. Getting onto the roof of the main building unnoticed will be difficult right now, so he’ll settle for checking out the perimeter of the campus first. 

He leaves the building he’s in and makes a break across the courtyard towards the high school building, which is taller than the middle school and second in height to the shared building-slash-main office. It’s also the building with the easiest roof access, given the gratuitous gothic stylings. 

The halls in this building are more difficult to navigate, and not just because of the confusing century-old architecture. High school students are much, much taller than his peers on average. Damian’s growing fast but he still sticks out, with the stripes on the shoulders of his uniform telling everyone he’s only in seventh grade.

As he turns the last corner before the back exit, someone shoulder-checks him into a locker. Damian’s shoulder bangs into the metal, the sore spot shrieking in protest. He stumbles, clamping down on his instinct to nerve-strike the classmate’s arm. Ignoring them is better than escalating, especially considering the number of strikes Damian already has this year. 

“Hey, freak, you lost?” the student says--probably someone that Damian was well-acquainted with last year, but Damian doesn’t bother double-checking. It doesn’t really matter which one of the students who used to torment Damian it is, they’re all equally unworthy of Damian’s time.

Determined not to be waylaid, Damian darts forward, weaving through the crowd, and lets the busy traffic in the hallway pull him away from the altercation. 

“Watch your back,” he hears the same voice call after him, a threat that pales in comparison to the human trafficker who held a knife to Damian’s neck less than twelve hours ago. Damian shakes off the words easily, refocusing on finding the door to the fire exit stairwell of this building.

Besides that unpleasant encounter, Damian’s left alone. He passes by a couple clumps of students, all carrying varied black instrument cases because this back hallway is home to the band room. None of them pay him any mind, particularly because one student is drinking soy sauce out of tiny packets while another times him with the stopwatch on their phone. It’s certainly one way to spend one’s time.

Damian’s hand finds the handle of the stairwell door. He pushes down, finding it unlocked, but his relief doesn’t last long.

“Excuse me,” says a voice that definitely belongs to an adult.

Damian pulls his hand from the handle and turns around, trying hard not to look guilty or suspicious. He’s been discovered by the band director, who’s frowning at him.

“Students aren’t supposed to be back here. What’re you up to?”

Damian swallows and, in a split-second, comes up with a lie. “I--I think I’m lost. Sorry, I didn’t know I’m not supposed to use these stairs.”

The suspicion on him doesn’t lessen. “There’s a sign on the door that says ‘staff only’.” 

Damian stubbornly juts out his chin, not backing down. “I’m trying to find Mr. Hahn’s room, to talk to him about AP Lang.”

“You look a little young to be worrying about AP classes.”

“I’m planning ahead.” 

“Sure. Well, I’ll let you off with a warning, but I’d better not see you back here again.” The band teacher keeps his narrowed eyes on Damian, unrelenting. “Hahn’s office is on the second floor, there’s a big sign about debate club next to his door.”

“Thank you,” Damian says. He strides forward, skirting the teacher and heading back the way he came. He’ll have to find a different route up to the roof.

“Take it easy,” the teacher says. Then his focus shifts, and as Damian retreats, he hears, “Keely, I’ve told you a thousand times not to drink soy sauce out here.”

“I’m going for the world record!”

“Please take it outside.”

The teacher’s tone has shifted to something playful and amused as soon as he was done speaking with Damian. It’s a theme around here, at least with teachers who don’t know that he’s Bruce Wayne’s kid. The teachers who do know are kiss-asses that drive Damian insane in the opposite direction, giving him false praise instead of veiled suspicion.

Damian hangs a left and emerges back out into the crisp air outside to begin a quick perimeter check.

His search is completely fruitless. Damian has just begun to doubt that he’s being watched at all when he feels that unmistakable feeling again, the trickling, cold sensation on the back of his neck. He’s made it all the way back around to the front of the science building by now, near the front office, and he turns his head sharply to the left, to the right, to the sky around him as he tries to catch his tail unawares.

He sees nobody. God damn it, Damian’s wasted a lot of time running around the school. 

“There you are,” says an irritated voice, and Damian pulls his attention back to earth to find Drake stalking towards him, his face all crinkled with annoyance. “Where the hell were you?”

“Mind your own business,” Damian says with a scowl.

Drake grabs his arm and yanks Damian after him, reversing his path to return to the pickup loop. “I have a WE meeting today and I need to be home now.”

Nobody’s forcing Drake to continue to work at their father’s company. Damian’s pretty sure he’s only doing it so he has something to complain about. Either way, Damian doesn’t have the energy to make this into a full argument. He wrenches his arm out of Drake’s hold and begrudgingly follows his brother back to where Jason’s car is idling by the curb.

Drake chucks his backpack onto the floor in front of the passenger’s seat and drops in after it. Damian opens the back door and hoists himself inside, very aware that the eyes on him haven’t lost their line of sight and he’s missing an excellent opportunity to identify where they’re watching him from.

“What were you even doing?” Jason asks from the driver’s seat. He looks much better than he did this morning. It was a bad pain day for him, but some of that appears to have eased up by now. “Were you trying to make friends with the dumpster cats again?”

“He was just wandering around,” Drake grouses without looking up from the message he’s tapping out on his phone.

Jason snorts and shoots a weird look at Damian in the rearview mirror, and then shakes his head and shifts gears and peels out of the pickup lane. He cuts another driver off to get out onto the main road before them, and appears to take immense pleasure in the parent honking at him in anger.

Refusing to either explain or defend himself, Damian just slumps onto his seat and crosses his arms, staring out his window. Even if he asked them to wait for what he thinks is an important delay, they wouldn’t listen to him.

That afternoon, Damian is trapped into working on his homework because he already blew it off last night to work on a case with his father. He falls asleep on his math worksheets, face pressed into the dining table, and is woken up when Alfred needs him to move so that he can set the table.

“Long day?” Alfred asks, running a hand over Damian’s hair.

Damian nods, tolerating the touch. He rubs his eyes and looks down at the spot of drool on his notes. He’d overestimated his ability to stay focused and alert, and now he’s missed out on the few hours’ worth of time he could have dedicated to sneaking off of the estate to find out where Talia is.

“Will you help me set the table?”

Damian pushes his worksheets into their folder and closes his notebook, acquiescing to the request nonverbally because he’s too groggy to remember how to use his words.

Dinner is quiet. Bruce and Drake are still in a video conference meeting, Alfred disappears to take care of something that’s not his grandsons, and Jason’s pain makes him too sleepy and surly to chat. Nobody else is in the Manor this week. It almost feels lonely, with Damian and Jason sitting in tired silence over plates of puttanesca. 

Afterwards, when their plates are cleared and the food is put away, Damian finally gets his chance to escape. Jason retreats to the Cave, so Damian puts on a coat and his shoes and slips out the back door with Titus, making a break for the perimeter of the grounds before anyone can demand anything of him.

This late into autumn, it’s already very dark at this time of early evening. He won’t be able to get far if he wants to get back before Bruce and Drake finish their meeting, but if Talia wants to meet him then she’ll probably be fairly close to the property line.

Titus trots along, running ahead and then doubling back, doing erratic circles around Damian as Damian strikes a determined straight line towards the wooden fence in the distance.

Two minutes later, Damian’s at the fence, peering into the copse of trees that blocks the line of sight between their grounds and their neighbors’ house. It’s so quiet here that Damian would probably be able to hear any sort of intruder rustling around, but Talia is notorious for her stealth abilities so that’s not necessarily applicable here.

He walks along the fence for a while, ears and eyes peeled for any disturbance. Titus snuffles around, taking interest in crunching his paws down on scattered leaves, not at all giving off the impression that he’s heard anyone trespassing.

“Titus,” Damian says, and the dog looks up at him with big trusting eyes, “do you think I’m being desperate?”

Titus cocks his head. Damian sighs and stoops down to pick up a stick, which he throws as hard as he can back towards the house. He throws it without looking, and the stick whizzes towards an imposing figure that has appeared out of nowhere. 

Ice freezes his blood, and Damian shouts a warning. His father has already dodged out of the way, and has turned his head back to give Damian an unimpressed look. Titus tears past him, almost a blur, in pursuit of the stick that could have caused serious injury to Bruce.

“Sorry,” Damian says, straightening and brushing off his palms on his jeans. He tries to determine whether or not he’s acting suspiciously--it’s not abnormal for him to take Titus for walks, but it’s pretty late in the evening and it’s very cold outside. Damian’s known for avoiding cold weather by burrowing as deep into his room as he can go. Bruce might question his intentions here.

“Shouldn’t have snuck up on you,” Bruce says, as he jogs closer. Considering how far he had to come to reach Damian’s location, Damian’s really not as aware of his surroundings as he thought he was. If he didn’t even notice Bruce’s approach, Talia could have easily evaded his search earlier. “How was school, bud?”

Damian stands still, watching Bruce approach with a not-insignificant flare of apprehension. There must have been something that prompted this questioning--Bruce doesn’t ask this very often, and the last time he’d inquired, it had been following Damian getting caught skipping his science class. 

(That had started all fake-nice like this too, and Damian had been so relieved that Bruce actually wanted to talk to him that he’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.)

He should at least play along a little bit, though.

There are a number of things he could mention--Olive figuring out a glitch in her game that let her skip over repetitive dungeon puzzles, or Maps mentioning-slash-threatening the upcoming dance that she was helping to plan, or Damian scoring a ninety on the math test he wasn’t certain about. He knows that Richard would have no issue chatting about these things, even if they seemed unimportant. It just feels like so much effort to express all of these things, when his father might not even recognize how they made Damian feel. 

The real thing that he should mention is that Talia is back in Gotham. Bringing her up is risky, though, with Bruce. Sometimes it’s fine, and Bruce gets a look on his face like he’s remembering better times. Other times, it just makes Bruce distant and vaguely furious. It’s confusing.

“It was fine,” Damian finally says. He sees Titus retrieve the stick and double back, running full speed. 

“Just fine?” Bruce asks.

Does he know something? Damian keeps his expression schooled, neutral. It’s normal that he can’t look Bruce in the eye, he reminds himself. Bruce has never gotten mad at Damian for avoiding eye contact. It’s only Damian’s teachers who scold him for that.

Titus passes Bruce at too close of a proximity. The stick hanging out of his mouth clips the back of Bruce’s knee, and Bruce staggers to the side as his knee buckles in surprise.

“Good boy,” Damian says, stooping to cup Titus’s head between his hands, scratching under his ears. 

Titus refuses to relinquish the stick, but closes his eyes in contentment at the scratches.

Bruce has regained his balance. Damian glances up at his father’s faintly disgruntled expression, and sees that he’s still expected to respond to Bruce’s inquiry. 

“There’s a dance at the end of the month,” Damian says. He would rather die than go, but he would also rather go than disappoint Maps, so, “Would I be able to go?”

Bruce says diplomatically, “Let me think about it.”

It’s a probable no, but that’s at least better than a flat-out denial.

“I understand,” Damian says. “Did you come out here to talk about something?”

“Oh. Yes, actually.” Bruce clears his throat. Though he didn’t look particularly content before, he now looks actively uncomfortable. Damian’s getting better at distinguishing the subtle changes in his father’s posture--part of that is thanks to Richard quietly narrating Bruce’s idle behaviors like he’s the subject of a nature documentary, giving Damian a reference guide for what the hell Bruce is thinking, so Damian doesn’t catastrophize things and convince himself that he’s about to be punished for breaking some obscure rule.

Right now, Bruce has his hands pushed into his pockets, his shoulders taut, his face frozen in-between a resting glare and a polite smile. He looks like he’s holding in a cough, sort of. 

(Last time he looked like this, Richard had yanked Damian over to where Richard was perched on a stool behind the kitchen counter and he’d trapped Damian with an arm around the waist and whispered, loud enough for Bruce to overhear, “Here we see a Brucie Wayne attempting to broach the subject of his son’s most recent breakup, because he was told he has to at least acknowledge it or he’s an inattentive father. He will find a way to express his disbelief that Tim ever dated the guy in the first place.”

Bruce had looked like he wanted to drown Richard in acid. Drake had sunk lower behind his laptop, face burning bright red. Richard had laughed his head off, and Damian had tried to memorize the feeling of being on this side of an inside joke, and made no attempt to hide his gleeful smile.)

Damian has absolutely not been the subject of any breakup recently. Based on his experience from last time, though, it’s safe to assume that Bruce is going to jump into an uncomfortable conversation, possibly one involving personal feelings that he or Damian won’t want to address.

Richard isn’t here to deflect the conversation, or even to absorb the brunt of the emotions for himself. Damian’s on his own. Besides Titus, who might be convinced to speak up on Damian’s behalf if Damian plays his cards right.

“Are things alright at school?” Bruce asks.

Damian immediately feels defensive. 

Things are alright now --Bruce is asking about a year too late. Damian has friends this year, after all, and he’s not skipping classes for no reason anymore, and he’s not hiding from specific classmates during lunch. Given his improvement in social standing, something must have prompted this inquiry. Either one of Damian’s siblings, or one of Damian’s teachers. 

The only teacher who would have grounds to be angry with him would be Ms. Contreras, and she didn’t see Damian sneak up onto the roof. Jason knows how to mind his own business, which only leaves Drake.

Ugh, of course it was Drake. He takes after Bruce in the most irritating ways possible. 

“Yes,” Damian says, watching Bruce dubiously. He straightens his knees, and Titus trots off to bury his stick somewhere. “Things are fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You can talk to me if something’s wrong.”

“I know.”

“Good,” Bruce says. He slumps with relief. For now, the interrogation is over. “Well, good. It’s cold out.”

Damian nods. The wind has been nipping at his cheeks and nose for a while, and his ears are hurting from the chill. Now that Bruce is keeping a closer eye on him, there’s little chance of Damian having any sort of secret meeting with Talia tonight.

“I was just headed back,” Damian says. He begins to walk towards the kitchen door, and Bruce matches his pace.

After a few seconds of walking in companionable quiet, Damian turns his head to call Titus. He sees the dog standing stock-still, looking at something through the fence. 

Following Titus’s gaze, Damian sees movement in the trees outside the property line. It’s too dark for Damian to make out any distinguishing features, but Damian would put money on the fact that it’s a person. Someone had been hidden mere feet from where Damian was standing, and now they’re slipping away.

Damian wants to call out for his mom. He wants to see her, and he wants to make sure that she’s alright. Mostly, he wants a fleeting hug from her, because Richard’s in Blüdhaven and Damian’s feeling deprived. Though she might come out intent to strangle him, at least someone would be touching him.

The last time Talia and Bruce saw each other, they didn’t part on good terms. Damian doubts that things would end peacefully between them.

“Titus,” Damian says, his voice not betraying a thing. 

The shape in the trees is gone too quickly for Titus to think of her as a threat. The dog turns and bounds towards Damian promptly, leaving no reason for even Bruce to notice that anything’s wrong.

They walk back towards the house. Damian doesn’t let himself look back over his shoulder, but he’s certain that there are eyes on the back of his neck as he gets further and further from the fence.

The next day at school, Drake drives the two of them. It’s even less pleasant than being driven by Jason, because Drake insists on stopping for coffee but refuses to leave earlier, so the two of them swing into the student parking lot at the same time as the first bell. 

It leaves Damian with no time to scout out the campus. He slides out of the passenger seat and slams the door hard enough to make Drake shout at him. Damian doesn’t stop and engage, he just storms across the parking lot towards English.

As soon as he leaves the parking lot, Damian feels eyes on him. During the forty-five seconds’ worth of time between Drake’s car and the back entrance of the correct building, he debates with himself whether or not he should cut class to find Talia and put the issue to rest.

It seems that the universe is mocking him. It’s comical enough that Damian momentarily entertains the theory that Jon’s reading his mind and orchestrating obstacles for him on purpose, even though he knows Jon’s off-world for the foreseeable future. No matter whose fault it is, as soon as Damian decides to ditch class, and is formulating a plan to remain unseen by any and all hall monitors, one of Damian’s classmates calls, “Damian, hi!” 

Damian turns his head and finds Amala, who’s in English with him. She’s the student who rounds out the table where Damian, Maps, and Olive sit together, and she’s a good sport about being a fourth wheel. If Damian’s remembering correctly, the two of them are going to be starting a project together later this week.

He greets her with a nod, unsure why she’s flagged him down. He at least manages to hide his annoyance at his plans being disrupted, which shows immense personal growth.

“Did you check your grade for the Tuck Everlasting paper?” Amala asks, as the two of them squeeze through the door side-by-side. The doors of the middle school are the same size as the ones on the building hosting the high-school classrooms, but they seem so much bigger in practice. Maybe that’s because high schoolers seem to delight in knocking past Damian in the doorways, while Amala at least seems content to share her lane.

“No,” Damian says, honestly. It’d slipped his mind entirely. “Did you do well?”

“Oh, I didn’t check either,” Amala says. “Wait, lemme show you this Tik Tok.” She pulls her phone out and abandons the previous thread of conversation easily, a skill that Damian severely envies. A beaded charm swings around from the top of her phone like she’s wielding a chain mace. “It reminded me of you.”

The doors shut behind them, the click of the lock reminding Damian he won’t have a chance to escape until lunchtime, at least. Somehow, the annoyance is soothed by the reminder that his friend had thought of him when he wasn’t around.

At lunch, Damian shakes his friends off with a lie about meeting with a teacher and slips out of the cafeteria. He manages half a perimeter check. Then, as he’s nearing the greenhouses behind the science building, wondering if maybe Talia’s hiding back there out of sight of most of the windows, the intercom crackles to life.

“Attention please,” the vice principal says, voice bouncing off of the concrete and glass around Damian, “we are going into a lockdown until further notice. There is an intruder on campus. Staff, please follow emergency procedures at this time.”

Damian stops short, taken off-guard.

Given that Gotham Academy is the school with the highest family income on average in Gotham, it’s not uncommon for the school to be a target for ne’er-do-wells. Since Damian’s been attending, he’s gone into lockdown no less than nine times, two of which led to an evacuation and partial or total destruction of the campus. That’s part of what makes a good attendance record at GA look so attractive on college applications--it shows a student is willing to suffer life and limb to take even the most inconsequential geometry quiz. That’s dedication that most other students wouldn’t be able to demonstrate. 

The vice principal repeats the emergency announcement. This time, he tacks on a short description at the end: “We’re looking for a six-foot white male in a green overcoat, seen near the gymnasium. He does not appear to be armed.”

Something in Damian deflates. He’d hoped it would be Talia, though it makes sense that she wouldn’t have let herself be spotted by anyone.

One of the back doors of the science building swings open, and Damian sees a teacher inside, waving him forward. Damian darts over, obedient, and is swept into the nearest classroom. The teacher must have seen him wandering outside. 

“Keep quiet, bud. It’ll be over soon,” the teacher says, giving Damian a brief, reassuring smile that she clearly doesn’t feel like giving.

Damian nods, wanting to make things a little less stressful for her, and turns to where her class is huddled on the floor underneath the windows set high in the ceiling.

He’s ended up in one of the labs, with several small counters scattered throughout. Someone left a Bunsen burner going; Damian switches it off as he crouches low and continues his path.

The first few students he sees look much older than he was expecting. They’re at least juniors, if not seniors. Most of them still have goggles on, and they look weirded out by Damian suddenly appearing. Based on the subject and on the age group, that means that…

“Damian?” Drake hisses, irate from where he’s folded into a corner behind one of the counters.

Great.

With a sigh, Damian plops down on the floor next to his brother. “Keep your voice down,” he grumbles.

They’re far from the only people talking. The older that students get, the less seriously they take lockdowns like this. Most of Drake’s classmates are scrolling on their phones, and a couple clumps of them are giggling or shaking with silent laughter at some inside joke that’s only made funnier by the fact that they aren’t supposed to be making any noise.

“Yeah, Tim, shut the fuck up,” one of Drake’s friends whispers, teasing.

Damian leans against the counter behind him, warily regarding Drake and the two friends sitting in a small circle with him. One of them has short-shaved whitish blond hair, and could uncharitably be described as looking like a hot dog. The other one, the one who had shushed Drake, is a short girl with dark hair and severe eyebrows.

“Are you guys…?” the hot dog begins to ask, confused.

“He’s my brother,” Drake says, like he’s mortified to have to admit it.

Damian crosses his arms and looks towards the teacher, who’s taken shelter now as well and looks as though she’s mustering up the courage needed to shush a bunch of seniors who fear neither God nor death.

“What grade are you, Damian?” asks the girl. 

“Seventh,” Damian says.

“Sweet,” she says. “Well, my name’s Ariana.”

“Ives,” says the hot dog, gesturing to himself. 

“Okay,” Damian says, not sure what else to say. He doesn’t like the way Drake looks ready to kill Damian right now--does Drake really think Damian is going to embarrass him any more than Drake already embarrasses himself?

“Wait,” Ariana says, “do you know Allison Price? She’s in your year.”

Damian knows the name, but it takes him another second to put it to the proper face. Allison is the daughter of one of the couples that shows up to almost all of the same charity events that Bruce drags his children along to. “Yes. Why?”

“Have you heard anything?” Ariana cocks her head.

Drake is giving Damian an even more intense look than before, now, almost imperceptibly shaking his head. It’s now that Damian remembers hearing Allison’s name in reference to one of Drake’s open cases. Something happened to her-- what was it?

“No,” Damian says. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Ariana says, reluctantly letting the subject go. “I just heard that she was last seen on campus.”

Oh. Right, she’s missing. Drake’s investigating her disappearance, and it seems to be going poorly, if the guilty look on his face is anything to go off of.

Ariana continues, eyes wide, “Just a little scary that nobody is saying anything about it, right?”

“Right,” Ives says. “Usually we at least get time off of school.”

“You’re terrible!” Ariana says, laughing far too loudly.

“Shh,” says Drake’s teacher. 

Ariana and Ives both mutter a half-sincere sorry and calm themselves down.

“Do you want to join AP Chem?” Ives whispers a moment later, when the teacher is no longer looking their way. “We need a fourth member for our lab group.”

“We’re asking Peter, remember?” Drake interjects.

“I can replace Drake,” Damian offers, peeved even though he knows the invitation was offered in jest. “My hands aren’t shaky like his, because I don’t use cocaine.”

Ariana laughs suddenly, loudly. Ives claps a hand over his own mouth to stifle a similar outburst.

“Dzerchenko, Ives,” the teacher scolds, “keep it down, please.”

“Sorry,” Ives and Ariana chorus.

When the other students have stopped paying attention to their little group again, Drake whispers, “I’m not on coke.” 

Damian knows this. Still, he wonders when Drake’s routine of seven shots of espresso starts being a less healthy alternative to more illegal stimulants.

Continuing to be irritated by the way Ives and Ariana seem to think Damian is funny, Drake nudges Damian’s leg with his foot and asks, “Why were you wandering around there anyway? Don’t you have class?”

“I was at lunch,” Damian says. 

Drake frowns. “So you were wandering around without eating?”

Damian doesn’t have a non-incriminating answer to that. Judging by the look on Drake’s face, this is another cause for concern that he’ll mention to their father in passing, and if Bruce feels like he can’t get through to Damian, then Richard will be informed as well.

This is all getting so complicated. It doesn’t make sense why Drake is suddenly concerned with Damian’s health, either. Damian just wants his mom. 

“I was going to eat after I saw the cats,” Damian says, because bringing up the dumpster cats is a foolproof way to get the conversation to derail.

Sure enough, Ariana says, “Oh my god, what cats?” and Damian’s able to segue away from anything that could make his family worried about him by pulling out his phone to find some pictures. 

Still, after the lockdown lifts, Drake palms him a protein bar. Damian looks at the snack distrustfully, not sure why Drake is acting so overbearing.

“It was nice to meet you,” Ariana says, all genuine. 

“Come back anytime,” Ives adds.

“Go to class,” Drake says, cranky that Damian is far more enjoyable as company than Drake will ever be.

Damian turns and leaves, shoving the protein bar into his backpack as he goes. The teacher gives him a smile, more certain of herself now that the threat has passed. 

Behind his back, Damian hears Ives whisper, “Tim, why didn’t I know you had a baby brother?” and Ariana chimes in, “Yeah, he’s such a little cutie!”

“Ew,” Drake responds, a sentiment which Damian internally echoes as he pushes through the door and escapes into the hallway.

After school, Damian doesn’t even bother looking for Talia. Drake is already on his case, and Damian can’t afford to arouse more suspicion. He goes straight to Drake’s car and rides home in silence and then retreats to his room to play Roblox until people in his family stop being so invasive.

That night, when Drake’s nosiness still hasn’t abated, Damian makes a drastic decision to skip out on patrol. Drake won’t be able to monitor him if he’s not here, and Damian’s waited long enough to meet with Talia.

Cassandra must know that he’s lying when he makes up an art contest he wants to submit to. His excuse of needing more time for schoolwork had been flimsy, so he beefed it up with an extra commitment--and Cassandra covers for him without him even needing to ask. 

“His work is pretty,” she says out of nowhere, coming to Damian’s aid when he needs it most.

“It sounds important to finish, then,” Bruce says. With the Cassandra endorsement, Damian’s lie is left unchallenged. “I’d love to see it when it’s done.”

…Shit, maybe there is a catch in Cassandra’s seemingly benevolent help. Damian’s going to have to produce some piece of art that he’s worked on tonight, to back up his lie. 

“Sure, maybe,” Damian mumbles. He focuses on his noodles, after that, and keeps his mouth shut so he doesn’t say any more bullshit.

It’s not enjoyable to miss out on patrol, because he’s already the only Robin who’s ever had a bedtime and even pretending like he’s not on top of his schoolwork and hobbies is humiliating. Some sacrifices are necessary, though. One of those sacrifices is the fact that, later tonight, he will be spending a harried forty-five minutes creating a subpar acrylic painting of Titus that’s nowhere near his personal standard. And he will have to show that to Bruce, and Bruce will have to make up some lies about how good it is because he's been trying so hard recently to be a normal, emotionally available father.

As soon as the Batmobile has left the Cave, Damian shuts himself in his room, turns on the least conspicuous study music he can think of, and slides out his window. Alfred’s standing in for Oracle tonight, so he won’t leave the Cave for a few more hours.

It’s bitingly cold outside, still ten degrees above freezing but nowhere near comfortable. Damian has three layers on, but his face still takes the brunt of the wind. When his feet are on the ground, he zips up his coat, pulls up his hood, and begins his escape from the estate.

Keeping low and out of sight of the security cameras, Damian skirts the house, bolts through the garden behind the high hedges, slips around the back wall, and reaches the service road that loops around the grounds towards the road out front of the Manor.

Talia had come awfully close to the property line yesterday. Damian’s sure that she’s not far away tonight--and when he emerges on the street in front of Wayne Manor’s front gate, shivering and retreating further into his coat, his suspicion is proved correct. As soon as his feet leave the Wayne property, eyes land back on him.

Damian looks up and down the sidewalk. The late-evening traffic isn’t exactly heavy, and the foot traffic is even lighter--besides one man with his dog, who Damian is pretty sure is one of their neighbors, Damian doesn’t see anyone.

Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, Damian starts walking. He keeps his pace as casual as he can. He’s very aware that walking around alone at night in Gotham, without telling anyone where he went, is in the top ten stupidest things he’s ever done.

He walks for a while, hoping that Talia will just come out and start walking with him once he gets far enough from his home. Even as the houses get closer together and start being interspersed with businesses, though, she doesn’t come out. 

Damian continues to feel the creeping, paranoid feeling of being tailed. He checks around corners and tries to shake her out of her pursuit, but nothing works.

He must be missing something. There has to be something she’s trying to teach him.

As he hits the block that designates the unofficial start of the actual city, not just satellite neighborhoods and suburbs, Damian slows down. It’s been half an hour, and Damian is no closer to understanding what’s going on. What he is getting closer to is a death by hypothermia. Damian’s fingers are going to fall off. He should’ve worn gloves.

Sighing, seeing his breath puff out in the air in front of him, Damian ups the danger level and turns off the main sidewalk into an alley he knows is narrow and dark. It’s perfect for a meeting if Talia wants to actually talk, and if she doesn’t show up here, then Damian will give up for the evening so Alfred doesn’t find his room empty.

“Mother,” Damian says, into the sharp, dim air. He turns in a neat circle, glancing at both ends of the alley and then to the rooftops sandwiching him. “I have other priorities. Say your piece or leave me alone.”

No response comes, save for a rustling of some discarded plastic bags. Damian sighs, tosses the trash into the nearest dumpster, and then turns to leave.

Most Gothamites know to mind their business, but it appears that some still don’t. Damian feels eyes on him that are closer than before, and he turns to see a man on the sidewalk, no longer walking past, staring at Damian directly. A wannabe Good Samaritan, seeing Damian as one of Gotham’s approximately nine thousand homeless youth. 

The man lifts an arm clothed by an ugly green overcoat and waves.

Damian sneers, turns around, and runs in the other direction. 

A night of confusing dreams plagues Damian. He doesn’t remember much except for the potent, sickening feeling of abandonment that still lingers once he’s awake. This does little for his overall mood.

Luckily for him, none of his family members seem to have much joie de vivre today, either.

Patrol appears to have been brutal. Drake has forsaken his breakfast entirely in favor of resting his head on the kitchen table to catch a few more minutes of sleep. Cassandra’s eyes are still mostly closed; she appears to be operating mostly on echolocation. Jason and Stephanie are both present, meaning they’d been too tired or injured to go to their own places last night. Bruce looks more or less the same as he always does. He has a thousand-yard stare and a Lilo and Stitch band-aid on his brow. When Damian enters the room, he gives a vague nod, which is the Bruce equivalent of an effusive good morning my dearest son. 

Duke’s wide awake and he’s the only one functional enough to give Damian a wave of greeting. His plate is nearly empty; there are about ten minutes between now and the time when Duke usually leaves the house.

“G’morning,” Duke says. He points to the spot next to him, left unoccupied. There’s a plate of food waiting for Damian, piled with what looks like some kind of scramble situation.

“Morning,” Damian responds, yawning wide enough to make his eyes water. He drops onto the seat that’s been indicated to him.

“I haven’t seen much of you this week,” Duke says. “Glad you’re still kicking.”

It’s difficult to reliably see Duke, now that Duke’s on day patrol and also working evenings at Leslie’s clinic. With the world ending, un-ending, and then re-ending a couple times a few months ago, things are just calming down and Duke’s only recently gotten back from space. 

“You as well,” Damian says, before giving his breakfast a closer look. It’s scrambled eggs, but there are many unidentified squares of other foods mixed in. It’ll take a lot of work to separate all the peppers and onions and whatever else Alfred has added in to make eggs more healthy. The mismatch of textures may prove to be his downfall.

Duke pats Damian’s shoulder and then rises from his seat with his plate in his hands. “Thanks for breakfast, Alfred.”

“Of course, Master Duke,” Alfred says warmly, shutting the dishwasher with his hip. “Take care.”

“Bye,” Stephanie says, suddenly managing to be alive. She jerks her chin up to give Duke a serious nod.

Duke’s standing behind Damian, so Damian can’t see his face, but he sounds like he’s suppressing laughter as he says, “Yeah, bye, Steph.” 

Then he leaves, stopping only to give Cassandra a hug. Alfred follows Duke out of the room to walk him to the door. With them goes any and all life in the room, because everyone else looks like they’d rather be dead than sitting up right now.

Damian picks through his food, painstakingly separating out the vegetables into their own distinct piles so he can decide whether he wants to eat them later. As he’s finishing his plate, leaving behind a pristine triangle of onions that he’s quarantined to their own spot at the center of his plate, Bruce finally rises from his zombie stupor, sitting up from where he’s been staring down into his coffee mug like a reflection pond for the last ten minutes.

“That reminds me,” Bruce says, even though nothing has been said to remind him of anything, “I told most of you last night, but, Damian--we had a security breach yesterday. Some WE servers, not in the Batcomputer, but we’re still keeping an eye on it.”

“Okay,” Damian says slowly. “May I ask a question?”

“Sure.”

“May I have Drake’s job now that he’s certainly been fired for cybersecurity failures?”

Cassandra snorts into her orange juice, splashing it up around her face. Stephanie kicks Damian under the table. Drake lifts his head to glare at Damian for a moment before dropping back down and returning to his doze. 

Bruce laughs. It’s barely noticeable, but his mouth twitches and his eyes crinkle. Damian feels a surge of pride in himself for a moment, recognizing the fond look on his father’s face. It makes him a little less irritated about how long his cat-and-mouse game with Talia has been stretched out.

“Not until you graduate,” Bruce says, which is the standard answer now that he’s back in the present time and has a minimum expectation of his children to at least finish primary education. Jason and Cassandra are the main obstacles standing in the way of this particular goal.

“I have another question,” Damian says.

Drake slowly reaches out towards his butter knife, taking it in his palm with clear intent to swing it at Damian’s head if Damian takes another dig at him.

Damian keeps half an eye on Drake, and the rest of his attention on his glass of water. “What kind of information was accessed?”

“As far as we can tell, nothing was stolen, but they accessed some employee records.” Bruce rubs his eyes with both hands. He has a full day of meetings about this ahead of him, probably. “Just to be safe, we’re going to assume they got hold of personal information, so be careful with your WE email.”

Damian shrugs. “Okay.” He’s never once used his WE email, so that’s fine. It was set up for him in anticipation of an internship program that he was going to do, but then the world almost ended and several WE employees were killed, and that got the program canceled. 

“Also, all of you,” Bruce says, broadening his focus, “if you get a call from someone you don’t know, don’t answer it until we’ve made sure that they didn’t get phone numbers. If that’s the case, we’ll change numbers, but just keep me updated.”

A general mutter of assent conveys the fact that nobody under the age of twenty-five answers calls from unknown numbers, which Bruce is satisfied by.

In all, breakfast is as boring as usual. As Damian picks up his backpack and the coat of his school uniform, though, the comfort of routine fades away. He’s running out of ideas to coax Talia into revealing herself, and he’s not looking forward to finding even more ways to skip out on class without getting caught.

Damian is watched that day and the day after. By the end of this fourth day of surveillance, Damian’s starting to lose his mind. Does Talia want to talk to him or not? He wants to see her. He thought that the two of them had moved past this sadistic-tests-as-a-love-language thing.

Add to that his normal school tribulations (his Tuck Everlasting essay was handed back today with a big red ‘C’ on it; Maps and Amala got paired up for a project in art class while Damian got put with someone who used to push him around last year; Damian got a bloody nose in gym and had to sit out from dodgeball even though it’s his favorite), and he’s not feeling very chipper by the time he gets in the car to go home.

Today, it’s Alfred picking him up, because Drake has some kind of after-school engagement. Damian climbs into the backseat and drops his backpack on the floor and buckles his seatbelt. It’s a small comfort when he can close the door and let the tinted windows hide him from the eyes fixed on him.

“How was school today, Master Damian?” Alfred asks as he eases the car back out of the pickup lane. He’s the calmest driver in the world--night and day from Drake and Jason, who both honk and shout at other drivers over the slightest provocation. Though, if Gotham drivers aren’t the cause of the concerned crease between his eyebrows, that means it’s Damian’s fault.

“It was fine,” Damian says. He’s too tired to say more--even if school wasn’t so draining, he would be exhausted by the constant worry of what Talia’s waiting for. The weight of all of it stops Damian's voice. He finds that nothing comes out when he tries to elaborate. 

Alfred makes a few more attempts at asking Damian some questions, but after receiving only monosyllabic hums in place of answers, he switches smoothly to telling Damian about his own day, which involved catching Cassandra and Stephanie dyeing Cassandra’s hair in the master bathroom, where they had ruined several bath mats with bleach. His voice gives Damian something to focus on that’s not the sweaty, itchy fabric of his uniform and the unpleasant leather that the seats are upholstered with.

It harkens back to a time when Richard and Alfred were Damian’s only guardians, and things felt so much worse in general. Damian had just started to settle in--things were just beginning to feel normal again--but Damian isn’t acting normal enough today. Now Alfred’s going to tell Bruce about his concerns that people are bullying Damian at school again, which is another problem he doesn’t need this week.

(Damian maintains that it shouldn’t count as bullying if Damian could at any point slit their throats and be done with them--it’s about power dynamics, after all--but this defense has never worked on Richard or on Alfred.)

When they get home, Damian picks up his backpack and slides out of the car. Alfred follows him up the stairs to the door to the house.

As they enter, Alfred says in a low voice, “I’m going to make some snickerdoodles this afternoon. Would you like me to bring some to your room when they’re ready?”

Damian nods. He turns and hugs Alfred around the waist before darting away, retreating to his room for the evening.

Patrol that night is blessedly normal. It’s such a relief that Damian feels like he’s flying as he runs after Batman and Red Robin through the financial district. For the first time all week, he feels unobserved. Even his family takes a break from hovering around Damian, their concern about his odd behavior shelved for the moment while they comb the streets.

The respite comes to an end around two-thirty, when Damian stops being able to hide his yawns. Someone scoops him up and it’s not until he’s sitting on Jason’s shoulders that he realizes what’s happening.

“This is unnecessary,” Damian says, trying to find his balance again.

Jason steadies him by holding onto his ankles, unyielding. “Don’t stab my fuckin’ head, kid. You’re getting a free ride.”

Damian considers stabbing Jason in the head anyway, because it was basically a challenge, but he’s too tired to make this into a whole ordeal. They’re going home for snacks and he’ll need to save his energy so he can get to the cookies first.

As Jason carries him back to the Batmobile, Damian casts his gaze up towards the rooftops. He’s not really looking for Talia, but he half-expects her to show up. She knows he’s Robin, and if she was truly following him everywhere then she’d at least make an appearance. 

Damian doesn’t see her. An irrational lump in his throat keeps him from talking the rest of the way to the car.

Chapter Text

Fridays are normally filled with the relief that the week is about to be over, but this week it’s more complicated. Firstly, Damian has to stay in at lunch for detention because he was caught ditching his science class to try to break into the attic of the main building with a hastily-hidden lockpicking tool. He’s been warned that another infraction will mean a call home from Gotham Academy, and the last thing Damian needs is everyone in his family zeroing in on Damian’s failure to commit to a civilian persona.

The second thing Damian has to worry about is that he’s spending the weekend in Blüdhaven with Richard. Alternating weekends are part of the complicated and legally inscrutable custody arrangement that Richard and Bruce have around Damian. Normally, Damian looks forward to this, but this week he doesn’t know how to communicate to Talia where he’s going to be. The uncertainty of this entire situation is starting to fray him around the edges.

Fifth-period history class is when Damian figures out that it's not just his irritating siblings who know Damian’s up to something lately. Damian’s sloppy enough to have alerted his peers, too.

The class is turned loose to work through a worksheet of questions and Damian’s elbow partner is Maps. Usually, the two of them split partner work equally and then do it independently, trusting that the other person will hold up their end of the deal to avoid excruciating active collaboration. 

Today, though, when Damian points to the bottom five of the ten questions, ready to claim them for his own, Maps clears their throat and asks, fairly awkwardly, “Are you gonna be on Roblox later?”

Damian says, “Probably not. I’m going to Blüdhaven this weekend.”

“With your brother?”

Damian nods.

“Oh. Okay.” Maps lifts a hand to her mouth to bite on her thumbnail. Now mumbling, they say, “Do you wanna text this weekend?”

“Why?” Damian asks, dubious.

Maps shrugs, now actively avoiding looking at Damian at all. “Just if you wanna talk. About anything. It’s stupid, forget it. Um, which questions do you wanna do?”

It takes Damian until the entire next class period to figure out that this was Maps’s method of ensuring that she’ll be able to check up on Damian later. Belatedly, Damian’s chest warms, and he’s not even that discouraged by the violent rain that starts up during the last half hour of the school day. 

Ignoring the humiliation of letting his distress bleed out around his composure, it’s nice to have people who care even when they aren’t related to him.

Instead of fading to the standard drizzle that consistently blankets northern Gotham, the drops remain a torrential downpour that rattles the roof as the final bell rings. Everyone makes a break for the parent pick-up circle or the dorms, as though it’s at all desirable to spend more time in the rain than is strictly necessary. 

Damian hangs back, taking his time packing up. He then chooses to swing by his locker to make sure he’s not forgetting anything for the weekend. The traffic usually takes a long, long time to clear out, and Richard tends to show up with the second or third wave of cars. He’ll text when he’s here.

The rain has put a significant damper on his plans. If it hadn’t started up, Damian would have had a good fifteen to twenty minutes of searching, but Talia hates the rain and Damian isn’t fond of it either. It isn’t the right weather for either of them to have a meeting outdoors. 

Again mourning opportunities lost, Damian scowlingly puts some books in his bag, shuts his locker, and turns to leave.

“Hi,” says a girl who’s suddenly standing right in front of him.

Damian jolts back, caught off-guard. 

“Sorry,” she says. It’s Kelsey, who sometimes hangs out with Amala. Damian’s talked to her all of twice. She’s lucky he hadn’t been carrying a weapon; she’d gotten way too close to him, way too quietly for Damian to fully suppress his startle response. “Can I talk to you?”

“Okay,” Damian says, already suspicious. He tugs on his backpack straps, just for something to do with his hands.

“Do you think you’re going to the dance?” Kelsey asks. She leans closer to Damian’s face like she’s trying to be secretive and mysterious with her body language. Damian leans away. “The Halloween one?”

Damian panics. His mind bluescreens. It takes him a second to remember if he’d asked Bruce about it already, because he can’t figure out why she’s asking him. He’s been preoccupied with so many other, more important, things. 

“Earth to Wayne,” Kelsey says, waving her hand in his face. Her skin smells like cheap scented hand sanitizer, which doesn’t help his headache. “Basically everyone’s going. Are you gonna be there?”

“I don’t know,” Damian says. He’s finally remembered that Bruce dodged the question completely. “I have to ask my dad.”

“Okay,” Kelsey says, unimpressed. Maybe it sounds like Damian’s avoiding the question. “Well, you should make your dad let you go, and you should ask Amala.”

“Ask her what?” Damian asks.

For a moment, Kelsey just stares at him like he’s the stupidest person she’s ever met. Then she says, slowly, “You should ask her to the dance.”

Oh. Damian’s brain catches up to the situation just a moment too late to save him this embarrassment. He feels his cheeks flushing, as well as an uncomfortable sweat on the back of his neck. He tries to look neither excited nor disgusted as he asks, “Did she tell you to tell me that?”

“I’m not telling.” Kelsey crosses her arms, eyeing Damian like he’s some kind of enemy agent for asking such a thing. “Anyway, are you gonna ask her?”

“I, um, have to think about it.” Damian wants to be anywhere else. 

Kelsey gives him another judgemental look before nodding. “Fine. Bye.”

“...Bye,” Damian says, overwhelmed, but she’s already turned tail and is stalking towards the parent pickup loop. 

Down the hall, peeking around the corner, Damian sees half of Amala’s face before she ducks back out of sight. She’d probably watched all of that, and now Damian’s in even deeper than he wanted to be. 

He didn’t realize that this was the kind of dance that people asked each other to. More importantly, he’s walked around to a few classes with Amala this week and he hadn’t realized that she liked him. She might get upset if Bruce doesn’t let Damian attend, but Damian wanted to go with Olive and Maps as normal friends. 

Damian tugs on his backpack straps again. His skin has started to rebel against the fabric of his uniform, as it is wont to do when he gets a little agitated. If the stupid rain hadn’t started, he could be looking for his mom, and Kelsey wouldn’t have been able to corner him like this.

After stewing on this for a short pause, Damian turns and takes an alternative route towards the front office so he doesn’t run into Amala or Kelsey or any unpleasant high schoolers, his mind fixating on how much everything sucks right now.

The ten-minute stretch of time that’s elapsed by the time he gets to the front loop means that a significant chunk of the crowd has dispersed. Damian pushes out of the front doors and steps into the rain, squinting through the rain as he searches for the correct car.

Drops immediately soak through his hair and into the shoulders of his uniform’s coat. He drifts further down the steps and walks several feet down the sidewalk to get a better view of the cars pulling in and out of the line, but it seems like Richard isn’t here.

Richard tends to be borderline punctual, or at least not egregiously late. In the past, he’s even managed to be early, coming to get Damian for one of his Blüdhaven weekends, and said it was because he just couldn’t wait to see Damian. 

To extrapolate, then, Richard being late means…

No, Damian shakes himself, he might just be caught in traffic. 

Regardless of the motive, Damian’s getting soaked. He wipes rain out of his eyes, irritated, and decides he’s going back inside. Turning on his heel to do so, he almost collides with someone for the second time in fifteen minutes.

Damian stops short and tries to dodge around them. Before he can run away, he realizes that they’re speaking to him, so he lifts his chin.

“What?” he asks.

“Pretty nasty out,” the man repeats. He’s not a student, and he looks almost as old as Bruce. In his right hand is a green umbrella, which has kept him enviably dry. He holds the umbrella out a little. “We can share while you wait, if you’d like.”

Damian pauses, thinking about this. The man looks familiar, probably a parent who he’s seen before when he came to wait for his child outside the school. They’re in plain sight of several cars that’re idling at the curb. Plus, the walk back up the steps was going to be miserable anyway.

“Okay,” Damian says, and steps under the umbrella.

The man steps closer to hold it over the two of them, but Damian takes another half-step to the side to put as much space between the man and him as possible. His shoulder is still getting a little wet, but he doesn’t want to be too close to the stranger. 

Richard hasn’t shown up yet. It’s been about twenty seconds since Damian last checked, but a fluttering feeling in Damian’s stomach means that every second waiting feels like it lasts an entire hour. Since coming outside, Damian’s been feeling that hunted, watched feeling again, which doesn’t make sense because Talia wouldn’t be caught dead outdoors in this kind of storm.

Damian takes his phone out and texts Richard, ‘are you almost here?’

Immediately, a read receipt pops up and Richard sends a despairing emoji and then, ‘shit, sorry my brain’s all over the place. leaving my place now.’

The backs of Damian’s eyes begin to burn. He’s not a baby, he knows that Richard is busy and that the erratic schedules they keep makes it difficult to keep track of everything. The confirmation that he’s been forgotten still tears something open in Damian’s chest.

He clicks his phone off, deciding he needs to go inside so he won’t be in the cold for the next half hour. As he straightens to leave, though, the stranger sharing his umbrella mistakes Damian’s shift of posture as interest in conversation somehow and asks, “What’s your name?”

Like what had happened with Kelsey, Damian’s whirring brain goes blank as the unexpected question derails his thought processes. He’s never shared an umbrella with a stranger (let alone a stranger who’s a classmate’s dad), and he’s not enjoying it. There’s half a foot of space between them and it’s not enough.

“Timothy,” Damian lies, after an overly long pause. His voice is quieter than before. He hopes it doesn’t do the thing that it did yesterday in the car with Alfred, because being unable to speak in front of an adult he doesn’t know would be humiliating.

“Oh, right, the Wayne kid,” the man says. He huffs, like he thinks that’s something funny. The sound chills Damian to the bone with a sharp slice, the sensation coming out of nowhere. 

“I forgot that I need to meet with a teacher,” Damian blurts, before he can calm his flight instinct down. The conversation seems innocuous, and maybe it’s just Damian’s shitty week catching up with him, but one of his hands has tightened around his backpack strap in anticipation for some reason, and he knows better than to ignore his gut. 

“Alright. Good to meet you,” the man says, but Damian doesn’t look at him again before stepping out from under the umbrella and walking quickly back towards the steps.

He hops up the stairs and slips back inside, hurrying through the halls. Wind rushes in his ears, and he worries he might get scolded for running inside, but he doesn’t encounter anyone. On the weekends, people are even more desperate to get out of school than normal, and they basically flee to the dorms at the final bell. Nobody stands between Damian and the sixth-period classroom he returns to.

The short jog shouldn’t wind him, but he’s breathing heavily as he shuts the classroom door behind him with a click. Then, before he can remind himself that he’s being ridiculous, he takes his phone back out and calls his brother.

Richard picks up after two rings. When the call connects, Damian’s vision half-fills with some relieved tears that he stubbornly blinks away. 

Over the background noises of traffic, Damian hears Richard say, “You better be staying warm inside.”

“Yes,” Damian says. With the single word, he realizes that he doesn’t want to talk right now, even though he’s the one who called. He just wants Richard to be on the phone, because a million little things are adding up and he doesn’t want to be alone.

Richard asks, voice softening, “I’m sorry about being late. I’m such a deadbeat.”

“It’s okay,” Damian whispers. He scrubs at his face, and then self-consciously checks around the classroom to make sure nobody’s watching. It’s dark and abandoned, so obviously there’s nobody there, but it makes him feel better to double-check.

“What’s up?” Richard asks. “Why’d you call?”

Damian doesn’t know what to say. He feels heat burning up his neck and ears.

An easy first topic of discussion could be to bring up the weird umbrella guy and that being the reason Damian’s inside. But the reality of that situation is that Damian ran away from somebody in the middle of a totally normal conversation, and now he’s on the verge of tears. That’s nothing to brag about. Richard would politely commiserate, and then privately roll his eyes at Damian’s inability to function.

“Damian?”

Damian squeezes his eyes shut. His words are too hard to use right now. He just wants Richard to be here as soon as possible, even though nothing happened and Damian’s being demanding and childish by being upset, even though it was just a mistake that Richard didn’t leave his apartment earlier. 

“Dami,” Richard says, voice thinning, “is something up?”

There are eyes on him again. Damian knows it without even looking. When he manages to lift his head and glance around at all the large windows on the classroom wall, he sees shrubs and trees tossed by wind and rain. The sky is darkening outside and the lights from the hallway reflect off the glass so Damian can’t see if anyone’s out there looking in.

To anyone else, it should seem like he chose this classroom at random. There’s no way someone should have been able to find him so quickly. 

Damian wishes Talia would just get it over with. 

“I’m twenty minutes out,” Richard says. “Hey, stay on the phone. Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Damian says. His voice wavers.

“Are you safe?”

Damian doesn’t know. Talia’s never toyed with him like this. When she shows up to test him, her lessons are short and brutal and then over. Damian had started this out hoping her visit was just a check-in, but clearly he was wrong.

“I’m sorry,” Damian says, because it’s all he remembers how to say.

“You don’t have to be sorry.” Richard stops for a moment, thinking, or maybe waiting for Damian to say something else. When Damian offers nothing, Richard says, “I’m going to keep talking to you, alright? Why don’t you find somewhere to sit and wait where nobody will hear me, because I have an embarrassing story to tell you.”

Richard doesn’t get embarrassed by anything, so getting blackmail on him is nigh impossible. Damian’s interest is piqued, and the promise of information loosens some of the tension that’s balling his free hand into a tight fist.

“Okay,” Damian rasps, and then clears his throat. “I will find somewhere.” 

He leaves the classroom to go into the one across the hall instead, because this one doesn’t have windows and he feels better about sitting at a desk and pulling his knees to his chest, his feet up on the chair, so he can listen more closely without the distraction of his limbs being in four different places. 

“You ready?” Richard asks. 

“Hn,” Damian agrees.

“Okay, so today I was teaching my parkour group and I was doing my hilarious bit about how it’s important for kids to wash their hands before using the equipment--”

Never mind, this story sounds too boring for Damian to begin to care. He’s been tricked into listening to Richard’s inner thoughts again, somehow, but Damian finds that he doesn’t want to interrupt. Instead of raining on Richard’s parade, Damian squishes his cheek into one of his knees and fiddles with the end of his shoelace, tuning out individual words and letting Richard’s cheerful tone keep him company instead.

“--And I’d forgotten that I still had all those ketchup packets in my pocket--”

“What were you doing with ketchup in your pocket?” Damian asks, jolted from his haze. 

“Because me n’ Aunt Selina went out for breakfast this morning, keep up,” Richard says, tone light and teasing. “Were you even listening--? Oh, by the way, I’m outside.”

Relief floods Damian’s entire body. He gets up and straightens his uniform and half-runs out of the classroom, tearing through three different hallways before he emerges at the top of the front steps. Though one of his shoes slips on a step and almost sends him flying, Damian regains his balance and leaps across the sidewalk into the river of rain runoff streaming right under the passenger door to Richard’s car.

His hand slips on the handle, but Damian gets the door open on the second try. He takes his backpack off and slings it into the car, then fully tumbles into the passenger seat and slams the door shut.

“Woah, hey, Dami,” Richard says, all soft and concerned. He reaches out and smooths down Damian’s hair, even though it’s probably damp and unpleasant to touch. “What’s going on?”

The car creates a bubble of safety, immediately slowing Damian’s heart rate. He swipes rain from his face, wipes his hands on his pants. He looks sideways, checking self-consciously to see which of his classmates saw that, but all he sees is the man standing with the umbrella. He’s still there, even though Damian didn’t see anyone else inside waiting around for a parent to show up and walk them home. 

Even from twenty feet away, Damian can see that the man is staring right at him. When Damian spots him, though, the man just lifts his arm, waves. Damian experiences a sickening wave of déjà vu, but he doesn’t know where it comes from. 

“Who’s that?” Richard asks, some of the goodwill leaving his tone.

Damian shrugs. He doesn’t want this to turn into a whole thing. What if Damian’s just being a freak again, like his classmates always say he is? He’d just embarrass this random stranger who’s been nothing but friendly.

Damian tears his gaze away, slumping down in his seat. 

“Somebody’s father,” he lies. “Can we go?”

“...Yeah,” Richard says. He pulls away from the curb, driving through the pickup loop in a tight curve and continuing out onto the main road. 

For a while, as the car wades through the thrumming downpour, Richard lets them sit in silence. He seems distant, his hands a little too tight on the steering wheel, but his driving is gentle and careful like he thinks Damian needs coddling. Damian feels too comforted by it to get too indignant. Like being in the Manor, where nobody can get him, he likes that being in Richard’s car makes Damian safe.

Eventually, though, when they get back on the freeway to leave Gotham and approach Blüdhaven, Richard clears his throat and speaks up again. “Did something happen?” is how he chooses to break the silence, after about eight minutes.

Damian slumps further down in the seat, even though it’ll wrinkle his uniform. He crosses his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits so they’ll stay quiet while he tries to think of the right way to explain himself.

Telling Richard about Talia is out of the question. At best, it’ll make Richard sad about not having a mom, and at worst, Richard will tattle to Bruce right away and blow up Talia’s spot. Even telling Richard anything about how Damian failed so miserably at talking to the umbrella guy has the potential to turn into a bad conversation, somehow. Damian can sense it.

Damian says, “No. I was being dramatic.”

When he risks a look at Richard out of the corner of his eye, Richard’s eyebrows are furrowed. His mouth is a straight line. For a second, he looks like Ric. It makes Damian shiver.

“I doubt you were being dramatic,” Richard says after a long moment. He shakes himself a little, and some life returns to his eyes. His white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel doesn’t relax, though. “Was it like, things were overwhelming? Or did someone say something?”

To Richard, it must feel like they’re taking steps backwards. Their first few after-school debriefs had felt like pulling teeth, and they’d eventually snapped and shouted at each other out of sheer frustration. Things had gotten better after that, and Damian got to the point where he felt like he could tell Richard anything. 

Then Bruce came back, and the order of things got all mixed up, and Richard vanished into Blüdhaven and when he came back he was a completely different person.

Things keep changing. It makes Damian want to throw up.

“It was just an unsatisfactory week,” Damian says quietly. He tilts sideways and rests his head against the cool glass of his window. 

“Do you wanna tell me about it?”

The accumulating emotions in Damian are going to come out sooner or later, and it’s only going to be a worse explosion the longer he holds them in. Still, Damian can’t do it right now, at least not without dissolving into tears. 

He spins the issue back around. “Do you want to tell me about your week?”

Richard huffs. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“You don’t need to worry about me either, then.” 

A heavy sigh leaves Richard. He reaches out and turns on the radio, twisting the volume to a level that’s still near-inaudible over the sound of the rain on the roof. 

The two of them don’t talk to each other for the next fifteen minutes, except for once when Richard tells Damian to stop chewing on the seatbelt. Damian hadn’t even realized he’d started.

That evening, Richard orders takeout for them from the fusion Moroccan place a couple blocks from his apartment. It speaks to how bad Richard feels about forgetting Damian earlier that he orders Damian a coffee, even though he’s long been of the opinion that Damian shouldn’t get reliant on caffeine until he’s an adult. 

Damian’s inclined to agree, given that he doesn’t want to turn out like Drake (shorter than many sixth-graders), but this restaurant makes their coffee in the same comforting way that Talia always used to. It’s not about the caffeine, it’s about the fact that he misses his mom and he won’t see her until at least Monday.

By the time the food arrives in several styrofoam boxes packed overfull, the rain has stopped and Richard is in a completely different mood. His distant, uneasy demeanor is nowhere to be found when he knocks on the wall to get Damian’s attention away from his homework.

“Chickie-bird,” Richard says, sounding much more like himself, holding up a tray with two drinks and a bag of takeout boxes, “come grab some plates, I’m struggling.”

“You aren’t struggling,” Damian says with a roll of his eyes, but he leaps to his feet and darts to the kitchen to acquiesce anyway. Everything feels a little bit better now that Richard can smile again. He doesn’t know what was wrong earlier, but it appears that the issue wasn’t Damian , which is all the reassurance Damian needs.

He sets out two plates and two forks for the two of them on the kitchen table, and Richard sets the bag and drinks down. They sit and Richard rips into the bag without untying it, like he’s a food-driven hyena. 

Damian picks up the cup of coffee and gives it an investigative sniff. He finds the heat coming off of it to be far too much for him to start chugging. He carefully sets the drink aside to cool, and while Richard starts distributing the food between their plates he gives Richard’s drink of choice a scrutinizing look.

“What is that,” Damian asks.

“It’s an avocado milkshake. It looked interesting, I dunno.” Richard smiles at the look on Damian’s face. “Wanna try?”

“That’s alright,” Damian says disdainfully, not just because he’s the only person in the family more lactose-intolerant than Drake. 

Richard picks up his fork and sing-songs, “Your loss!”

The two of them start to eat. Damian tries to slow himself down so he’s not shoveling his food into his mouth like Cassandra at every meal she’s ever had. The atmosphere in the kitchen relaxes, lulling Damian the rest of the way out of his panic from earlier, and with the recovery from that mood comes the guilt-inducing realization that he was kind of a brat in the car.

“I’m sorry for forgetting,” Richard says, “and for being so weird today. I’m dealing with some stuff, but that’s not an excuse.”

“I forgive you,” Damian says easily, knowing the script to this conversation. “I apologize for being rude to you in the car.”

“You weren’t that rude.” Richard reaches over and ruffles his hair. “Plus, I’ve got pretty thick skin.”

Judging by the types of people Richard’s worked with in the past, from the least affable members of the Justice League to Damian himself, Damian supposes that’s true. He accepts the pat on the head. 

He wants to extend a peace offering--he doesn’t want Richard to feel like Damian’s shutting him out completely. Even if Damian can’t tell him about Talia, he should say something. 

“There’s a Halloween dance in a couple of weeks,” Damian blurts.

Richard stills, his fork stopping in the air. His eyebrows raise, his smile widens. “Yeah? You thinking about going?”

“If Father says yes. Mizoguchi helped to plan it.” Damian looks back down at his plate. “But…today, Kelsey came and talked to me after school and told me I have to ask Amala to go with me, even though I was planning on going with my friends.”

Though Richard probably doesn’t know who any of these classmates are, he latches onto the information like the detective he is. “Does Amala like you? Is that why she sent Kelsey to…?”

“I don’t know,” Damian says, despairing, still staring at his half-eaten couscous. “I thought we were just good friends.”

“Okay. You don’t like her like that, though?”

“I don’t think so.” Damian wrinkles his nose. He hasn’t really thought about it. He’s been focused on more life-altering things.

When Damian looks up again, Richard’s smiling sympathetically. Damian has to look away because it’s altogether too honest. Too loving. “That’s tough. It’s probably best to be honest with her, though. Don’t ask her to the dance and get her hopes up because you don’t want to be rude.”

“Ugh.”

“I know, it sucks.” Richard slurps his milkshake, eyes not leaving Damian. He seems to be expecting something else from him. When Damian gazes blankly back for too long, Richard raises his eyebrows and prompts, “Is there anything else that’s been bothering you?”

Right. Damian should’ve anticipated that Richard would know that surface-level middle school drama isn’t enough to put Damian in such a bad headspace. Especially because the last time Damian was consistently coming home from school upset, it was because something was actually very wrong with how Damian’s classmates were treating him.

He doesn’t think that talking about the C he got on his English essay is going to cut it. Damian instead takes the low-hanging fruit of emotional manipulation and says, “I’m alright. I was just looking forward to being here this weekend.” He makes his eyes wary and sad as he looks back at his brother.

Richard’s face crumples. Damian feels like the most insignificant piece of garbage on the planet as Richard says, miserable, “I’m really, really sorry I forgot. Let me take you out on patrol tonight to make up for it.”

“Really?” Damian asks, losing the pitiful act immediately. Bruce has said in the past that he doesn’t want Damian patrolling Blüdhaven, not without a third person on backup in case there’s an emergency, because it stresses Bruce out to have Damian in potential danger and more than half an hour away from him without traffic. During the initial conversation on this topic, Damian had snapped that he’d managed to survive while his dad was more than a thousand years away from him, not factoring in traffic, and Bruce had grounded him for two weeks.

“Yeah, I owe you one.” Richard gives him a smile so wide it forces his eyes shut. It appears that Damian’s alleviated any suspicion that he’s experiencing some deep emotional distress.

Damian picks up the cup of coffee that’s cooled significantly by now. The first sip brings such a rush of memories that Damian would have started crying if he hadn’t had a few hours to recover from the stinging disappointment of not seeing his mother face-to-face this week. As it is, he just has to blink rapidly to calm himself back down, and then the taste is a positive familiarity instead of something that’ll tip him over the edge.

“You wanna watch some TV? I’ve got some work to do before we go out.”

Damian nods and sets his cup down to help clear the table. He sets the boxes with the leftover food in the fridge, which looks suspiciously empty other than Richard’s accumulating collection of half-empty condiment containers. The dishes go in the dishwasher, and Richard wipes down the table, and then he hands Damian his coffee and the two of them sit on the couch.

They’ll wait until it’s dark, and then they’ll wait another hour or so to get ready to leave. Damian’s caffeine high will keep him up for the next eight hours, if he paces himself.

Getting out of Gotham and out of his own head is good for him. Damian gets a couple of days to focus on revising his shitty English essay, and to patrol without feeling as though he’s being monitored by anyone besides Oracle. Richard sets him loose in a modern art museum on Sunday morning, and then he drives Damian back to Gotham in the late afternoon. 

Damian returns to Gotham with a tightly-wrapped minorly sprained ankle from a patrol misstep, a sketchbook with an abstract art piece print for a cover from the museum, and a t-shirt pilfered from Richard’s pajama drawer that says “BOY” WONDER.

As Richard pulls the car up in front of Wayne Manor, Alfred opens the door to wave hello. The butler begins to make his way down the stairs. Damian picks up his backpack and unbuckles his seatbelt, but Richard stops him from getting out with a hand on his arm. 

Damian looks over at his brother to find that Richard looks very serious all of a sudden.

“If you wanna talk, you can tell me anything,” Richard says. “You know that, right?”

Damian nods, mouth glued shut, taken off-guard by the sudden shift back to sincerity after Richard spent the past half hour scream-singing along to the shitty nineties playlist he made. 

Richard leans over and kisses Damian’s forehead. His hand cups the back of Damian’s neck, solid and comforting right underneath Damian’s hairline. “Okay,” Richard says as he leans back into his space, with a bittersweet smile. “Be safe this week, okay? Call me if you need me.”

Damian wants to lock his door and refuse to get out. Perhaps it makes him a bad son, or at least a little disloyal, but he wishes Richard was back in Gotham so that Damian didn’t have to survive solely on Bruce’s roundabout method of communicating his love, and so he didn’t have to live at the whims of Talia’s come-and-go parenting. 

“I will,” Damian says. He can’t look Richard in the face as he says it. He leans over the center console and hugs his brother around the middle and Richard returns the embrace immediately. Even though the gear shift digs into Damian’s ribcage, he only lets go when he remembers that Alfred’s waiting outside for him.

“Have a good week,” Richard says.

Damian nods, eyes fixed on the backpack clutched in his hands. He opens the door and slides out, standing on the driveway, and greets Alfred with a side-hug. It’s obvious to everyone present that Damian put much more emotion and affection into his hug with Richard, but he doesn’t have the energy to change this.

“It’s good to see you, my boy,” Alfred is saying to Richard when Damian starts paying attention again. He sets a paper grocery bag on the floor in front of the passenger seat. If previous weeks are any precedent to go by, the bag is filled with meals for the next few days, in labeled tupperwares packed pristinely against each other. “It’s a bit dull around here without you.”

“Don’t let Cass hear you say that,” Richard says, laughing. He’d adored the anecdote about Cassandra and Stephanie wreaking bleach-based havoc in the master bathroom, and had hounded Cassandra for pictures of her new hairstyle yesterday until she blocked his number for a few hours to get some peace and quiet. “Thanks, Alfie.”

“Have a safe drive, please,” Alfred says.

“I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do,” Richard says with an easy, fond smile. “Bye, Dami.”

Damian gives a small nod, trying not to be too clingy and petulant about Richard’s departure. Then Alfred closes the door and Richard puts the car back in drive and pulls away, gliding back down the driveway.

The car reaches the gate, which opens automatically, and Damian feels eyes on him again. It’s an itchy feeling, and one that has him checking in all directions for someone with their eyes on him, but the only non-Alfred person he sees is someone who’s a speck in the distance on the sidewalk outside the front fence, a man out on an afternoon walk.

Damian turns and goes up the front steps, already missing the safety of Richard’s apartment.

“Dinner will be ready in about an hour,” Alfred says, following close behind Damian.

“Thank you,” Damian basically whispers, swinging open the front door, and then he all but runs up to his room. He doesn’t want to go out and wander the property line and he doesn’t want to try to draw Talia out in downtown Gotham. He just wants to get some sleep before starting the week all over again tomorrow.

He’s watched as he goes up the steps to school the next morning, but Damian just hunches his shoulders and steps closer to Drake’s side, signaling that he’s not interested in engaging with Talia’s game this morning. 

Drake gives him a weird look, half-confused and half-something else. Surprisingly, he doesn’t tell Damian to fuck off. Maybe Richard said something to him about not being an asshole to Damian, but this just creates another unknown factor, which makes Damian feel even more unstable.

During English, Damian’s assigned seat is next to Amala. This causes some anxious flutters in his stomach that are unrelated to his complicated family dynamics. 

He sits at his spot at the table and puts his backpack down. Maps and Olive haven’t arrived yet. Amala greets him with a shy, “Hey.”

Damian says, “Hi.” Then he cringes under the weight of being watched, and he darts his gaze to the window. A flash of movement at the bottom right corner of one window tells him he just missed someone. 

Talia’s getting bolder. Anyone in the class could have seen her staring in the window.

“Damian?” Amala says.

Damian must have missed something. He tears his gaze away from the window to look at her again, feeling all scattered around. “Sorry.”

Amala looks at something over Damian’s shoulder. Damian turns his head just enough to confirm that it is, indeed, Kelsey making encouraging gestures from across the room. 

“Are you going to go to the dance?” Amala asks after a moment, refocusing on Damian’s face.

Damian feels his face heating up. He takes his notebook out of his backpack and pretends like it takes all his attention to open it to the right page. Richard had told him to just be honest, so Damian says, “My father is still deciding if I’m allowed to go.”

“Aw, what?” Amala sets her phone on the desk, the beaded charm on her phone skittering across the wood surface. “I thought your dad, um, liked parties?”

“What?” Damian says, giving her a sharp look.

Amala has the decency to look abashed. Her shoulders lift towards her ears a little bit. “That’s just what my parents said. They went to his New Year’s party. I didn’t mean it in a bad way!”

Damian thinks about this for a moment. It’s true that Bruce goes to a lot of social events, but they’re far from his favorite activity. At least Bruce’s longtime campaign to pretend like he’s nothing but an airheaded socialite is still going well, even for people Damian’s age.

“Okay.” Damian eventually says. “I’m not sure if I can go, though.”

“That’s fine,” Amala rushes to respond, wide-eyed and somehow looking a little relieved. “Don’t worry about it. Just, um, when he decides you should let me know!”

Damian nods. And thankfully, at this point, Maps and Olive burst into the classroom. Maps is in the middle of buttoning up her uniform over a t-shirt that appears to have some kind of Pokémon on it and Olive is failing to keep Maps’s dress-code crime from being noticed by their teacher. As their teacher calls out to Maps to get her in trouble for her infraction, Amala’s attention shifts, and Damian’s free to go back to staring out the window for a glimpse of his mother that never comes.

During the break between fourth and fifth period, when Damian’s stopped by his locker to drop off his English accoutrements, he starts to feel his phone vibrating with an incoming call in his pocket.

Phones aren’t as prohibited as, say, pocket knives, but Gotham Academy’s policy around personal devices is fairly draconian. Damian checks over both shoulders for hall monitors before pulling his phone out. He crowds closer to his locker and checks the screen, finding that the number is masked.

Though several days have elapsed with no follow-up and Damian was mostly asleep when the warning was given, he remembers Bruce telling Damian and his siblings not to answer calls from unknown numbers. Damian hesitates for a long moment before his suspicion (desperate hope) that it might be Talia wins out.

Damian swipes to accept the call, angling his body so his phone will remain hidden behind his open locker door. He says, pressing the phone to his ear, “Hello?”

The other end of the call rasps, and something crinkles. Damian plugs his free ear, leaning further towards his locker to get some respite from the loud chatter of the halls. He might be behaving stupidly, but he wants it to be his mother. He wants to hear Talia, and the familiar way she says his name. 

“Hello?” Damian says again. 

A heavy exhale hits the other end of the call, almost a sigh. Damian’s arms prickle with goosebumps when he hears the same noise repeat itself, a consistent but labored breathing pattern. It threatens that someone’s listening, but they don’t say anything.

Anxiety starts to curdle his stomach. A flicker of doubt makes him lie, “I can’t hear you,” and then he hangs up with a desperate jab to the screen, putting as much emotional space between him and the breathing as he can.

Then he stares at the phone, cursing himself. He should’ve just greeted Talia. It must be her doing this--and if she has his number, it was her who got into the WE servers last week. Now Damian has hung up, and she’s going to be disappointed in him for letting his fear win out. Add that to the disappointment she must already feel at him having not figured out what she wants to communicate, and Damian could be in big trouble soon.

With a finger that’s only trembling a little, Damian presses on the last call in his history to dial them back. She’ll answer, and he can apologize, and he can ask her to meet him somewhere so they can get this over with.

Instead of connecting, the line just blares a single tone over and over. The number has been disconnected.

Overhead, the warning bell rings. Damian jumps, nearly dropping his phone, the sound startling the shit out of him. 

With a nasty feeling like the beginning of a headache, he puts his phone in his pocket and shuts his locker. He needs to get to class.

The second call comes towards the end of sixth period, and the incessant vibrating of his phone earns Damian a stern look from his teacher. Damian silences his phone, but when school ends, he pulls it out and finds that someone has called him from four different unknown numbers, four separate times.

He gets a ride home with Drake, and the phone rings while he stares out the window and ignores his brother. He gets home and tries to start his homework at the dinner table, and the phone rings while his bad essay blurs into a haze of confusion on the screen. He clears out the dishwasher after dinner and when he finishes, he checks his phone and they’re calling again, the notification silent because he hasn’t turned his ringer back on yet since Alfred started getting suspicious of the constant barrage while Damian sat at the dinner table.

“Damian?” Bruce says, to get his attention.

The phone stops ringing, returning to his lock screen and adding the call to the list of missed calls. Zero voicemails, though. Damian jerks his chin up to look at his father. “Yes?”

“Can we have a conversation about the dance you brought up?”

Damian doesn’t manage to hide his surprise. Bruce huffs, a little self-conscious. “Dick mentioned you wanted to go. It's the weekend after this one, right?”

After clicking the dishwasher shut, Damian crosses his arms, fiddling with the seam on the side of his phone case as inconspicuously as he can. “Yes.”

“Gotham Academy has had security issues in the past,” Bruce says. He presses his hands together, cracking one of his knuckles. “But…if it’s important to you, we can make it work, with some conditions.”

“Such as?” Damian asks, trying not to let his warring emotions show on his face. He wants to go because he promised Maps he would, but he was also planning on blaming Bruce for not going, which would free him from having to have a real conversation with Amala.

“Well, first,” Bruce says, “I’d like to talk about your English grade.”

Damian hasn’t had the energy to check his cumulative grade in that class, but based on the assignments he’s been getting back, he’s gotten into a bad pattern. He mutters, “I’m trying.”

“I know you are,” Bruce reassures, looking pained. “Do you want one of your siblings to look over some of your assignments?”

“Maybe,” Damian says, his stress increasing. If he had just a little more mental bandwidth to devote to it, he could revise his stupid, bad essay all on his own. “Can I have a week to try it myself?”

Bruce wavers.

“I’ll ask Stephanie or Duke if I don’t get it,” Damian promises, with no intention of actually following through.

The lie works. Bruce’s posture relaxes a little. “Alright. If I see an improvement by next Monday, then I’m alright with you going to the dance.”

Damian waits for the other shoe to drop. Two seconds later, it does, in the form of Bruce saying, “My other condition is that I would like at least one of your siblings to be at the event, either as a chaperone or volunteer.”

“Ugh,” Damian says, before he can help himself, “what?”

Bruce’s mouth twitches. It’s almost like Damian’s impending humiliation is amusing to him. Still, he doesn’t renege on his threat. “I want there to be someone to keep an eye out. Students at your school are targeted all the time.”

It’s logical, and it’s in line with the fact that Bruce wants all of his children to basically wear body cameras at all times so they’re never outside of his zone of protection. Damian imagines hanging out with his friends in front of some undetermined member of his family and wants to crawl inside the empty dishwasher to die.

“Fine,” Damian grinds out through gritted teeth. “Which one?”

“I’ll ask around.” Bruce takes a short step back, beginning his retreat from the conversation. Rumor has it that he used to be much worse about officially ending conversations. According to Richard, Bruce used to just straight-up leave as soon as he didn’t know what to say anymore.

“Thank you,” Damian says, taking his own step backwards.

“Of course.”

The two of them turn and flee in opposite directions. 

Around eleven, when Damian’s about to go down to the Batcave for the night, his phone rings again. It’s his fault that he’s around to see this happen, as he’s been sitting on his rug for quite a while, slowly rotating his foot around on his injured ankle to try and get some blood flow happening after the injury has been wrapped for so long. As Damian watches the phone ring out, he begins to re-wrap his ankle, making sure it’s perfect.

He finishes dressing the sprain and puts his socks back on. 

His phone starts to ring again.

Damian answers.

The other end is just breathing, again. The sound of it sends shivers up Damian’s neck, but he turns the volume up and tries to listen harder, searching for any clues. Nothing stands out to him.

After a few seconds of this standoff, Damian says, “What do you want?”

No response comes. The tension in Damian is not relieved; if anything, now that Damian is sure that he’s being toyed with, he’s even more upset with Talia for just sitting there when all he wants is to talk. 

A knock sounds on his door, startling him. 

Damian jumps, fumbling with his phone, dropping it onto the floor. Just like that, the spell of utter stillness is broken, and he’s ripped back to the real world.

He taps at the screen, waking it back up to end the call, and only then does he call out, “Yes?”

The door creaks open. Cassandra’s head pokes in. The bottom half of her hair, first dip-bleached, then dyed, is now a brilliant purple color that matches the underlayer of Steph’s hair. Cassandra has gotten away with this drastic change in appearance because she wears a full cowl, a fact that didn’t stop Richard from loudly complaining at Bruce for not being allowed to dye his hair when he was Robin.

(Nobody could stop Richard from dying his hair now, as Nightwing. Richard hasn’t seemed to figure that out yet, or maybe he just wants to be mad at Bruce for a petty reason instead of a legitimate one for a change.)

“Alright?” Cassandra asks. Her eyes have zeroed in on Damian and the way he’s hunched over his phone on the rug. 

A faint tremor has started through Damian’s hands, like he’s cold. He is cold, his room is quite drafty, but he’s pretty sure that’s not why he’s so unsteady. Damian curls his hands into his sweatshirt sleeves to hide them and still them at the same time, forgetting how to answer for a moment.

“I’m fine,” he says, delayed just a half-second too long. He leaves his phone on the floor and stands, walking to meet his sister by the door. “Your hair looks nice.”

Cassandra smiles, striking a little pose that says she’s pleased with the compliment. Then she grabs onto Damian’s wrist and pulls him after her, out into the hallway and down the stairs.

Before they can enter the study and take the elevator down to the Cave, though, Cass stops them out in the hallway and she just looks at Damian for a long moment, unnerving all-knowing eyes boring down on him. Damian’s catching up to her in height, but not enough to avoid feeling intimidated by her. Judging by how Jason’s still transparently terrified by her despite being three times her size, Damian doesn’t have much hope for the future, in that regard.

“Scared,” Cassandra says--or, more accurately, diagnoses. 

“I’m not scared,” Damian snaps, balling his hands tighter in his long sleeves. 

He’s lying. Maybe it’s irrational, given that Talia isn’t doing anything to directly harm him. But Damian doesn’t understand what the endgame of her phone calls is, and he doesn’t want to wander into any alleys on his own tonight. Damian prefers to know what a threat is before subjecting himself to it.

Cassandra frowns. She tips her head to the side, considering him. Damian feels completely transparent.

“You’re a Batgirl tonight,” Cassandra finally says.

“What?”

“You. Batgirl. Come on.” She tugs him forward again, all the way into the elevator, and Damian’s so confused he forgets to resist.

As it turns out, being a Batgirl for one night means that Damian’s tagging along to help Spoiler and Orphan with the final stage of their current case. Cassandra’s plan to get Damian to feel better works almost instantly, because Damian’s involvement in the case means Drake’s assistance isn’t needed. Drake lets the issue go surprisingly quickly, but Damian doesn’t let that dull his glow of pride.

Stephanie drives the car out of the Cave and then stops in a little grove of trees and gets out of the driver’s seat, telling Damian to swap places with her in a moment that has Damian absolutely, irrationally, childishly thrilled.  Bruce was already thrown off by Cassandra and Stephanie commandeering his Robin for a night at such short notice, and would never have given permission for Damian to drive. (Which is bullshit, because Richard was allowed to fly the Bat-plane when he was ten.)

Tonight, Damian finds himself operating one of the auxiliary Batmobiles while Cassandra works through new case information on a laptop in the backseat and Stephanie gives him very poor directions towards what’s apparently the base of operations for the latest crime lord the two of them have been targeting.

Damian changes lanes on the highway with much less room between him and a neighboring car than he means to, but instead of getting a disapproving click of the tongue or a scolding word, Stephanie just whoops and hollers like a maniac. 

Batgirl's rules are so much better than Batman’s. It almost makes Damian regret not accepting Stephanie’s half-joking offer of giving Damian one of her old suits to try on.

“Excellent driving as always, Spoiler,” says Oracle dryly through the speaker in the console of the car. “Let’s not get pulled over for causing a public disturbance, guys.”

“You got it,” Stephanie says, as though she’s still the one driving. Out of the corner of Damian’s eye, he sees her smile wickedly, and she gestures for Damian to drive even faster. “My bad, babe.”

Damian is sitting on a phone book to be able to see over the steering wheel, which means he has to use his tiptoe to press the gas down further, but he of course follows Stephanie’s order. They rocket forward through the sparse late-night traffic, and Damian’s able to shuck off some of the paranoia that’s begun clinging to him since he first answered the phone earlier today.

“Next exit,” Stephanie announces, and Damian jerks the car to the right to get into the correct lane. Stephanie bonks her shoulder into her door because she’s not wearing her seatbelt, but the smile on her face doesn’t fade. 

Besides a more lax understanding of safety “rules,” the main difference Damian has observed between his normal patrols and this one is that Cassandra and Stephanie seem to do this out of genuine joy for their work. Damian knows that his father is dedicated to his duty as Batman, but he wonders if Batman finds pleasure in the routine of patrol these days. With the Batgirls, there is no question that they think this is a blast.

After getting off the freeway and returning to narrower streets, Damian has to slow the car down. He takes tight corners, once getting the momentum wrong and almost flipping the car, but neither of his companions is annoyed by that. 

Cassandra keeps typing, perched on the backseat like a gargoyle, and Stephanie continues work on the detonator of the improvised explosive device that she’s tinkering with (allegedly, it’s integral to her plan for infiltrating the building they’re driving towards). 

“Alright,” Stephanie says, after a couple more turns, just as Damian’s started to get a feel for this older model of Batmobile. “Let’s slow it down, time to stealth it.”

The car jolts as his toe slips and brushes the gas harder than he means to, and Damian tenses as he expects a sharp correction on his technique. Again, Stephanie and Cassandra appear not to give a shit about his shortcomings as a driver. Their blasé attitudes are strange until Damian reasons to himself that Stephanie’s civilian driving is more harrowing than any mistakes Damian could make.

He pumps the brakes, relieved that they let him figure it out on his own.

“Parking lot,” Cassandra suddenly speaks up, leaning between the two front seats to point to where she wants Damian to stop the car. He turns the wheel and eases into the lot, into a spot overshadowed by a few trees. He even manages to stay within the lines.

Stephanie puts a conspicuous finger on the mute button of the car’s comm system and says, out of earshot of Oracle, “Great work, Robin.”

“Good driving,” Cassandra chimes in, tugging affectionately on the edge of his cape.

“I know,” he says, like the compliments mean nothing to him. It’s good he’s wearing an armored suit; it feels like his heart is glowing, which isn’t exactly conducive to stealth operations. 

Like working with Richard in Blüdhaven, being on the Batgirl patrol route is a relief. It brings all of the exhilarating, all-out fighting of a normal patrol with none of the paranoia that he’ll somehow fail to live up to his father’s expectations. Cassandra and Stephanie have literally no expectations for him, except Stephanie whispers to him at the beginning of their operation that Cassandra would prefer they didn’t kill anyone, if possible.

Damian’s allowed to drive halfway home, after which he and Stephanie switch places in case Bruce drives past them as they pass through downtown. Damian settles into the backseat, feeling sleepiness start to creep up on him. Aches and pains sneak up, too--his ankle, which got messed up on his Blüdhaven patrol over the weekend, has started to bother him again now that the adrenaline of their fight is almost completely faded.

They get back to the Cave long before everyone else. Stephanie parks and the three of them spill out, heading towards the first aid station to find ice packs for their various bruises. As they go, Stephanie slings an arm around Damian’s shoulders, which he fails to evade in time to not be trapped by her side.

“B asked me to volunteer at your fuckin’, uh, school dance,” she says. 

Damian groans with as much anguish as he can muster. 

Stephanie puts him in a headlock for his obstinance. She’s lucky Damian doesn’t have the energy to stab her. While she mercilessly noogies his hair, she says, “Stop being a pissbaby.”

Scowling, putting up a token struggle to the elbow locked around his neck, Damian asks, “Are you going to do it?”

“You clearly love the idea so much, how could I refuse?” 

Cassandra snorts, the noise not fully muffled despite the fact that the entire upper half of her body is stuck in the freezer as she roots around for her ideal ice pack.

“What do you want?” Damian asks. “I couldn’t get him to change his mind, he’s insisting on having someone there. You can say no.”

“I’m not saying no.” Stephanie releases him from the headlock. Bemused, she continues, “You’re so cagey, Jesus. Brucie’s paying me to do it, so I’m not turning it down. I’m just giving you a heads-up that I’m gonna be there.” 

Cassandra emerges from the freezer with an armload of ice packs, as well as three popsicles clenched in one hand. 

“Where did those come from?” Damian demands. In the Cave, snacks are supposed to be relegated to the food fridge, and none of the ones Damian’s seen have any sort of artificial colors or sugars in them.

“Freezer,” Cassandra says.

Damian makes a noise of wordless frustration. He’s not stupid. 

“Chill, Little D,” Stephanie says, putting her hands back on him to steer him over to the exam table. Damian digs in his heels, but Stephanie just pushes harder, forcing him to keep walking. “These are the Batgirl snacks. They’re a secret. Be cool.”

Mollified by this explanation, Damian stops pushing back against her hands. 

Cassandra appears behind Stephanie, holding the popsicles just out of reach. “Table,” she tells Damian.

Damian gets up on the table, only now realizing that he’s been corralled into first aid when he hasn’t expressed any particular need for such a thing. He’s more tired than he thought, if he’s allowed them to manipulate him like this.

“Why don’t you want me there?” Stephanie asks him. 

Damian frowns. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“No…?” Stephanie says. Then her face morphs into horrible glee and she asks, “Damian, are you going with a date?”

“No!” Damian yelps. He can feel his face flushing. “No. I just haven’t told her I’m not, yet.”

Stephanie’s eyebrows furrow, her amusement muddling with confusion. “Huh?”

Cassandra drops the wrapped popsicles on the table next to Damian with a crinkle of plastic. Next to them, she sets down her armful of ice packs. On top of the pile is one specially designed to stay on an injured ankle, a boot with velcro flaps. He should have known he wasn’t hiding his limp well enough to fool her.

“Shoe off,” Cassandra says to him.

Damian curls his shoulders, irritated. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“Which ankle?” Stephanie asks. “And what the fuck is the story with your date you don’t want to go with?”

With an embittered sigh, Damian ignores Stephanie and takes off his right boot. His foot has swollen considerably; he can see it even through the sock he’s wearing. Without the boot to keep his foot stable, the problem is only going to get worse.

“Shit,” Stephanie says, some of her joking demeanor fading. “When’d that happen? It wasn’t tonight.”

Damian keeps his mouth shut. He won’t get Richard in trouble for his own mistake.

His gaze is trained on his ankle, and on the bandages poking out over the top of his sock, but he can practically hear the look that Stephanie and Cassandra exchange with each other. Then, in the periphery of his vision, he sees Cassandra pick up the ice pack and move to start putting it on his foot.

“I can do it,” Damian snaps, and rips it out of her hand. 

Again, Cassandra and Stephanie look at each other. This time, Damian catches the latter half of their nonverbal conversation as his eyes flick up to check if they’re laughing at him. 

They aren’t laughing. Stephanie isn’t even smiling anymore; her downturned lips say she’s worried. Cassandra’s watching Stephanie evenly, one eyebrow quirked up in a silent question.

Damian scowls and puts the ice pack on over his ankle, biting down on the flare of pain that comes with moving his foot. He shouldn’t be running around on it, but taking time off to rest would mean risking future time with Richard, because Bruce will find out how the injury occurred.

“Did that happen at school?” Stephanie asks.

The concept of this clearly bothers her. Damian’s never going to be able to move past the mistake of letting his family find out about him being mistreated at school last year, is he? Things had been bad, but they hadn’t been unbearable. Not any more unbearable than the constant worrying and coddling from Richard and Alfred. 

Damian’s mouth, now that he’s clamped it shut against any noises of discomfort, refuses to open again to answer her. He secures the velcro straps of the ice pack snugly, and stays quiet while he does so. The dry cold of the wrap immediately takes the edge off of the throbbing pain, though the swelling will take a little while longer to abate.

A crinkle of plastic interrupts the silent standoff between him and Stephanie. Then a popsicle is shoved in his face, striped red, white, and blue. They’re the Superman popsicles that Bruce always refuses to let them order from the grocery store.

Damian looks up. Cassandra pushes the popsicle at him again, forcing him to take it. 

“We’re tired,” Cassandra says. She nudges Stephanie with her elbow. “Talk tomorrow.”

Stephanie relents, though the wrinkle between her eyebrows doesn’t disappear. “Okay,” she accepts. “Tomorrow.” She picks up one of the popsicles and unwraps it with a harsh squeal of plastic packaging. Damian cringes at the noise. 

Cassandra and Stephanie rock-paper-scissors to decide who will handle their case write-up. They both choose paper, then both choose scissors, then both choose scissors again. They choose the exact same sign four more times in a row before Stephanie says, “Fuck it, let’s just do it tomorrow.”

Cassandra readily agrees, bobbing her head. Then she hops up on the table next to Damian and wraps both arms around him, trapping him in a hug. “Thank you for your help,” she says. Her arms are like iron bands around his torso, pinning his arms to his sides. His hand uselessly holds the popsicle up out of reach of his mouth. Cassandra drops her voice, nearly whispering so Stephanie won’t hear, and asks, “Still scared?”

Damian shakes his head. Being reminded that he’s capable and being allowed to test those skills without worry of being reprimanded have both eased his anxiety about whatever Talia’s up to. If he lets his mother down with his response to her test, whatever this test is, then at least he knows that Cassandra and Stephanie won't be disappointed in him.

Cassandra squeezes him once more and then lets go. “Snack time,” she announces. Then she erases all of her built-up goodwill in Damian’s books by leaning over and biting off three-fourths of his popsicle in one go. Perhaps angering him is part of her grand design; Damian gets so angry he completely forgets what he has to be paranoid about. Talia would understand that defending his honor is his priority, after all.

Chapter Text

In the morning, after a night of restless sleep, Damian wakes up to three more missed calls, zero voicemails, and, inexplicably, a new email in his WE inbox. It’s an empty email with no subject line, but he’s never gotten an email in that inbox before. Part of him hopes that this message is a first attempt by Talia to bypass the security on his email address, a step up from not-talking over the phone.

Drake didn’t sleep at all, so he actually leaves the house at a reasonable time today. When they arrive, he stays sitting in his car while Damian gets out to go hang out anywhere else before the first bell rings.

The halls are mostly empty. Thus, there’s nowhere to hide when Kelsey comes up and basically corners him against his locker.

“What did your dad say?” Kelsey asks.

Damian doesn’t understand why she’s so obsessed with this subject. His phone vibrates in his pocket with another incoming call as he responds, “He said yes.”

Her eyes gleam. “Are you gonna ask Amala, then?”

Damian can feel sweat beading on the back of his neck.

“Basically everyone that’s going is going with somebody,” Kelsey continues, all businesslike as she twirls the end of her ponytail around her fingers, “and she’s the only person I know who would actually say yes to you, so.”

A dry feeling in the back of Damian’s throat catches his voice there, keeping him silent for a moment while he processes this. It’s true that people have been asking other people to the dance, with posters and candy bars and stuff that all seem entirely excessive. Maps and Olive promised to go with Damian, but if they’re going together first then maybe Damian’s going to look stupid just hanging around them.

“You should ask her today, so you can still coordinate costumes,” Kelsey says. She smiles. “Okay?”

Damian doesn’t think he can talk. It’s been a while since he was suddenly knocked off-guard like this, with sudden self-doubt about how weird he is compared to his classmates. His lips stay stuck together, and he hopes, prays for any kind of interruption.

The monkey’s paw curls. Damian’s head turns as he hears, “Damian, hey!”

It’s Drake, brandishing a green windbreaker in one hand. He has a smile on his face that would look more at home at a gala or business brunch rather than in a hallway of Gotham Academy. “You left this in my car,” Drake says, not stopping until he’s standing at Damian’s side. “It’s supposed to rain again today.”

It isn’t Damian’s coat. He reaches out and curls his fingers around a handful of it anyway, accepting it while not quite understanding what’s going on. The texture crunches unpleasantly under his skin. He’s never been so relieved to see Drake in his life.

When Damian doesn’t say anything, Drake turns his sharklike smile on Kelsey instead. “Sorry, I’m just gonna steal him for a second.” And then he puts a hand on Damian’s shoulder and steers him down the hall, turning two corners before Damian realizes what’s happening and starts to put up a fight.

When he feels Damian start to struggle, Drake lets go of him and they stop walking forward. Drake takes the coat back, prying it out of Damian’s fingers, and says, “I was actually coming to give you this,” and he thrusts a piece of printer paper forward, folded in fourths.

Damian takes the note and unfolds it with fingers that feel weirdly numb. He thinks he might have been starting to have a panic attack, a fact that he’s only noticing now that he’s been snapped out of it. 

The paper is covered in handwriting that’s somewhat similar to their father’s. The signature is a very good replica of Bruce’s, too. It’s a note excusing Damian from gym today.

“Steph said you shouldn’t be on your ankle today,” Drake explains, scratching one elbow awkwardly, “but you didn’t want to tell B, so.”

“You wrote this?” Damian asks, finally able to speak again. 

“Yeah.”

“That explains the poor penmanship.”

“Fuck you.” Drake reaches out to snatch the note back out of Damian’s hand, but Damian pulls it close to his chest, refusing to relinquish it. Drake relents while that weird, earnestly concerned expression returns to his face. “I tried to call to ask your teacher’s name, but I think it’ll be fine without it. Is your phone off?”

Damian nods, lying.

“Okay. I figured.” Drake takes a half-step back, awkwardly draping his coat over his arm for more convenient carrying. “See you after school.”

Damian nods again.

“If that girl is bothering you,” Drake starts to say.

“She’s not,” Damian interrupts, sounding altogether too defensive.

Drake’s eyes narrow. 

Damian shoves the note into his pocket. “Goodbye,” he says, and turns and flees towards the library.

He skips his first two classes, knowing full well that it’s not going to help him raise his grade in English. Damian hides in the library the whole time and then goes to gym to drop off his note and subsequently gets sent back to the library again. The librarian doesn’t seem to care--Damian’s coasting on the glowing impression that Jason left on her years ago--which is good because Damian needs all the time to recover that he can get.

Damian shows up to his normal lunch table after third period to find Maps and Olive both leaning over Maps’s notebook, whispering between each other. As he approaches, they look up, completely in sync, but only Maps smiles in greeting.

Damian sits. 

Maps shoves her notebook towards him, and he looks down at it. He’s not quite surprised when he finds a printout of Allison Price’s class schedule, a map of campus with several spots highlighted, the margins filled with scribbled approximations of the statements that Allison’s friends gave to the police.

“I was talking to Pom,” Olive says, her tone low and conspiratorial, “and she said Allie had been talking about someone following her around for a couple days before she disappeared.”

“What kind of someone?” Damian asks, taking in the points labeled on the campus map--the pickup loop, the greenhouses, the space behind the gymnasium. Maps has provided a key for her marks; yellow for a spot Allison’s friends mentioned in their testimonies, pencil for security camera locations, and pink for the last place Allison was seen. 

Allison was dropped off at the beginning of the day a block away from the school and vanished before first period. According to one of her friends, they saw her on campus that morning, but the school has refused to acknowledge that as true. This is why Gotham Academy hasn’t been put on particularly high security. At a certain point, it would be impossible to keep having a normal academic calendar if they responded to every crime occurring on or near campus.

“Some older guy. He kept trying to get her to talk to him, even like on the phone and stuff. Her parents told her she was overreacting.” Maps points at a pencil-marked spot on the map, right inside the gate ringing campus. “If we could look at the security camera from there, we might see him. Supposedly he was outside Allie’s second-period class sometime last week.”

Damian takes careful note of the classroom and the specific camera. Drake’s investigation doesn’t appear to be moving forward very quickly, and it’s impressive that Damian’s friends have eclipsed the leads that Damian’s seen Drake pursuing. 

“Do you know how to get into the security system?” Damian asks. 

Olive and Maps’s faces both fall a little. “No,” Olive admits. “We’re asking around.”

Maps elbows her. Olive elbows her back, scowling, and Maps sighs and straightens and asks Damian, “Do you think your brother could help?”

Damian nudges the notebook back across the table. He says, carefully avoiding making any promises, “I’ll ask, but he’s not very agreeable.”

Maps nods, like that’s about what she expected. Meanwhile, Olive’s gaze is a little more calculating, as though she’s deciding whether or not she believes Damian at all.

Damian takes a tentative bite of his lunch, just so that he can have something to do with his hands. While he averts his eyes to focus on his food, Maps shifts and closes their notebook, and Olive retreats to her phone for a moment.

Quiet reigns at their table. Damian doesn’t notice that it’s because Maps and Olive are having a nonverbal conversation until Olive breaks the silence with, “We need to tell you something else.”

Damian looks up to find both of them looking just as serious as before. Maps is now avoiding his gaze, chewing the hell out of one of their nails, and Olive is tapping her fingers on the table in a manic rhythm, a grimace on her face.

“So, Colton is in third period with Kelsey,” Maps starts.

Immediately, one of Damian’s hands goes to the opposing arm to scratch underneath the end of his shirtsleeve. Olive’s eyes flash with worry, looking down to the manic anxiety Damian’s reacting with, but Maps just barrels onwards, her hands bunched on the lapels of her blazer for comfort.

“He said he heard her telling her friends that you were going to ask Amala to the dance in front of everyone,” Maps says. She looks angry. “And she said they should all come to watch you get rejected.”

Damian looks between Maps and Olive, searching for some hint that this is a joke. Or maybe a scheme of theirs. He feels like someone’s reached into his mouth and tried to strangle him from the inside.

“What?” Damian says, even though he definitely heard and understood what she said.

“She’s doing it to make fun of you,” Olive explains, as gently as such an idea can be explained.

It hits him like a sucker punch, even the second time around. This should be a relief-- and it partially is, because now he knows he won’t be hurting anybody’s feelings. 

Just his own. 

Why would any of his classmates want him to ask them out, anyway? The only friend who’s stuck around longer than a year has been Jon, and right now he’s in deep space and not answering any text messages. Or maybe he’s no longer in deep space, but he’s not answering messages because he doesn’t want to anymore. 

Damian pushes his tray a little ways away from him, his fledgling appetite souring. “I didn’t want to ask her anyway,” he says. His voice is quiet, he wouldn’t be surprised if it his friends can’t hear him at all. “I just want to go with you guys.”

“We want you to come with us too!” Maps exclaims, like they’ve been vindicated. “I already bought the tickets, silly.”

“Yeah, screw Kelsey,” Olive says with venom. 

Maps smooths down their notebook, pressing it open to a new page. “Will you dress up with us? We didn’t want to pick without you.”

Damian’s throat has a lump in it. 

“We made a chart of group costume ideas,” Maps brags, waving her notebook. 

Olive nudges Maps with her elbow and gives Damian another one of her knowing looks and asks, more tactfully, “Are you okay?”

He picks up his backpack and puts it back on. “I’m going to call home,” Damian says, then stands and picks up his tray. 

“Okay,” Olive says. Her smile is small. “Just let us know if you need anything.”

Maps bobs their head in agreement, eyes sad.

Damian leaves, not having anything else to say to them. He dumps his food out and puts the tray back and then escapes the cafeteria, pushing through another set of doors to sit outside against the side of the building, under the slight awning to protect him from the drizzling rain.

He takes out his phone and scrolls past the many, many, many missed calls from as many burner numbers. It takes a minute, but he finally finds and presses on a name that’s actually saved in his phone.

The call connects after the first ring.

“Yello. What’s-- wait. Hang on,” Stephanie says, “ someone should be in class right now.”

An itch traces down Damian’s face, and he swipes at it to find that it’s actually a lone tear. The fact that this has happened without him realizing he was on the verge pushes him even further into whatever he’s feeling. He’s so tired. He abandons all pretenses and asks, “Can you come get me?”

“Huh? In the middle of the day?”

“Please.” 

“Are you hurt?”

“...No.”

“Buddy,” Stephanie says, sounding all remorseful, “I’m walking into an exam in fifteen minutes, I can’t come at this exact second. But Tim’s there, right?”

The only thing worse than Stephanie seeing him like this is the idea of Drake seeing him like this. Damian groans, the sound altogether much too tortured for the situation.

“I know, he’s an asshole. He’ll take literally any reason to ditch school, though.”

If this were Richard, Damian might have some luck guilting him into driving over. However, because Stephanie was not raised by Bruce, she is capable of setting immalleable personal boundaries. Drake is Damian’s best option for a speedy escape right now.

“What,” Stephanie teases, “you’re saying you aren’t good enough at manipulating him to get him to drive you somewhere?”

“I’m fully capable,” Damian retorts.

“That’s my little girlboss. You can do it!”

Her exaggerated cheer grates on his already-flaring nerves. He says, “Don’t you have an exam to be failing?”

“That was personal,” Stephanie says, mock-offended, but Damian hangs up before this can spiral into more conversation. He wants to be out of this school by the time his lunch period ends, so there’s no time to waste.

He sends a text to Drake, not overthinking it. Stephanie’s right about one thing, and that’s Drake’s intense desire to be anywhere but class--the only worse truant in the family is Jason, who has the whole “being murdered” excuse for his copious absences. 

Damian’s text is a simple ‘I want to leave.’ There’s no point in gussying it up.

Drake probably makes a habit of texting in class. Damian can assume so because Drake does the same thing on patrol--he texts without looking at the screen, innocently nodding along like he’s listening to whatever Bruce is explaining. 

His hunch is correct. Damian barely has to wait for a response. Only three seconds after his text is delivered, a read receipt pops up. 

Drake types a response, deletes it, stops typing. It’s a full ten seconds before he starts up again, this time actually sending his answer.

Damian holds his breath.

The response comes through: ‘meet @ my car in 5.’

Relief courses through Damian, refreshing after several minutes of his emotions threatening to burn him from the inside out. He leaps back to his feet, pushing away from the wall and beginning to cut an efficient line through campus towards the student lot.

He knows he’s passing underneath some classroom windows, so he hides his limp and tries not to look like he’s sneaking around. By some miracle, he gets all the way to the parking lot without anyone stopping him and demanding to see a hall pass.

By staying low and keeping close to the sides of cars, he stays out of sight of the classrooms as he dodges through the parking lot. It’s not a huge lot, given the relatively low number of commuter students, so it doesn’t take him long to reach Drake’s car. 

Having a specific means to a specific goal is refreshing. Damian focuses on making his feet silent, on finding the perfect route through the lot. He shouldn’t be surprised that he beats Drake to the car by a long shot.

Shivering a little bit, Damian waits, one hand on the door handle. 

Five minutes pass. As the six-minute mark hits, the car doors unlock and Damian looks around to find Drake approaching from the opposite direction, as though he’d been as far away from the school buildings as possible without leaving campus. When Damian spots him, Drake just gives a tight-lipped smile and rounds the car to get in on the driver’s side.

Damian opens his door and slings his backpack in, tossing it onto the floor in front of the passenger seat before climbing in after it. Drake is already turning the keys in the ignition, his seatbelt left unbuckled.

“What took you so long?” Damian asks. He pulls his door shut.

“I was getting into the school records to mark both of us excused from the rest of the day.” Drake puts the car in reverse. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

Damian sinks lower in his seat before he admits, “I need to be excused from first and third period as well.”

Drake emits a short, aborted noise. It’s not exactly judgemental, but Damian doesn’t know what it means so he ignores it. The car goes quiet until Drake’s phone finally connects to the bluetooth, when music starts leaking out at a faint volume.

It’s a song that Damian’s heard blasting through the wall coming out of Jon’s brother’s room. This makes it familiar and less of an annoyance as Damian sits perfectly still and waits for Drake to announce that he expects some kind of favor in exchange for this rescue.

Drake doesn’t do that. He instead drums his fingers on the top of the steering wheel and makes tiny tik-tik-tik noises with his tongue against his teeth in time with the song, and he doesn’t ask Damian what his deal is. The farther from school they get, the less pinched and irritated his expression is.

Damian follows his lead and slowly untenses, his shoulders leaving a hunched position that was beginning to make his neck sore. 

They hit the lunch rush, locking them in traffic on the freeway. Drake slows the vehicle accordingly, still not making conversation, so Damian takes out his phone to tell Maps and Olive where he disappeared to. At Gotham Academy, vanishing without a trace is not a kind thing to do. 

Olive reacts to the message with a heart, and Maps sends ‘NO FAIR’ within a couple of seconds despite the fact that lunch has ended and both of them should be paying attention in class right now. 

Damian has begun to puzzle out the most irritating way to scold them for this when an email notification pops up at the top of his screen. Damian frowns, only partially invested when checking it, but then he completely forgets what he was doing when he realizes what it is.

It’s an email sent to his WE inbox, the one that nobody’s supposed to know about. He opens it with his thumb. It takes a second to load, but when it begins to, the entire body of the email is an embedded photo of a brick-wall gothic-style building, cast in grayish light. It’s the side of one of the buildings of Gotham Academy. 

The photo loads in a scroll, top-down, which is why it’s five more seconds until the bottom half unfurls and Damian sees himself, hunched on the ground in his uniform, his phone pressed to his ear.

Damian placidly takes in the photo, sure to keep his expression schooled. It must have been taken less than twenty minutes ago, from a distance of less than twenty yards away. He’d shed tears while begging Stephanie to come pick him up, even though his mother taught him at a young age not to cry just because he felt too many things at once.

“B and Alfred are both at home,” Drake says, beginning to ease into a right turn. 

The way the photo is framed, Damian looks tiny, insignificant. He’s a shorter-than-average middle schooler with one ankle looking swollen due to bandages under his sock, completely incapable of mental fortitude.

“We probably won’t be able to sneak back in. Want to go to my apartment, or somewhere else?”

Talia had likely seen Damian in that state and lost faith in him. She’d turned and walked away, with Damian none the wiser. 

“Can you not fucking text while I’m trying to talk to you?”

Damian doesn’t know how to fix this. Now that he’s been spotted in that state--now that there’s photographic evidence of that state--there’s no un-ringing that bell. He’s been given up on.

With this conclusion made, the motion of the car, the pounding music, the leather seats, and his itchy uniform suddenly make his skin feel too tight. His scalp prickles, begging him to drag unforgiving nails through his hair and over the skin of his neck, but he can’t move.

“Damian.” A hand suddenly swats at Damian’s hand, trying to snatch his phone from him. 

Damian flinches, dropping his phone and barely restraining himself from breaking Drake’s wrist. The phone bounces to the mat under Damian’s feet, and Drake recoils as the smack of a slap to his arm fills the car. 

For a moment, both of them are completely, utterly still. Damian stares between his feet at where his phone has landed, his palm stinging with the aftershock of striking his brother.

“What’s wrong with you?” Drake asks. When Damian doesn’t find the wherewithal to respond, Drake’s voice gets even more apprehensive and he asks, “Can you hear me?”

A car abruptly honks behind them. While Damian’s hands, unbidden, fly up and cover his ears to protect them, Drake huffs and steps on the gas, lurching them forward again.

Drake turns the volume down on the music, removing one stressor. Muffled through Damian’s palms, Drake starts talking again, words stilted and awkward. “We’re going to my apartment because it’s closest. Will you give me a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on that? I don’t know how to help you.”

Damian doesn’t want anyone to help him. He closes his eyes to protest the way that the overcast day is suddenly way too bright for him, and presses his hands harder against either side of his skull. 

Why had he taken Stephanie’s advice? Under normal circumstances, he would know better than to outsource his decision-making to her. 

Running out of the cafeteria was a mistake. Maybe leaving campus was a mistake, too. He wishes he’d just hid in the storage room above the gym and told Drake to excuse him from class.

“Shit,” Drake says. 

It’s a tonal shift surprising enough for Damian to open his eyes again. He turns his head slowly, feeling like he’s running on a lag, and sees Drake looking in the rearview mirror intently.

Drake’s eyes move to meet Damian’s, and then refocus on the road. His mouth has turned down with some unspecified negative emotion. “I’m gonna drive like an idiot for a second. Sorry.”

Damian’s lack of comprehension must come across, because Drake gives the mirror another quick glance and elaborates, “I think we have a tail. I should be able to lose them.”

Then he jerks the wheel sideways, cutting into the next lane and squeaking through just in time to get through the light before it turns. Damian is jostled, his elbow cracking into the door, but he bites his tongue and focuses on not letting himself rock back and forth. He’s already shown just how poorly he’s coping, but engaging in such blatant self-soothing behavior feels like a line he shouldn’t cross.

Drake is normally a fine driver, in comparison with the rest of Damian’s siblings. Unlike Stephanie and Jason, who both drive in a fashion on-par with the average demon-possessed Gotham taxi driver, Drake doesn’t use the Batmobile as a vehicle to express his inner turmoil and insanity. On a good day, he’s even an acceptable replacement for Richard. 

Today, he makes Damian regret leaving the house this morning. Drake marks a harrowing path through side streets, cramped parking lots, and the crush of lunchtime traffic. Ten minutes later, they’re pulling into the parking garage below Drake’s apartment building, with Drake satisfied that they’ve lost the car that had been pursuing them.

Damian isn’t convinced that Drake wasn’t just trying to terrorize him. Talia would never be sloppy enough to let Drake notice her tailing him.

Either way, the ordeal is over. The parking garage blocks out the worst of the brightness of the day, and it stops the drizzle of rain from hitting the windshield as well.

After Drake parks the car, he pulls the keys out of the ignition and says, voice low and even but still betraying that he has no clue how to deal with Damian, “We’re here. Are you up for walking?”

Damian reaches down and picks up his backpack and phone, then opens his door. His actions speak for him; Drake doesn’t demand a verbal answer.

They get in the elevator, and are thankfully not joined by anyone else. Drake messes around on his phone for a couple seconds, typing texts more quickly than Damian’s tired eyes can follow.

Damian turns his gaze down to the toes of his shoes and waits.

The elevator stops. As they exit onto Drake’s floor, Damian trails along behind his brother, feeling weird and out-of-place. This has never happened before. Drake and Damian have always done everything in their respective powers to keep themselves from becoming sole caretaker of the other, but Drake’s carting Damian along with him like this happens all the time.

Drake digs in his pocket for his keys, which he’s somehow misplaced somewhere between the parking garage and his front door. He finally pulls them out of his pocket with a jangle, and shoves one into the lock. 

Damian follows Drake into the apartment and stops when Drake’s feet in front of him stop.

“Welcome,” Drake says with no bravado whatsoever.

Damian lifts his head long enough to glance around and take in the living room--two long white couches, large unshuttered windows lining one wall, a TV mounted on another--before dropping his chin again. It’s too bright in here. He doesn’t want to sit on the couch, either, because the fabric looks scratchy.

Drake stands still for a moment, leaving them in silence. Then he regains his will to power the conversation and says, hesitant, “Um, I was gonna do casework in my room. If you want, you could help look over some files for me. Or you could just…chill.”

He gives up on Damian giving him a response and just starts walking away, heading down the hall and passing a couple doors before opening one into a very sparsely decorated bedroom. It’s dimmer in here, with the curtains drawn. Besides a desk, a chair, a bed, and a lamp, it’s pretty empty. The sheets and blankets are in a heap in the center of the unmade mattress, and the only sign of real life is a sleeping bag left unrolled on the floor next to the dresser.

Noticing that Damian’s taken in the depressing scene, Drake says, “I don’t really stay here often. So.” He slings his backpack onto the desk and pulls out a couple of manila folders, then his laptop. “Those sheets are clean, I just haven’t gotten around to making the bed.”

Damian perches on the edge of the mattress, letting his backpack fall onto the bed behind him. Drake turns on the lamp. Thankfully, the soft glow doesn’t hurt Damian’s head too badly.

Drake tosses a file about Allison Price’s case onto the bed for Damian to sift through, and he asks Damian to go through a pile of about twenty different suspects and decide which ones seem like kidnappers. Then he opens his laptop and puts on his headphones and forgets that Damian exists. 

Slowly, Damian shifts to curl up against the mountain of unused blankets and sheets, and attempts to focus on the sheets of paper in front of him. The texture of his uniform still bothers him a little bit, but it’s more manageable now that he doesn’t have other sensory inputs torturing him. Besides Drake clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth every couple of minutes, the room is silent.

The task that Drake has set him up with is juvenile, but its repetitive nature soothes him. Damian begins to sort the suspect profiles into gender, age, and class groups using the information on each of them that Drake has dredged up. 

A couple of the faces are familiar. He narrows his eyes at one man in particular, wondering why his photo stands out to Damian. It’s not until fifteen minutes later, after he’s moved on to other profiles, that he places the face as the one of the man who had shared his umbrella with Damian in the school pickup loop.

Damian shuffles back to the profile in question and scans over it. He’s mostly curious as to what makes him so suspicious. According to Drake, this is a stretch, and he only put the guy in the pile because he’s been spotted on Gotham Academy grounds before and he doesn’t seem to be the guardian of any currently enrolled student. That doesn’t mean he isn’t an aunt or an uncle or even a good friend of someone who does have a kid enrolled. Next to the others--men with prior convictions of embezzlement, attempted murder, assault--he doesn’t appear to be much of a threat.

Something about him is still a little bit weird to Damian. He remembers how nervous he’d gotten talking to that guy, which could mean nothing. Damian hasn’t historically been the best judge of character.

He puts him in the top five most likely suspects, bumping someone else out of the group, and finds the courage to clear his throat and speak up.

“I’ve seen this one,” he says.

Drake looks over his shoulder. He pulls his headphones off. “What?”

Damian holds up the piece of paper with the man’s photo paperclipped to it. “He talked to me when I was waiting after school for someone to pick me up.”

Drake nods. “I’ve been trying to find if he’s related to any enrolled students. He doesn’t have any priors.”

“He was…” Damian doesn’t know how to express what the man made him feel. It feels stupid. 

“Did he creep you out?”

“I suppose.” Damian’s shoulders start to climb around his ears. He regrets speaking up. “Richard saw him too. You could ask him.”

“Okay…” Drake lifts his headphones back up onto his head, leaving one ear half-covered as he signals he wants this diversion to end. “Like, was he weird to you because he expected you to talk to him like a normal person, or--?”

“Forget it,” Damian snaps. He shouldn’t have said anything. He flips to the next person in the pile. Drake gives him a weird look and turns back to his computer.

An hour later, Damian sits up a little and rubs at the blanket lines on his cheek and holds out the stack with the most likely suspects on the top. 

Drake turns and accepts them with an outstretched hand. With the other hand, he pulls his headphones off of one ear. “Thanks. I keep getting dragged away from this to deal with the WE hack stuff.”

Damian blinks, surprised at being acknowledged for such a menial task, and then nods. He clears his throat, relieved that his voice responds when he opens his mouth to say, “Mizoguchi told me that Allison was watched during her second period class. I can show you the camera feed to check.”

Drake’s eyebrows raise. “Really?”

Damian scoots towards the edge of the bed, hesitating when he realizes he doesn’t know the information without a reference picture. Recognizing the same issue, Drake turns back to his computer and pulls up an intricate map of Gotham Academy’s grounds. 

Damian points to the spot that was in Maps’s notebook. Drake clicks on the camera there and pulls up the archive of its footage, shoulders slumping in relief. “You’re a lifesaver.”

It’s the closest to a compliment that Damian’s gotten from Drake. It’s direct and doesn’t appear to be a joke. Damian retracts his hand, pulling it back to his side, feeling satisfied with himself despite the fact that at this very moment, a group of his classmates are gathering to anticipate the hilarious planned spectacle of him being publicly rejected by someone he thought was a friend.

“I can drive you home,” Drake says, looking at his screen instead of at Damian. “With traffic, we’ll be back around the same time as normal.”

Damian nods. 

“We can get food on the way.” Drake closes his laptop and looks over at Damian. “I skipped lunch.”

“I did as well,” Damian says.

“Batburger?”

“I suppose,” Damian says, reluctant to admit that it’s a good idea. Drake almost smiles.

At four-forty-three the next morning, Damian’s awoken from a dead sleep by the feeling of his phone vibrating. He props himself up on one elbow, scrubbing at his eyes to clear his vision, but they stay too blurry for him to see the name on his phone screen. Calls in the middle of the night like this usually mean that someone got into trouble on patrol, so he can’t afford to ignore it.

“Hello?” he mumbles.

Silence answers him.

“...Hello?” Damian repeats, needing the family member on the other end to hurry this up. His sleep has been restless the past week even without interruptions like this.

Damian waits for almost ten more seconds before he starts to hear that breathing again. His blood turns cold, sending a shiver across his skin, and he sits up a little more to try and hear it more clearly.

Now in the dark, all alone save for a sleeping Titus at the foot of his bed, Damian can hear the sound much more clearly. A long breath goes in, and then a heavier, deeper one rushes out. He realizes, with a funny feeling in his gut, that the voice is much too deep for it to be Talia’s without some kind of electric distortion.

“Is someone there?” Damian asks sharply. He scrubs his eyes again before checking the screen. The number is masked like all the rest of them have been. 

The person on the other end huffs a short laugh, the sound scraping. It’s unfamiliar and it only intensifies the goosebumps on Damian’s arms.

“If you want something, just say it,” he snaps; it’s his knee-jerk reaction to feeling fear start to creep up on him. “You’re wasting both of our time.”

The breathing just resumes its regular pattern, but more labored than before. Then the person says, “Alright.”

It isn’t Talia. 

“Good morning,” they say, a curl of a smile in their tone.

Damian’s stomach has been ripped up through his throat, and he’s choking on it. Whoever that is, it isn’t his mother. 

He pries the phone away from his ear and taps at the screen to hang up, severing the connection before he can make any sounds of panic. With the call over, the screen goes dark, plunging him back into pitch black.

It was never Talia. In a cataclysmically bad stroke of luck, her visit has lined up with this prank caller. The calls must be from the person who hacked WE--the person who Drake and Bruce have both been failing to corner for a week. Because they think the hacker hadn’t targeted any specific information, the tech team at WE is focusing more on cybersecurity updates instead of finding the person responsible.

Because Damian’s been so desperate to hear from Talia, to the point that he misplaced his better judgment, he’s hindered an investigation. The voice on the phone must want something specific from Damian, and Damian’s made everything worse by being a complete idiot.

Damian stares at the fuzzy nothing of his unlit room. His lungs start to burn as he remains frozen in his spiraling thoughts.

Titus pushes his nose against Damian’s hand, and Damian jumps . 

His phone begins to ring again. 

Damian can’t be near the device anymore. He’s late in listening to Bruce’s order, but he won’t talk to the person on the other end again. As his mind continues to whirl, recounting all of the past times he’s gotten calls like that without knowing who was on the other end, Damian scoots sideways and climbs down off the side of his bed to find someone to tell the situation to.

Titus catches on, hopping down after Damian and walking alongside him so that his back rubs up against Damian’s palm as the two of them continue. Only thanks to this help staying in his own body does Damian make it down a flight of stairs and then the elevator to the Cave without falling to pieces.

As he expected, most of his family is still wide awake and moving around the Cave at this hour. It’s a fairly normal scene. Bruce and Jason are arguing over something on the Batcomputer’s screen, and Kane is trying to contribute to their argument while Alfred is actively inserting an IV needle into her arm. Stephanie and Cassandra are nowhere to be found. Richard isn’t either, but that’s not out of the ordinary.

What gives Damian pause, though, is the fact that Drake isn’t in the middle of the shouted discussion (the details of which Damian still hasn’t picked up on). Instead, Drake has stopped only a few steps from his bike, arms slack, not looking at anything in particular.

Alfred has spotted Damian already. Kane stops yelling for just a moment, presumably at some kind of nudge from Alfred, and turns her head so that Damian is pinned by the elevator by her gaze.

“Kiddo! Fancy seeing you here,” she says, doing a remarkable job of sounding nonchalant as she clearly only says this to get the attention of the other adults in the room.

Something’s wrong with Drake. This knowledge shakes Damian up even further. He doesn’t realize he’s stopped breathing again until Titus nips at the end of his sweatshirt sleeve and tugs him towards Bruce.

Damian looks in the direction he’s being dragged and finally notices that there’s a short loop of some of Bruce’s cowl footage going on the Batcomputer. As a backdrop to Jason and Bruce’s argument, the monitor shows the moment that Bruce spotted a body, brutally beaten, left in a pool of blood.

“B,” Jason suddenly exclaims, and his hand juts out to shut the monitor off, “your brat is--”

“Damian,” Bruce says, already striding towards Damian and doing his best to block Damian’s view of the computer with his body. 

It’s too late. Damian’s already recognized Allison Price. 

More than a week without a ransom demand or anything--it was perhaps statistically likely that this would be the outcome. Nothing could have softened the blow for Damian, though. The image of her slack face burns into his vision.

Drake’s traumatized demeanor now makes complete sense, as does the tremor in Jason’s hands. Now that Damian’s been pulled further into the Cave by Titus, he can see an uncharacteristic tension in Kane and Alfred, too.

Bruce stops a couple steps away. He pats Titus to tell the dog to get out of his way, which Titus obeys, and then Bruce crouches, now blocking Damian’s sight of everyone else in the Cave. “Damian,” he says, hands on Damian’s forearms, “what’re you doing up?”

Titus loops around and then stops behind Damian’s knees, pressing him nearer to his father. The comfort isn’t as welcome as it was even a few seconds ago; suddenly, Damian’s problem seems so much less important than what his family has gone through tonight. Considering that someone from Damian’s school has just been found dead, he has no place to be complaining about a series of spam calls that he brought upon himself.

Damian’s silence isn’t convincing Bruce that things are alright. His father asks, “Did we wake you?”

Damian shakes himself, breaking himself forcibly from his thoughts. He clears his throat. “I had a bad dream,” he lies, and then deflects as cleanly as he can: “Is Drake alright?”

Bruce turns his head, remembering that Damian isn’t the only problem in the room. Under his breath, Bruce mutters something like a curse and his attention slides to Alfred next. “Ask Dick to drive down.”

“Of course, sir.”

Bruce nods, spares Damian one last look, and then reprioritizes.

This is what Damian wanted, to be put aside so that he could work on snapping himself out of his childish panic. It still stings to watch Bruce abandon him by straightening and striding towards where Drake has been listlessly trying to remove his gloves for a full minute now.

He senses that Alfred’s approaching, having left Kane’s side to approach the phone in the other corner. As Alfred nears, Damian hears himself say, “Calling Richard is unnecessary. I’ll be going back to bed.”

Alfred’s stride doesn’t falter, not even for a second. “Master Dick is perfectly capable of declining the invitation if he isn’t interested.”

Damian considers many melodramatic courses of action, ranging from cutting the telephone line to breaking out into shrill screaming. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees that Bruce has finally gotten Drake to sit down and accept a weighted blanket around his shoulders. Jason’s allowing Kane to pour water over his head to get dried blood out of his hairline, a process that doesn’t look altogether pleasant. His family’s recuperating, in their way. Damian isn’t helping by standing here and forcing Alfred to pay attention to him. 

When Richard’s invited over like this, it’s because Bruce is in over his head in the comforting-his-children department--it reinforces that Drake and Jason are the ones who need real attention, and as always, Damian’s getting in the way.

“I’m going to go back to bed,” Damian reiterates, taking a small step back. His heel finds Titus’s side. Titus, who’s been dozing on the floor for a few moments, lifts his head at the change of pace. 

“I see,” Alfred says, though he doesn’t sound as though Damian’s put him at ease. “If I understood Master Bruce earlier, it appears you and Tim won’t be attending school today, so take this time to catch up on some sleep.”

Damian nods, though he doubts he’s going to be able to. He spares one more glance around the Cave--at Bruce with his hand on Drake’s shoulder, at Drake now sans mask with no recognition whatsoever on his face, at Kane using some scavenged butterfly clips to pin back Jason’s hair while she figures out how to bandage his forehead--and then Damian turns and goes back to the elevator, Titus trotting after him.

The house is utterly still, especially in comparison to the tense shuffle in the Cave. Duke should still be asleep for another few hours, and Cassandra and Stephanie are nowhere to be found. It seems Damian will be alone up here until his family leaves the Cave for the night.

His phone is still on his bed upstairs. Damian doesn’t want to go anywhere near it, so he instead diverts his path to the sitting room and he tucks himself into a spot near the arm of the couch. Titus hops up next to him, bumping his nose into the side of Damian’s leg over and over until Damian starts petting him and remembers that he’s supposed to be breathing.

Even though the faint creaking and settling sounds of the house are familiar, they aren’t comforting this morning. Damian stays curled in a tight, tense ball until the room starts to lighten with a dull gray beginning of a sunrise. The sky is a golden-pink color before Damian’s tired eyes fall closed and stay that way.

Chapter Text

When Damian next wakes up, he’s not alone. Richard has sprawled himself across the other end of the couch. He’s flat on his back and snoring, one arm slung over his eyes to block out the light, one of his feet pushing against Damian’s thigh. Titus has disappeared; if the light outside is anything to judge by, it’s because the dog is terrorizing squirrels outside.

As soon as Damian shifts, uncurling from his squished sleeping position, Richard startles awake too. He’s only this jumpy when he’s under intense stress, and this knowledge is why Damian can tell that Richard’s greeting smile is very, very forced.

Guilt pushes down on Damian’s throat. If he had just stayed upstairs, Richard could have gotten real sleep on a real mattress, in his own apartment. In general, Richard has started making intermittent complaints about his back and how he’s aging too quickly, and Damian has only made things worse.

At the same time, Damian’s intensely, selfishly relieved that Richard showed up. It means that forgetting Damian at school had truly been a fluke. 

(…Unless Richard only showed up to worry about Drake, in which case Damian’s previous point doesn’t hold up.)

Richard pushes himself up into a sitting position, yawning hard enough that his jaw pops. “Morning,” he mumbles, rubbing at his eyes. 

Damian says, “Good morning.”

Richard lowers his hands, fixing his eyes on Damian. His smile softens. Damian takes in the expression as well as he can, straining to figure out what’s going on in Richard’s head. 

“Let’s see if breakfast has happened yet, huh?” Richard says. “I’m starving.”

Damian moves to stand up, but both he and Richard see at the same time that Damian’s ankle is visibly swollen, even under his sock. Hurrying downstairs earlier this morning hasn’t done it any favors.

Damian can think of no way to hide his foot in time before Richard scoots closer and asks, voice losing all semblance of grogginess, “Is that from when you were in Blüd?”

There’s no point in lying. Damian responds only with a scowl.

“You said you were gonna take it easy on that.” 

The sound of disappointment in Richard’s voice immediately worsens the stomachache that’s been threatening to overtake Damian since the phone call this morning, but he refuses to be cowed. “I am taking it easy,” he says, glaring at the foot in question. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“It kind of looks like it hurts.”

“Then your eyes are just as bad as your memory.”

“Dami!” Richard gasps, as though the jab actually caught him off-guard, but it quickly morphs into a laugh that’s warm and more real than his smile had been earlier. Damian untenses--he’d poked at that old amnesiac wound without thinking. The topic is something they rarely bring up, even though the remnants of that time are still all around them.

Richard keeps speaking, pulling Damian out of his brief reverie. “Maybe you’re right. Totally not gonna stop me from finding you an ice pack, though. Hang on.”

“That’s unnecessary,” Damian tries to protest, but Richard has already committed to vaulting over the back of the couch to go to the kitchen.

A few minutes later, Richard returns with the same ice pack Cassandra had strapped onto Damian yesterday morning. Damian accepts it to put it on himself.

Rather than let them sit in silence, Richard crouches in front of Damian, feet planted on the floor, and says gently, “Were you and Allison close?” 

Damian rips the velcro apart and slides the boot-shaped ice pack over his foot, not quite managing to make the process painless. “We were acquainted. I only spoke to her a couple of times.”

“You can still be upset.”

Damian fastens the strap and then readjusts it with a rasp of velcro, pulling it more snugly against his foot. “I’ll be fine.”

“If you wanna talk about whatever’s going on with you lately, then--”

“Nothing is wrong with me.” Damian can’t stop the defensive words before they’re leaping out of his mouth. “You have enough problems to deal with without imagining new ones. Doesn’t Drake need you right now, anyway?”

For a moment, Richard is quiet. Damian raises his eyes and finds Richard just looking at him, maybe a bit surprised by the outburst but more analytical than anything. 

“Tim’s gonna be asleep for a while. Besides, Alfie said you had a rough night, too.” Richard looks down at the ice pack, checking to make sure it’s in place correctly even though Damian would never mess that kind of thing up. “I’m always going to worry about you, Dami. Even if you say nothing’s up.”

Damian searches for some kind of resentment in Richard’s tone. He doesn’t find anything.

Richard says, “You want a piggyback to the kitchen?”

Throughout all of his insecurity, Damian has been trying to figure out how to ask for a hug without asking since early this morning, so this is a logical course of action. He nods in agreement.

Richard turns his back to Damian, and Damian loops his arms around Richard’s neck. With a grunt of effort, Richard stands and hoists Damian with him. After a couple of steps, Richard hooks his arms under Damian’s knees to keep him up a little better and says, “You’re growing so fast. Sheesh.”

Damian rests his cheek against the back of his brother’s shoulder. Richard’s making a show of it, but it’s not hard for him to lift Damian at all. The reassurance that there’s someone strong enough to take care of him for the next little while helps to soothe the still-jagged edges of fear that are left over from the phone call this morning.

He could mention that he has a lead on the WE hacking, now. If he wants to fess up to ignoring Bruce’s orders, it’d be best to get Richard on his side and then figure out a solution with him. The prospect is tempting--Richard always knows what to do. Better still, Richard loves being on any side of an argument opposing Bruce.

Between one step and the next, though, Damian thinks better of this. Richard has already gone out of his way by coming to Gotham, and Damian’s mere presence makes Richard anxious if his time as Ric Grayson taught Damian anything. The fact that Richard fell asleep on the couch with Damian instead of in his own room shouldn’t give Damian the illusion that Damian is at all pleasant to deal with.

They’re just prank calls, anyway. And any tightening of the security net will prevent Talia from sending more emails, if that’s what she decides to do.

Damian will figure it out on his own. For now, though, he just hangs on and trusts that Richard will handle what needs to happen to get the two of them breakfast.

After the two of them have eaten, Bruce emerges from the Cave and gives both of them an update on what’s happened. 

Gotham Academy has canceled classes indefinitely while the leadership figures out a heightened security solution for the next few weeks. Students staying in the dorms are on lockdown, and commuter students have been told to stay away from campus.

With this imparted, Bruce leaves and Richard goes with him to check on Drake, leaving Damian on his own. 

Damian knows that he should get back to his phone to check in with Maps and Olive before they get too worried about him. Before he does that, though, he needs to clear something up. He needs to see Talia and confirm that she’s not connected to the hack at all. If Gotham Academy is under such high security, it’s possible that she’ll be near Wayne Manor again instead.

He opens the front door. Titus immediately runs to meet him so that he can be included. Damian clips his leash on and starts on the walk, but Damian only limps about ten feet from the door before a hand clamps down on the scruff of his sweatshirt.

“Woah there,” says Jason’s voice. 

Damian twists, snarling. “Get off of me!”

“Nope, nope.” Jason pulls him back towards the house. Damian stumbles over his feet, unprepared to be walked backward. “Wait for me to get my shoesies on, brat. You’re not wandering around unattended.”

His heel hits the threshold of the door. Jason stops pulling him backward, but doesn’t let go of Damian’s sweatshirt as he finishes shoving his feet into shoes that are a few sizes too small because they definitely belong to Richard.

“Didn’t B tell you that we’re on a buddy system for now?” Jason asks, unimpressed.

Damian scowls. He looks over his shoulder at where Jason is, finding his brother with dark bags under his eyes and several band-aids on his forehead covering the injury Kane had dressed for him earlier this morning. 

“I don’t need a buddy,” Damian says.

“Well, I do, and you just volunteered,” Jason says. He yells back into the house, “Demon and I are leaving!”

Damian tries again to walk away, but Jason’s hand keeps him solidly in place, so he has to wait for another ten seconds before Jason decides the shoes are on as much as they’re going to be. 

The two of them begin to walk, Damian trying to outpace Jason and Jason not letting him do that. As they go down the driveway, Titus begins to tug, straining to pick up a stick on the cobblestone. Damian loosens the leash a little and lets him at it.

“You and Timmy aren’t wandering around by yourselves until we catch this guy,” Jason says, addressing the dark glare that’s still on Damian’s face. “Listen, I don’t wanna babysit you either, believe me.”

“Then don’t,” Damian grouses. “I can handle myself.”

“Sure.” Jason sounds unconvinced. His voice is uncharacteristically solemn when he says, “You’re a potential target. Dickie is stressed enough without you fucking around and getting kidnapped.”

“I won’t get kidnapped.” They’ve reached the end of the driveway. He punches in the code to open the gate, and grinds his teeth as Jason trails along after him like the world’s most irritating shadow. “Leave me alone.”

“Nah.” Damian shouldn’t be surprised by Jason’s obstinance; the only thing Jason seems to enjoy more than annoying Bruce is annoying Damian. “It’s nice out. I’m enjoying the weather.”

The day is overcast and a harsh wind whips drizzling rain into Damian’s face. Damian hunches further into his hoodie and keeps walking, trying to focus so that he’ll notice when he’s in Talia’s line of sight. 

“Have you been in contact with my mother?” Damian asks, after a couple of minutes. The sidewalk curling around the neighborhood only has a few other die-hard dog walkers out, and none of them are Talia.

Jason actually looks over at Damian at that, the question surprising him for some reason. He says slowly, “No…? Should I be?”

Damian sighs. 

Titus trots along with the stick in his mouth, as though he has very important business to attend to. He pauses to sniff a couple spots before choosing one to begin digging at. Damian and Jason slow to a stop for him.

“Not necessarily,” Damian finally says. “If you’d like to see her before she leaves Gotham again, though, now’s your chance.”

“She’s in town?” Jason asks.

“Yes.”

“When’d you see her?”

Damian keeps his mouth shut this time. It’s too embarrassing to admit that he hasn’t proven himself worthy of even a quick chat--but if Jason can make contact with Talia, maybe he’ll at least give Damian an idea of what Damian’s doing wrong. Then Damian can fix it for next time, without having to break Bruce’s temporary rule against going out unattended in civilian wear.

“Another helpful info sesh,” Jason says, exasperated. “Thanks so much.”

“I didn’t realize you wanted your hand held through this,” Damian says. 

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a little shit?”

“Grow up.”

Titus has lost interest in the half-dug hole he’s been snuffling around in. Damian and Jason finish their walk in silence.

They return to the Manor. Jason ditches Damian as soon as they’re over the threshold of the house, which is a relief. Damian goes up to his room and showers before he steels himself and checks his phone. There are fifteen missed calls but only one new email. 

Dread is becoming so familiar to him at this point that he barely registers its presence. Damian sends an obligatory “I’m not dead” text to Maps and Olive, and once he’s made sure that the same is true of them, he confronts the more nerve-wracking notifications on his phone.

Damian opens the email and watches with ever-increasing nausea as the photo embedded therein loads top-down.

He sees overcast sky, the wrought-iron fence that rings his home, and then himself, walking close to Jason’s side. It’s not too close, so Damian hadn’t been in real proximity to Talia’s camera this time, but that’s not the scariest part.

The bottom two inches of the photo load, and Damian sees Titus with a sharp red X drawn over him, a hasty digital drawing that has Damian immediately lightheaded with a rush of fear.

He drops his phone and bolts. His ankle shrieks with pain as he pounds down the hallway, and he hears a surprised noise from Bruce as Damian dodges around him to hurry down the stairs. 

“Titus,” he says, trying to sound like an authority. His voice wobbles. Usually, Titus spends the afternoons roaming around the house and isn’t left outside, but that could always change. If Titus had been left out on the grounds on his own, then he could’ve been hurt.

It doesn’t seem like Talia, to hurt one of Damian’s animals, but he also knows better than to underestimate her--he’d thought she wouldn’t want anyone to kill him, and that got him stabbed through the chest. She’s capable of anything, and this just pushes Damian to run faster towards the living room where Titus’s bed is.

“Damian?” Bruce calls, his feet starting to follow Damian down the stairs.

Damian doesn’t respond. His mind is focused on one objective only. “Titus,” he yells, a little louder. He swings around the doorframe into the living room a bit too sharply, and his ankle buckles. As he begins to wipe out, his shoulder colliding with the other side of the doorframe, he sees that Titus’s bed is empty.

Chin-first, he slams into the ground in the living room. Exclamations rise from the occupants of the couch mix with the new shrill ringing in Damian’s ears--after Damian’s vision clears a bit, he sees that it’s Duke and Richard rising to meet him, both alarmed by Damian’s less-than-graceful entrance. 

“Where is,” Damian starts to say, but all of the air has been knocked out of his lungs. He pushes himself up out of his prone position, trying to get up to his feet again. Halfway up, he finds that his ankle won’t take his weight anymore. 

Richard has vaulted over the back of the couch, and Duke’s already doing the same to meet Damian by the door. While Richard slides an arm around Damian’s middle, keeping him upright but preventing him from setting his bad foot back down, Duke asks, “Where’d you last see him?”

“He’s supposed to be here,” Damian gasps. 

“What’s going on?” Bruce’s voice asks from behind him, as though Damian is capable of answering right now. 

“We’re finding Titus,” Duke says, thankfully taking Damian at his word. “I’ll take upstairs.” Damian watches him exchange a look with both Bruce and Richard before ducking around their huddle and taking off down the hall back in the direction that Damian came from.

“I’ll check the ground floor,” Bruce says, already leaving in the opposite direction of Duke.

Damian takes a determined step towards the door that connects the living room to the kitchen, forcing Richard to follow along if he wants to keep supporting Damian’s weight. “Back door,” Damian says, despite the nausea coiling in his stomach. “If he’s outside…”

“We’ll find him,” Richard soothes, not breaking stride as he rubs a hand up and down one of Damian’s arms. “Wanna get on my back? I’ll carry you.”

For the second time today, Damian doesn’t put up any resistance to this idea. He wordlessly turns and latches on once Richard’s crouched next to him, and then the two of them take off at a much faster speed without Damian’s ankle slowing them down.

Richard takes them through the kitchen and shoves the back door open. He steps out onto the patio without bothering to put shoes on, and continues on in a light jog even once they’ve hit the grass. 

“Titus!” Damian yells. He doesn’t see the dog anywhere, even in the broad daylight. The grounds are large, but Titus should hear him. If Titus could run, he’d be running to meet Damian right now. 

He calls out two more times, to no result. After that, his breath is gone and he’s holding on tight enough to his brother that he must be causing Richard respiratory issues comparable to his own. How could Damian have been so stupid to think that he could just ignore all of this and hope that it went away? He’s had Titus since he was six weeks old, and now…

“Dami, we’ll find him,” Richard repeats. It’s a platitude, borne of Richard not knowing how to handle Damian’s theatrics right now. “It’s going to be okay.”

Damian drops his head down to hide his face against Richard’s back, but before he can respond aloud, the kitchen door opens behind them. He hears Duke call, “Damian, I got him!” and then he hears paws clicking on the tiled patio.

He looks up quickly enough to make his head spin. The dog is trotting towards Damian, having noticed that Damian’s exhibiting many of the symptoms that Titus learned about during his stint in therapy-dog training. 

Titus is safe. Things are alright.

Richard loosens his hold underneath Damian’s legs, and Damian slides down to the ground. He ends up on his knees, his arms around Titus’s neck instead of Richard’s. Damian doesn’t let himself hold on too tight, because he doesn’t want to scare Titus, but he thinks he might fall apart if he lets go too fast.

Titus pants, his tail slowly wagging in the bottom half of Damian’s blurring vision.

“He was in Jason’s room. Snoring.” Duke keeps his tone light. Damian sees one of Duke’s hands pat Titus’s back. “Lazy guy.”

“Thank you,” Damian says, his voice choked up. 

Duke lowers himself down and sits on the ground just a couple feet away from Damian and Titus. It lessens the number of people towering over Damian, which is welcome. “No sweat. I’d be concerned if my dog chose Jay over me, too.”

Richard says, “I’ll go tell B we found him. Don’t put weight on that ankle, Dami. I’ll be back.” He jogs around their little group on the ground and disappears inside.

Duke leans himself back, propped up on one palm. Now that Damian isn’t actively panicking, he seems to decide it’s okay to ask, “What got you worried?”

It’s a fair question. With Titus resting his chin on Damian’s shoulder, he feels more in-control and able to lie, “A few of my classmates’ dogs have been found dead.”

“What?” Duke says, voice pitching up, “Really?”

“I don’t want him to be alone outside.” Damian digs his fingers deeper into Titus’s fur.

“No wonder. That’s fucking scary.” Duke shifts. His hand pats Damian’s shoulder. Duke is much more self-assured when it comes to casual contact than Bruce is--this doesn’t feel uncomfortable or forced at all. It’s reassuring, actually, to know that Duke legitimately sympathizes with the utter terror Damian has just recently been locked in. “Do you want me to help figure out who’s doing it?”

Damian says sharply, forgetting to manage his tone, “I can handle it myself.”

“...Sure.” Duke backs off, both physically and emotionally. The spot where he used to be touching Damian’s shoulder now feels very cold. “Just trying to help.”

Damian regrets rejecting Duke’s offer, but the entire premise of this conversation has been a lie that he refuses to let spin out of control. It’s better that Duke experience this temporary rudeness, rather than go on a wild goose chase for a case that doesn’t exist.

Despite this rationale, Titus pulls out of Damian’s hold. It seems he’s just as disappointed in Damian as Damian is.

Damian is nearly asleep that night when something clicks in his brain.

Maps had said, back when she laid out what happened to Allison, that the kidnapper had been trying to get Allison to talk to him on the phone. In Damian’s haze of exhaustion and stupidity, he’d set that aside and forgotten it. He had had his heart set on the calls being from Talia.

He knows now that the phone calls aren’t from his mother. Now that he’s lying in the dark and his mind is getting on the right track, he realizes that if the phone calls have been coming from the person who hacked WE, then the emails should be from them, too. The photos, taken from someone able to watch Damian from such a short distance, weren’t from Talia either. She would have no reason to choose that particular inbox, at this particular time of year.

The man on the phone, the one who calls Damian just to breathe into the receiver, could have hurt Titus. 

He reaches out in the dark, needing to double-check that Titus is still there. Throughout the afternoon and evening, Damian had braved concerned looks from most members of his family to keep Titus at his side at all times, and when he’d laid down to go to bed, Titus had been curled up on his mattress. Damian’s hand sweeps through a terrifying few feet of emptiness before he makes contact with warm fur.

He keeps his hand there, palm pressed to Titus’s side to feel him breathe. With this reassurance, Damian’s mind skips ahead to something else to be afraid about: he’s never gotten any concrete proof that it was ever Talia keeping such a close eye on him. 

Damian’s naive desperation for his mother to want to see him--it’s put others in danger. Someone unidentified has been on campus; the lockdown was just one sign of that. Allison Price being found dead is another sign of that.

If Damian had clued in faster, could he have saved her?

He feels Titus’s nose nudging at his arm. Damian lets out a breathy, terrified sound and covers his head with his arms to get some space to just think. 

Titus shifts, standing up and jumping off the bed before Damian can stop him. Getting someone to help is what Titus is trained to do when Damian begins to panic like this, but Damian doesn’t want him to leave. He opens his mouth to call Titus back, but no words come out.

By the time he realizes his voice has failed him, Titus is long gone. Damian hiccups, the spasm of his diaphragm sharp enough to hurt, and scoots back against the headboard to try to ground himself. 

With the wood at his back, Damian stays huddled there and shakes and desperately tries to remember the breathing exercises that Richard’s tried so hard to teach him. He needs to make sure Titus is safe--he needs to find Drake and tell him what’s going on with this case--he needs to apologize to the Price family for his idiocy. 

Damian digs his fingernails deep into his scalp and sobs.

Something touches his shoulder. The hand is accompanied by a voice, saying words that Damian can’t make out. But he hears their tone, and it’s just as low as the one belonging to the person who was on the phone.

Damian doesn’t know how they got into his house, but it might’ve even been easy, with how inattentive Damian’s been. He doesn’t think twice--he just slides a knife out from under the pillow nearest him and slashes at the intruder.

The blade doesn’t make contact. A much larger hand closes around his wrist and pins it still, stopping the trajectory of the knife.

Though he knows he won’t be able to speak coherent words, Damian opens his mouth and screams to alert anyone in the house who might be asleep. They need to wake up. Damian won’t let this person get them. 

“Damian,” he hears, a single word of this person’s continued stream of nonsense finally getting through. “Stop.”

Damian thrashes and claws in the direction of the voice. His knuckles catch on someone’s throat, which he knows because their next words are cut off into a choke. Then Damian tosses his knife to his free hand and tries again to stab the man who’s trying to subdue him.

He almost hits them this time. His knife nicks something that feels like the fabric of a t-shirt, but it doesn’t meet skin. On his return swipe, when he draws the knife back to strike a third time, his left wrist is also grabbed, and the hand holding it twists until Damian’s forced to drop his weapon.

Damian reels, considering his options for escape. He gasps for air that refuses to stay in his lungs.

“You’re safe--it’s okay, you’re at home--”

The more that the person talks, the more familiar they sound. 

“It’s just me,” the voice says, and Damian’s eyes finally focus enough to see his father in front of him.

Damian slows his movements, letting his arms go limp in Bruce’s hold. He looks around the room, searching out dark corners where the intruder could have gone. All he sees is Bruce and Titus, the latter of whom is waiting by the edge of the bed to be invited up.

“Hey,” his father says, and eases himself onto a more secure spot on the bed in front of Damian. Bruce is solid as a rock, not a trace of fear in his face. He soothes, “It’s just me.”

Damian blinks, still struggling to understand. 

Bruce’s thumbs trace soft lines on Damian’s wrists, which are still trapped in his grip so Damian won’t try to attack him again. “It was just a bad dream,” he says.

Damian’s chest heaves, pushing out another sob.

“I’m letting your arms go,” Bruce says, when Damian doesn’t say anything. He loosens his hold, and Damian pulls his hands back in, twisting his fingers together. Bruce asks, voice low, “Was it a bad dream?”

Damian hiccups. He keeps sitting still. Bruce is in his pajamas, hair tousled. He’s still waking up, but his eyes remain on Damian nonetheless.

Bruce asks, “Do you…want to talk about it?”

Damian keeps his mouth shut. This problem, this someone-keeps-calling-me problem, is entirely his fault. Bruce had told him not to answer strange phone calls, but Damian did anyway. And Damian’s capable of dealing with that himself, if he could just get a grip for a second.

Bruce reaches forward and his thumb wipes tears off of Damian’s face, and then he leans over and turns on the bedside lamp to cast both of them in a soft glow. Then he stills, visibly strategizing what he’s supposed to do next, as though Damian is a particularly well-armed group of opponents.

Then Bruce offers an arm out, opening a spot at his side for Damian to fill. 

Bruce rarely offers hugs to Damian. It’s a result of how prickly Damian was towards any kind of touch when he first arrived in Gotham--besides his mother, nobody touched Damian except to hurt him. Unlike Richard, who eventually recognized that Damian just needed to be acclimated to the practice, Bruce took the opposite approach and stopped making contact with Damian almost entirely. 

Given how rare this opportunity is, Damian has to take a moment to process the implications of the gesture before he scoots over and tucks himself into his father’s side. He hugs Bruce around the waist and presses his cheek to Bruce’s chest right above the spot where Damian recently slashed a slit into the fabric.

Bruce’s arm lowers down, and his hand slowly rubs Damian’s shoulder. Bruce is silent for a long time, long enough for Damian’s heart to stop pounding, before Bruce asks, “Was it about what happened with Titus?”

Damian looks down at the dog in question, who’s still expectantly waiting to be invited onto the bed. It would be an easy off-ramp from the conversation. It doesn’t matter about what’s easiest anymore, though; Damian needs to kick his detective work into high gear if he wants to catch the guy who’s been watching him for almost two weeks now.

“It was about the League,” Damian says, the lie coming to him easily. He pats the bed, and Titus jumps up, circling around to lay down with his back against Damian’s.

Bruce’s arm on his shoulders is a comforting weight, one that makes Damian feel a lot younger than he is. Not for the first time, Damian wishes he’d been better at being a son when he’d first arrived here. If he’d just been easier to love, Bruce might offer this kind of comfort more often.

“Did something specific set it off?”

Damian shakes his head, feeling the soft fabric of Bruce’s sleep shirt rub his skin. 

“Hmm,” Bruce says. His voice rumbles into the side of Damian’s head. “I’ve noticed that you haven’t been yourself lately. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

Damian finds the segue opportunity and pounces. He asks quietly, “Have you been in contact with my mother recently?”

Bruce’s hand pauses in the slow ups-and-downs it’s been doing on Damian’s shoulder. Damian holds his breath. Bringing up Talia is always a bit of a delicate balance around Bruce.

“I haven’t,” Bruce finally says. “Do you want to arrange a visit?”

“It’s not important,” Damian says, a sinking feeling in his gut. 

A pronounced frown is evident in Bruce’s responding grunt, but he doesn’t say anything more on the topic. He sits there, still and patient, until Damian’s eyes start to droop shut against his will.

“Are you not going on patrol tonight?” Damian mumbles, when he’s already into the dim twilight of being half-asleep.

Bruce lifts his hand to card his fingers through Damian’s hair, slow and steady. “A little later,” his chest rumbles. “This is my priority.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Damian says. He’s not even sure if the words fully leave him, though; he’s already drifting off.

Classes at Gotham Academy are officially canceled for the remainder of the week, to be resumed on Monday. This, combined with a couple of irregularities in the Wayne property’s security perimeter, means that Damian spends his Friday under house arrest. The extent of the excitement in the house is when he watches someone’s Instagram Live as Duke and Kane respond to a Poison Ivy copycat downtown. 

Other than that, he just lies on his bed with his foot elevated, trading out ice packs all day. The sprain doesn’t get much better, and neither does his cabin fever.

Saturday morning dawns and the day threatens to be just the same as the day before. His sleep was unreliable and difficult to find, and Damian thinks he’ll explode if he has to continue on like this. Things in the outside world are going on without him. 

For example, despite the clear and present danger to Gotham Academy’s campus, there’s no talk of the dance being canceled, which several people in Damian’s art club group chat seem to think is in poor taste, even for Gotham. Damian sees the dance as what it is: an opportunity to entrap the person who’s been watching him.

Damian needs a costume. Maps and Olive are dead-set on the three of them dressing up like members of the Justice League, with Maps as Batman and Olive as Wonder Woman. Damian reluctantly agreed to a Superman costume, having assumed that he could find some version of an authentic suit, but now Jon’s not answering his texts. He’s still in space, it seems.

Without a way to get out of the house in the near future, Damian’s willing to settle for any costume he can get for now. His first tactic to acquire a costume--raiding the many, many closets and storage boxes in the Manor--yields little result. Beyond giving Damian a distraction from his confinement to the home, the only costumes that turn up are much too small or far too out-of-date for Damian to even consider. Among his spoils are an ancient Gray Ghost costume that looks nearly three decades old, made for someone half Damian’s size; a collection of gymnastics leotards that must have been Richard’s at some point; and the cache of edibles that Drake thought he could hide in the crawlspace in his closet.

Three hours later, Damian is no closer to having a passable costume. That means it’s time for his backup plan, which will be made easier by the leverage he’s just picked up.

“Drake,” he says, kicking open the door to the library, “I need a Halloween costume.”

Drake is right where Damian thought he would be: in a contorted, sleepy pile on one end of the library’s couch, dozing off over his laptop. At Damian’s entrance, he startles up and nearly kicks his computer onto the floor. 

Now that he’s upright, it appears that he’s not quite bounced back from the intense reaction he’d had to Allison Price’s death. Damian is disgusted by the twinge of sympathy he feels. This’ll just make it easier to manipulate Drake, so it’s fine.

Drake recovers fairly quickly, scowling deeply and trying to act like he hadn’t been scared at all. “What are you talking about?”

“People often wear costumes to celebrate the holiday of Halloween,” Damian says. “What part of that is confusing to you?”

“No, I know--fuck, god. Obviously I know that.” Drake tries and fails to stifle a yawn. With his bleary eyes now watering, he continues, “I meant why do you need one? We’re all on patrol that night.”

“I’m attending the dance the night before. It’s still being held.”

Drake slowly reaches out and closes his laptop, clicking the lid closed. “No way is B still going to let you go.”

“He doesn’t need to know,” Damian counters. He reaches into the front pocket of his hoodie and pulls out the half-full gallon ziplock bag of all of the weed products he found in Drake’s room. Holding it aloft, he continues, “And you are going to help me keep it a secret.”

Drake’s eyes look like they’re going to pop out of his head. He shoves his laptop and a throw blanket off of his lap and staggers towards Damian. “Why the fuck were you in my room?”

“That’s not relevant,” Damian says. He steps back, dancing out of Drake’s reach and tauntingly waving the plastic bag. “You will drive me to Spirit Halloween or others will find out about these.”

“Drive you to--? No!” Drake swipes for the edibles and misses. “Give it back!”

“I’ll give them back after you’ve driven me to get a costume.” Damian lifts his chin defiantly. “I need one for the dance.”

Drake’s expression shutters, outright anger becoming seething annoyance instead. He rocks back onto his heels, no longer actively grabbing for the bag, but his narrowed eyes say he’s still considering it. “Why do you care so much about the dance?” he asks.

“If you prove yourself trustworthy, I might tell you,” Damian counters.

For a moment, the two of them stare each other down, but eventually, it’s Drake who sighs and slumps his posture. “Is there nobody else here who can drive you?”

“Nobody else who I could blackmail so easily.”

“You’re the worst,” Drake sighs, and then rubs a hand over his face. He looks far too tired to be having this argument, anyway--again, a pang of guilt sours Damian’s stomach, but he reminds himself that he’s doing this to help solve Drake’s case. The best kind of teamwork is the kind where the other parties don’t even know they’re involved.

The two of them reach the store an hour later, once Drake has tossed himself into the shower and both of them have changed into clothes presentable to the outside world. Getting out of the Manor is surprisingly easy; Alfred is out of the house, and Bruce is on a conference call, so Drake and Damian get into the garage and out the gate without a hassle. Drake leaves a note saying that they’re going to stop by Todd’s place downtown, figuring that Bruce will be less prone to panic if he knows the two of them are with someone who he sees as an adult.

In retaliation for Damian’s behavior, it seems, Drake blasts his music so loud it makes the car doors buzz, and the seat vibrates under Damian’s thighs in such a jarring fashion that he wants to strangle his brother. Drake’s driving is just this side of reckless, getting them to the Spirit Halloween in record time. 

In consideration of Drake’s foul mood, Damian doesn’t draw his attention to the car that tails them all the way from their neighborhood to the parking lot they end up in. 

He didn’t see who followed them the first time, but he’s sure it’s the same person this time. The lockdown at school last week had been in response to a relatively tall white male, wearing green. In the short, hidden glances Damian takes in the rearview mirror, he finds that the driver behind them matches that description.

It could be a coincidence. More than one person owns green clothing.

Drake parks the car. With a twist of the keys, the pounding music finally ceases, and both Drake and Damian get out.

Across the parking lot, caught up in the rest of the traffic coming and going, Damian sees the other car park, too, and the door slowly opens.

“What’re you dressing up as?” Drake asks, which requires Damian to stop staring over his shoulder lest he draw attention to his behavior.

Damian says, avoiding Drake’s gaze and thus hoping to deflect some of his ridicule, “My friends have asked that I dress up as Superman.”

“It seems like you just wanna make B as mad as possible.”

“He won’t find out.”

“Maybe not right away, but he’ll find out.” The automatic doors slide open in front of them. Drake lightly bumps Damian’s shoulder with his own. “Does Jon not want to lend you something of his?”

The store is fairly busy, with a week until Halloween. Keeping close to Drake’s elbow, Damian lets himself slip into the crowd of people and doesn’t check back over his shoulder for his shadow.

“Jon is otherwise occupied,” Damian says. It feels like they barely see each other anymore, anyway. Damian doesn’t want to be upset about it, so he forces himself not to be. He doesn’t need someone constantly hanging around him for companionship. It’s why he’s not a Teen Titan at the moment.

(That, and he’d proposed a break from the team as a formality, expecting the others to argue against it. They had instead readily agreed, leaving Damian alone and in no position to renege on his own idea.)

“What size?” Drake asks, drawing Damian back to attention to find that they’ve stopped in front of a veritable gallery of different Justice League costumes. “Youth extra small?”

“Yes, you’re very funny,” Damian says, accepting the usual jab at his stature. It’s hard to be very upset about the familiar line of teasing, what with the feeling of eyes on the back of his neck resembling a layer of thick, heavy sweat on his skin. 

Without looking, he can’t be sure, but he gets the feeling that he’s being approached. The man could get within a couple of feet without Drake even noticing anything particularly worrisome about that behavior. 

He clears his throat and looks back up at his brother. “And you’re still buying children’s sizes, as well, then?”

Drake glares at him and picks a Superman suit off of the wall and holds it up in front of Damian, gauging the size. “I’m an adult medium, thanks. And not like, a psychic. Like the size.”

“What a helpful and necessary clarification.”

“This looks like a good size,” Drake says in a louder voice, no longer engaging with Damian about the subject. “Yeah?”

Damian looks down. The arms and legs seem like they might be an inch or two too long, but the next size down will likely be too small. “Yes.”

“Fine. Okay.” Drake hands Damian the costume. Then he takes a few steps further down the wall and then reaches out and, with dawning horror, picks up a plastic package and holds it up for Damian to see. It’s a package promising to contain a “Sexy Batman” costume, complete with a micro-mini skirt and fishnet tights.

Damian says, “Absolutely not.”

“I wasn’t gonna tell you to wear it.” Drake turns the package around by the hanger to look at the costume again. 

“Excuse me,” says someone else, stepping between Damian and Drake to reach for a costume on the wall. Drake obligingly steps back, looking briefly annoyed, but Damian’s distracted by something else. Namely, that the interruptor looks very similar to the brief glance Damian had gotten of the driver tailing them on the way here.

Up close, even only seeing half of his face, Damian realizes that he recognizes this man. In the midst of Damian’s panic of being abandoned at school by Richard last week, this man had offered to share his umbrella. More recently, his face had shown up in Drake’s list of suspects in the Price case.

The man looks average, with nothing to betray that he’s capable of hacking into WE, stealing a car, murdering a child. Damian doesn’t want to be afraid of him, but he doesn’t know how much more the stranger could be capable of.

All Damian can taste is bile, but he can’t betray that he knows who this is. After stubbornly pushing past the tightening, crushing band of panic around his lungs, Damian says to Drake, as though the man between them isn’t even there, “I doubt that the school will let me wear that to the dance.”

“They won’t?” Drake asks, though something has shifted in his tone. He’s watching Damian a little bit more closely than before, waking up from his grouchy stupor as he senses that something’s happening. 

Damian sees the man pause, his head tilting just a little bit, taking in Damian’s information. It’s as close to a guarantee that Damian will get that the man is going to be at the dance on Friday. With that, Damian can get as far away from the man as possible.

Drake looks from Damian to the man between them, noticing Damian’s shift in attention.

“Make your selection,” Damian says, exasperated, too loud. He takes a step backwards, towards the checkout. “I want to leave.”

“...Fine, yeah,” Drake says. He shakes his head a little, clearing his thoughts out of the way. He puts the costume back up on the rack and then picks a bigger size instead. “Let’s go.”

He steps around the man and turns Damian around with a hand on the middle of his back, and walks away with purpose. Damian drifts along, not necessarily enjoying being pushed around, but still finding that Drake’s hand feels like a shield between Damian and the stranger. The stranger who’s not really a stranger.

They get in line, Drake’s arm not leaving Damian’s shoulders. Damian strains his ears trying to hear if they’re followed to the checkout, but doesn’t let himself turn around to check.

After a tense and quiet car drive home, Damian returns Drake’s drugs to him and turns to retreat back to his room, but Drake stops him by saying, “Damian.”

“What,” Damian says, turning back around and trying to look as unfriendly as possible.

Drake isn’t even looking at him, so Damian’s glare is wasted. Instead, his brother is fiddling with the handle of the plastic shopping bag that holds the Sexy Batman costume and looking at his socks. 

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, earlier,” Drake says. “I was gonna say I bought it to switch Jason’s costume out with, but then that guy was there and I couldn’t mention him. But it seems like I made it weird. So. Sorry.”

Hearing an apology would be strange on a good day. Given how scrambled Damian feels, he nearly says, I have no clue what the fuck you’re talking about, but then he catches up with the situation properly. Drake’s silence has been motivated by guilt, and by him thinking that he’s somehow freaked Damian out by suggesting a provocative costume. It’s not a quiet, growing concern about Damian’s connection to the stranger he was followed by.

“It’s fine,” Damian says, having no idea what else to say. He turns again to leave without checking Drake’s face, but pauses by the door and says, “If you need assistance getting into Todd’s apartment, I have his security codes.”

“...Thanks,” Drake says, relieved. “See you later.”

Sunday is quiet. Damian has yet to make good on his promise to his father that he bring his English grade up, so he sits and stews in hatred and anger for Tuck Everlasting and revises his essay for a while in the afternoon. 

Titus remains stretched out on the floor in the cold autumn sunlight, bored out of his mind. He’s only been allowed to be out in the fenced-off patio area outside the back door, not roaming free like he’s used to. Damian would take him on a proper walk, but he can’t fight off any attackers in broad daylight, where someone could see him. He’s still trying to figure out how he’s going to take the man down without him somehow figuring out that Damian is Robin. 

Damian finishes a draft that could make a high school teacher weep for joy, and moves on to his missing assignments. As he transitions to the new task, though, a flash outside his window catches the corner of his eye.

Damian’s eyes dart up, but all he sees is a wide expanse of lawn, ringed by trees at the far edge. 

The flicker had been too short for him to pinpoint its exact origin, but his intuition tells him, with a sinking and queasy sensation, that it might have been the flash of a lens. Not a camera flash, just the sunlight reflecting off glass in motion.

A few minutes later, Damian’s laptop pings with a new email notification. With stiff fingers, he clicks through and finds that it is, indeed, a photo sent to his WE email. 

In the photo, Damian looks small, bent over the keyboard and chewing on the collar of his t-shirt. The zoom on the lens is too impressive to belong to a phone, which implies a high-tech camera, comparable to Drake’s expensive one that his brother has nearly stabbed him for touching.

Maybe it was foolish to leave his window open. Damian likes to keep it this way, though, so he doesn’t feel like he’s trapped in a claustrophobic breezeless hell, and so he doesn’t accidentally trigger a flashback of being buried underground. 

Another email slides into his inbox, from a different email address than before. All of the addresses have just been scrambled letters, definitely throwaway accounts. This one doesn’t have a photo, but says, ‘I don’t see your dog out to play today.’

Damian looks down at Titus, who is still sound asleep, snoring a little. Another flash comes from outside his window, a tilting of the same lens, and Damian reflexively shuts his laptop and then reaches out and yanks his curtains closed.

He tries to think back to all the other times he had his curtains open, and to all the times he thought he was safe inside the house just by virtue of being out of sight of the front driveway. 

The concept makes him shiver too much so he abandons it, and instead just lays on the floor next to his dog, where he can be sure they’re both safe. He doesn’t move until he’s called for dinner.

Patrol has always felt like an escape, but tonight it’s like breathing for the first time in two weeks. Adrenaline more than makes up for the state of emotional and physical exhaustion that’s started to plague him. Damian runs and punches and kicks and slashes until his bad ankle forces him to stop and wait in the Batmobile for two hours, his unused energy burning a hole through the palms of his hands as he tries to keep them clasped and quiet. 

The conversation on comms drifts from topic to topic, each annoying Damian more than the previous one. When the clock on the dashboard hits two-thirty and Damian’s begun seriously considering duct-taping a splint to let him go back out of the car, the chatter turns to a topic that has the fight leaving Damian immediately.

“Oracle,” Damian’s father says, “do you have anything new on the WE hack?”

“No,” Oracle says, maybe a little snippier than normal, “and I’ve tried everything I could think of. They were just as clean as when they hit WellZyn a few months ago. That must have been a trial run for the bigger job.”

Damian sinks lower in his seat, bowing under the weight of guilt, but the WellZyn name makes his ears prick up. It’s not a connection he’d heard drawn before, but WellZyn is a subsidiary of WE, and--

“Wait,” Drake says. “Isn’t the Price family the one that founded WellZyn?”

For a moment, there’s quiet, and Stephanie unconvincingly tries to argue, “That could be a coincidence.” 

“Nobody’s getting weird phone calls or emails, right?” Drake demands, as he’s asked before.

“Nope,” is the general consensus. Oracle adds, “Signal hasn’t either, we were talking about it earlier.”

“Robin?” Bruce prompts, noticing Damian’s conspicuous silence.

“Nobody unknown has contacted me,” Damian says, choosing his words carefully.

“Shit,” Drake says. Damian has cautious optimism that he’s dropped the Allison Price connection. “We’ll keep looking.”

He sounds downtrodden. Oracle isn’t exactly chipper, either. Damian has the key to two of their open cases and he’s withholding it.

They can’t know he knows. Damian will fix it. He can do it on his own, because it’s his fault it’s happening. They’ll thank him when this all ends Friday night.

Damian’s disregard for his own limits means that he has to use crutches at school the next day. Enough time has passed since his visit to Blüdhaven that he’s able to fabricate a lie for when the original injury occurred, so the crutches don’t spark any more conflict between his father and Richard. That’s a success in Damian’s book. He just wants them to be able to be in the same room without arguing.

He takes longer than normal to get to his first period classroom--first, there’s an extra security checkpoint installed at the front door, and then the crutches hinder his ability to weave through the crowds of students. Damian enters the classroom to find his table already occupied, Maps and Olive whispering over Maps’s notebook and Amala staring at where her hands are clasped on her desk, more nervous than Damian’s seen her, with new orange and pink beads in her braids. 

Damian sits. 

Maps says, “Hi! You’re alive!” and Olive waves.

Damian nods. He sees his friends across from him both give Amala a sideways look, waiting for her to chime in, but she’s still staring at her hands.

Damian left school to avoid the trap that Amala and Kelsey set up for him. Looking at her now, though, something tells him that there was something else to that story. He gives Maps and Olive a look that says to at least pretend to be minding their own business, which they reluctantly do, and then Damian says, “Hi, Amala.”

“Hi,” Amala says, a smile failing to gain purchase on her face. She takes a deep breath and then says, “I’m really sorry about last week. Kelsey said it would be funny and I didn’t know how to stop her.”

Damian has no reason to believe that Amala is lying. He looks over his shoulder to where Kelsey usually sits, and finds her brooding in silence, not looking their way. Maybe she and Amala aren’t getting along so well, after that. That’s a good indicator of Amala’s honesty.

The sting of the whole prank idea had been quickly swiped to the side by the raw wound of Damian feeling abandoned by his mother. With the Talia issue upgraded into something that scares him even more, this whole dance situation shouldn’t feel important at all. Damian should be able to get over it and dismiss it like the rest of the (intentional and unintentional) things that his classmates have done and said to him.

The apology works on him. Before he can try to resist, he feels some of the ache lessen, and he nods and says, “I would be satisfied with leaving the blame at Kelsey’s feet.”

Amala finally looks up at him, her fidgeting hands stilling. Her smile peeks out again. “Really?”

“Yes.” Damian clears his throat and looks over at Maps and Olive, who are unabashedly eavesdropping, not quite sure what he’s expecting from them. 

Maps blurts, “Do you want to come with the three of us, Amala? Do you have a group?”

Amala’s eyes widen. “Do I--? Y-yeah, sure.”

“You have to dress up like a Justice League member,” Olive says. “Best ones are already taken, sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Amala says, her voice leaving the half-whisper it had been before. Without guilt weighing her down, she’s the same friend Damian thought he knew before last week happened. “Can I be Hawkman? My sister has a costume from last year.”

“Yeah, that’s great!” Maps beams. “I stole my costume from my brother, too.”

“My brother purchased a Sexy Batman costume this weekend,” Damian says, before he can keep himself from doing so, but the resulting shriek of amusement from Maps is worth his slight embarrassment. 

Amala’s apology has ended the weird tension at Damian’s table, and conversation proceeds as usual from there. Damian’s sore and tired from his weekend, but it’s nice for things to feel normal. As long as he ignores the feeling of being watched through the wide windows, everything is completely fine.

Nothing is fine. Everything besides Damian’s small group of school friends is terrible, but he soldiers on despite that. 

The knowledge that he’s being followed by a stranger, an unknown commodity, begins to take more of a physical toll over the following days. Damian can’t make himself sleep longer than an hour at a time, and he constantly jolts upright to make sure Titus is still at his feet. He barely eats anything at meals, instead pushing food around his plate and ignoring the glances passed over his head as everyone worries about him without saying anything about it.  

Richard’s check-in texts go unread and unresponded to, and so do the emails and calls and photos from the stranger. Damian can’t focus on anything in class, his mind racing with possibilities for how the confrontation will go. 

With Damian having more or less confirmed that the man following him will be at the dance on Friday night, and having obtained a costume, the only things left to coordinate are…everything else about the night. 

As Drake predicted last Saturday, Bruce has made the inflexible decision that Damian’s not allowed to go to the dance anymore. He decides not to tell Damian this until Thursday night.

Damian takes the news stoically. It’s about what he expected. Then, without a word, he turns on his heel and goes directly to Drake’s room. 

Drake’s already implicated in Damian’s rule-breaking by having supplied the costume. He’s in too deep. Hopefully, this will make him easier to manipulate.

Damian knocks on his brother’s door twice. Footsteps approach the door, and then it opens and Damian looks up to find someone taller than who he expected to answer it.

“What’s up, Little D?” Stephanie asks. She looks over her shoulder. “It’s Damian,” she tells Drake.

“Why?” Drake asks. He sounds like he’s lying on the floor.

Stephanie looks back to Damian. “Why?”

“I need to talk to him,” Damian says. He thinks critically about his situation for a moment before adding, “And you, as well.”

One of Stephanie’s eyebrows arches itself, her interest piqued. “Very well. You may enter.”

She steps back, letting Damian through, and shuts the door behind him. Damian takes note of the blanket draped around Stephanie’s shoulders and Drake’s prone position on the ground, one of his arms stuck out to the side with the nails half-painted and a little bottle of black polish sitting on the rug. 

Drake’s eyes are closed. He looks about as tired as Damian feels.

“What is this?” Damian asks.

“Girls’ night,” Stephanie says. “Wanna join?”

Damian shakes his head, but sits down on the rug next to his brother. Stephanie reclaims the spot that she’d likely been in before she answered the door, hunched over Drake’s nails to continue painting them.

“Shouldn’t Cassandra be here, if it’s a girls’ night?” Damian asks.

“She says we’re too sad to hang out with,” Drake monotones. He cracks one eye open to look up at Damian. “What do you want?”

Damian ignores him for the moment and looks to Stephanie. She’s concentrating so hard on the painting of Drake’s nails that her tongue is poking out of her mouth a little. “Are you still intending to chaperone at the dance even though Father prohibited me from attending?”

Stephanie spares him a brief glance. A glob of black polish drips onto her bare knee. “Aw, fuck. Um, yeah. I already signed up and everything. I felt like it’d be better for security to have me there anyway, you know?”

It surprises Damian how reassured he feels, knowing that Stephanie will be there to keep an eye on things. While he doesn’t need backup, having someone in the building who carries throwing knives is a comfort.

Damian nods, acknowledging this. Then he looks at Drake. “I came to ask for a ride to the dance.”

Drake groans. He closes his eyes again. “No.”

“I’ll tell Father about your drugs.”

Drake groans a second time, this one even louder. “Fuck you. You’re not allowed to go.”

“I need to go,” Damian says. He turns to Stephanie, trying to look as pitiful as he can manage without bruising his ego. “I promised my friends that I would attend with them. I want to be there in case something happens, so I can help them.”

Stephanie widens her eyes, mirroring Damian’s expression and then exaggerating it to gross excess, pouting and batting her eyelashes. “Aren’t you sweet.”

It’s almost like she knows something else is up. Damian gets back to his feet, stutter-stepping on the toes of his injured foot and failing to mitigate some of the pain. “Fine. Drake, expect a drug bust in your room before the night ends. I’m leaving.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Drake calls after him. “No drugs here.”

“Put ice on your ankle, dorkus,” Stephanie chimes in.

Damian stalks out of the room, not dignifying either of their heckling with a response. He shoves the door open and lets it bang against the wall, not caring about any potential damage he causes, and doesn’t bother closing it on his way out.

He hears feet move towards the door. Damian’s nearly turning the corner in the hallway when he hears Stephanie call after him, “Damian.”

Damian pauses, looking back over his shoulder.

“I’ll drive you,” Stephanie says, her smile very subtle and nearly overshadowed by the concern on her face. There are few members of Damian’s family who have no reason to be worried about him, this week, but at least that’ll be over soon. She adds, “We just have to show up early so I can help set up.”

It’s less than ideal--he asked Drake because if this goes poorly, then Damian would have been more easily able to offload half of the blame onto Drake. Stephanie always finds a way to wiggle out of trouble with Bruce. Also, Stephanie’s car always smells like old Chipotle.

“That will do,” Damian says anyway. He doesn’t have much of a choice.

Stephanie nods. She waves, and shuts Drake’s door with a thud, and Damian is alone again.

‘talia isnt in fucking gotham,’ Jason texts him late that night, followed by a message consisting of about thirty individual question marks. When Damian ignores him, Jason follows up with, ‘she hasnt been here in the past year. why did you think she was?’ 

It doesn’t matter anymore. This will be over soon. Apparently his mother will answer Jason’s texts but not Damian’s, in the same way that Bruce will soften around the edges for Jason but get colder when Damian’s around. It doesn’t matter. Damian doesn’t know why he’s so hard to want, or what he did wrong or how he can atone for it. It doesn’t matter. 

Damian turns his phone off and turns over in bed. The mere sound of his phone vibrating has begun to make his heart race, and he needs to get meaningful rest before tomorrow.

Damian gets in Stephanie’s car the next evening in plain clothes, having stood there and nodded at the right moments when Stephanie lied to Bruce’s face about the two of them going to spend the night at Jason’s apartment downtown. She’d promised that they’ll only be there for a couple hours, and then they’ll be back before Bruce leaves for patrol, and then she steered Damian to where her car is parked in the driveway. 

Damian finally exhales once out of sight of his father.

“You got your costume?” Stephanie asks as she turns the keys in the ignition.

Damian says, “Yes.” It’s in his backpack. Bruce had looked oddly touched that Damian was planning on asking Jason for help with his English homework. It’s Bruce’s fault for believing that Damian would willingly ask anyone but Titus for that.

“Sweet, me too,” Stephanie says. Her car is manual; she wrestles with the gear shift to start their trip. The car jerks forward, she eases on the clutch just a split-second before hitting the gas. “Hopefully they’ll let us change in the bathroom.”

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t,” Damian says. 

His stomach hurts. He’s taken a severe dose of Tylenol to stop feeling the throbbing pain in his ankle, but perhaps he should have eaten something to go with it. 

Stephanie turns the radio on, switching between the pre-programmed stations until she finds the single pop station in Gotham that isn’t playing Ed Sheeran. They ride in quiet, Damian trying to focus on Stephanie switching between gears, down to one for stop signs and then back up to three as she speeds through the residential shortcut towards his school. 

It’s already dark out, with only streetlamps and the lights of other cars showing the way. Occasionally, Stephanie will point out a house that’s particularly well-decorated for the holiday tomorrow. Damian allows himself a brief moment of wondering what it would be like to be allowed to trick-or-treat instead of what he’ll actually be doing (sitting a four-hour stakeout on what promises to be one of Scarecrow’s hideouts).

As they near their destination, Damian begins to wipe his sweaty palms on the knees of his pants. He tries to remember the minute-by-minute plan he established for himself to make sure he’s successful tonight.

Stephanie gives him a sideways look as she turns onto the main street and shifts into a higher gear. “You seem nervy.”

Damian crosses his arms and chides himself to sit still. “I’m not.”

“It’s okay to have jitters,” she says. “Nobody’s good at dancing in middle school, anyway. Except me.”

In all of his agonizing over every aspect of the dance, Damian has failed to consider that he will, at some point, be expected to actually dance. He feels blood draining from his face, leaving him cold and lightheaded.

“Oh, shit. God damn it. Hey.” Stephanie taps at his arm insistently to get his attention, noticing the way Damian has gone stiff. “Stay with me. What’s wrong? You need some water?”

Damian has to go to this dance. He’s going to keep his classmates safe, and he’s going to solve Drake’s case. At no point in this evening will he let himself become preoccupied with worrying about his lack of experience in dancing. 

Stephanie reaches around the back of her seat and picks up her clunky metal water bottle, which is too big to fit into the cupholders in the front. She drops it in Damian’s lap. “Are you carsick?” she asks, hands braced to pull the car over to the side of the road.

“No,” Damian finally manages to say. He unscrews the lid of the water bottle and takes a sip. Water sloshes out with an irregular lurch of the car and it spills onto the front of his sweatshirt. 

“Wow, drink much?” Stephanie asks, voice purposefully light. She’s worried.

Damian wipes water off of his chin and flicks it towards her, and she exclaims in protest. “I’m fine,” he says, trying to sound more authoritative about it than he feels. “Do you think Todd will rat us out?”

Stephanie says, “Jason isn’t a snitch. Are you worried because you think you’ll get in trouble?”

Damian had purposefully left his phone at home, and last night during patrol he planted his tracking device in the collar of Jason’s coat. There’s no way that Bruce will be able to prove that Damian was at the dance, and Stephanie has the excuse of volunteering if Bruce checks her tracker out. 

The only weak point in this plan is that they didn’t tell Jason they were using him as an excuse. Normally, Damian wouldn’t be concerned, because Jason never picks up the phone when Bruce calls, and ignores most texts as well, but Jason has been abnormally strict about the buddy system that’s in place. Something about Drake’s open case scares him, and that might make him act uncharacteristically. 

“I’m not worried,” Damian says. He’s normally successful in getting out of trouble with Bruce by getting Richard on his side and escaping to Blüdhaven until Bruce’s anger has subsided. 

Still, the queasiness in his stomach doesn’t abate. The smell coming from Stephanie’s collection of old fast-food garbage isn’t helping matters.

“It’ll be okay.” Stephanie bites her lip, briefly lost in thought, and then adds, “Just focus on having fun. Dick’s always talking about making sure you get normal-kid experiences, right? This is just gonna be normal. Kinda awkward, maybe, but you’ll survive.”

When Damian doesn’t respond to that, Stephanie sighs. She mutters, seemingly just to herself, “I’m definitely jinxing it.”

They find parking in the back lot, the one nearest the gymnasium where the dance is being held. A fair amount of people have already begun bustling around inside, mainly adult volunteers and faculty; Damian can see them through the chain-link fence and propped-open doors and copious fake cobwebs that have been strung up everywhere.

The two of them get out of the car and walk towards the back entrance to the school, where they’re confronted by a security checkpoint and both of their bags are looked through. Damian shows his student ID and Stephanie is located on the volunteer list and they’re let through without a problem. 

“There’s a restroom in there we could change in,” Damian says, and points out the science building to Stephanie. She nods and follows, looking around at the old buildings with faint interest. He can never tell if she’s strategizing or truly just chilling out; she doesn’t telegraph the same paranoia that infects Damian and the rest of his siblings.

Being in a school building at night has always felt eerie to Damian. He doesn’t miss the days when he was a boarding student here. 

He changes quickly. The costume consists of nothing more than a jumpsuit with some fake muscles sewn in and a cape tied around his neck with thin strings. Damian has brought along the lace-up boots that belong to one of Drake’s many iterations of Red Robin costumes; they match the costume better than his own green-accented ones. 

Wearing the boots makes him feel more secure, and not just because they help brace his bad ankle--they mean that at least one part of his body is protected by armor. Other than that, all he could sneak past security is the ring on his finger with a taser, and the watch on his wrist that has a panic button installed on it. The button was installed three years ago and hasn’t been checked since, so it may not work. Damian’s assuming he won’t have to use it, anyway.

After rolling up the sleeves of the costume a few times so they aren’t too long, Damian shoves his discarded clothes into his backpack and then exits the restroom without looking in the mirror. He then waits for Stephanie outside in the hallway so they can go together and drop off their clothes at his locker before the dance starts.

Damian fidgets with the edge of the paper-thin cape, feeling weirdly vulnerable in the silent hallway. He’s relieved when he hears a stall inside the women’s restroom open, knowing that Stephanie will be finished soon.

“What do you think?” she asks as she emerges, and Damian regrets ever meeting her. The costume she’s elected to go with is none other than the one that Drake bought at the Halloween store: fishnets, a short skirt, a useless cropped cape that only extends down to the small of her back. At least the top has been exchanged for a t-shirt with the Bat symbol on it, making it at least somewhat appropriate for a school setting. 

Damian says, “I will not be seen with you.”

Stephanie puffs herself up with faux indignation. “What? C’mon, I look cute! And so do you, oh my god.”

“Shut up,” Damian hisses at her.

“Oh, relax.” Stephanie sweeps forward and, with an arm around Damian, spins him to start walking back out of the building. “Let’s dump our stuff so you can party.”

They take a short path through campus to find the hallway that hosts Damian’s locker. Three-quarters of the way there, Damian feels a telltale prickling on his neck, a confirmation that the man has, indeed, shown up and managed to get past security. He doesn’t get full visual confirmation until he’s in the middle of his locker combination and he hears a jangle of keys at the other end of the hallway.

Damian turns his head and sees the janitor’s closet open. The man pulling a mop out of the closet is not the custodian.

Right now, the man is doing a very good job of pretending to actually be occupied with retrieving cleaning supplies. Not acknowledging their company, Damian clicks his lock open and swings the door out of the way. He stuffs his backpack inside.

Stephanie follows suit, but then she takes her phone out and says, “Let’s take a picture.”

Damian thinks quickly. Instead of protesting, he angles his body so that her phone will have a view of most of the hallway, and he gives the camera a distrustful glare as he makes sure that Stephanie’s photo captures not just the two of them, but also the figure far in the background. He can’t be certain, but he’s fairly sure that she catches the man’s face as he glances their way. 

Preoccupied with the foreground of the picture, Stephanie doesn’t seem to notice the photobombing that has occurred. She lowers her arm and pats Damian’s head. “Thanks. Okay, let’s go.”

On their way back to the gymnasium, Damian begins to shiver, though he isn’t sure whether it’s the freezing cold wind or the fear that’s begun to creep up on him against his will. He doesn’t realize he’s walking very close to Stephanie’s side until she nudges him with her elbow and says out of the corner of her mouth, “There’s still time to bail.”

“No,” Damian says, hearing the faint shuffle of the man following them at a distance, “I’m fine.”

“Your call.” Stephanie reaches out and pulls the door to the gym open, exposing both of them to a room lit with a warm orange glow and strung up with streamers. There’s still about twenty minutes before the official start of the dance, and Damian spots Maps standing with the rest of the student planning committee and feels a complicated twist of his anxiety--he’s glad that she’s here, but also terrified that one of his friends will get in the middle of the confrontation about to happen. 

Stephanie continues, “I need to go check in and see what they need help with. Holler if you need me.”

Damian nods. 

“Chin up, bud,” Stephanie says. “No bloodshed and no pregnancies, okay?”

Damian wrinkles his nose, jarred out of his haze of paranoia. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, and no headlines!” Stephanie ruffles his hair. “Keep it chill. Have fun out there!”

She’s mentioned in the past that her mom used to set her up to compete in child beauty pageants. If Damian was feeling like himself, he’d have the wherewithal to ruin her night by telling her that she’s becoming her mother, but he misses his chance. Stephanie disappears from his side, going towards a faculty member with a clipboard who looks to be in charge. 

Mourning the lost opportunity, Damian forces his feet into motion and goes over to Maps.

They’re wearing a Batman costume that’s much more accurate and much less provocative than Stephanie’s. When she sees Damian coming, Maps’s face lights up and she pulls her cowl up a little to show dark raccoon eyeliner around her eyes. She steps away from the group of students to greet him. “Damian, hi!”

“Hello, Mizoguchi.” Damian finds that he’s fiddling with the edge of his cape again. He lets it go. “I like your costume.”

“Thanks, it’s Kyle’s.” Maps strikes a little pose, showing it off. “Yours is cool, too.”

“Thank you.” Damian looks down at himself and feels very stupid. “Is Silverlock here?”

“She’s driving with Amala. They’re coming after it actually starts.” Maps pulls a face, and then gives a guilty look over their shoulder at the planning committee. “I have stuff to help with, sorry. I’ll be free to hang out once the dance starts, though!”

Damian nods. Maps turns away and Damian is left unmoored in the gymnasium. 

He walks a lap around the room and even leaves and reenters, trying to look purposeful and not letting himself stop moving. It does absolutely nothing for his anxiety; in fact, he feels worse because his ankle hates it. 

On his third weird loop around the room, he spots Stephanie by the front door of the gymnasium, where she’s been set up to put wristbands on attendees. She has pulled her phone out of her pocket and she’s frowning at the screen. Damian drifts towards her. 

“Hey,” Stephanie says when she notices him, but doesn’t say what’s bothering her. Maybe it’s unrelated to the scam she’s currently helping Damian run on his father. “Can I send the picture to Tim?”

Damian grimaces. “If you must.”

“Cool.” Stephanie doesn’t look up from her phone as she asks, “Why aren’t you socializing?”

“Nobody’s here yet.”

“Excuses, excuses.”

Damian turns on his heel and walks away. He can pace more laps until more people get here.

He’s only a few paces away when it occurs to him that the least harmful way to do this confrontation would be to do it before more people get here. That’s less opportunity for a witness to stumble upon them, and less opportunity for someone to get caught in the crossfire.

Damian doesn’t want to. He’s surprised by the wave of fear that stops him in his tracks for a moment. After the past two weeks, he feels like a frayed rope, two strands from snapping. He wants nothing more than to turn back and beg Stephanie to drive both of them home.

Surreptitiously, he glances around the gym. Nobody’s looking at him. Maps is caught up in last-minute setup, Stephanie’s texting Drake. 

He takes a deep breath and pushes out the side door of the gym, ducking under some cobwebs, and emerges in the back alley behind the building. The cold air greets him like a punch to the stomach.

Around the corner to his right, the building faces out to the street and parking lot. To his left, there’s the shed and some dumpsters. If he wants to avoid witnesses, Damian’s stalker will be in the latter direction.

Damian begins to walk in that direction, not muffling his footsteps, and reminds himself of the ground rules. He will only be able to fight the bare minimum to defend himself. He will work himself up into hysterical tears--which won’t be too difficult, considering his exhaustion--and scream for help once the man is unconscious. If everything goes according to plan, he won’t have to reveal the two weeks of terror he’s just lived, and the only person mad at him will be Bruce. Maybe Jason, too, for ensnaring him in the plan.

He hears rustling behind the shed. It’s either dead leaves in the wind or the person who Damian is looking for. Damian stops in his tracks, standing perfectly still, doing his best to portray an average middle schooler frozen in fear.

“Hello?” Damian calls.

Behind him, a door closes. Damian hasn’t even turned around before he hears an answering “Hello,” from directly behind him, and then a sharp prick in the side of his neck.

Damian gasps and tries to twist around, but is stopped by a strong arm hooking itself around his neck and a gloved hand clapping over his mouth. 

The new surge of fear is like a splash of cold water to the face. He tears himself back to attention and drives his uninjured heel down as sharply as he can into his attacker’s shin, dragging the foot down and ending with a punishing stomp on the man’s foot.

He hears a grunt of pain from the man behind him, but the arm around his neck just jerks upwards, cutting off Damian’s air. 

“It’s just me,” the man says into his ear, far too close for comfort, the feeling of his breath making Damian want to scream. Damian only intensifies his struggle, throwing sharp elbows behind him and finally resorting to biting at the hand covering his mouth.

The hand reflexively slackens.

Damian doesn’t waste any time. The spot in his neck where something had pricked him has begun to burn, reminding him that something’s been put into his bloodstream and he doesn’t know what it was.

He gives a final, desperate thrash, reeling back to create enough space and then ducking down underneath the new slack in the arm that’s been choking him. He spins to face his opponent, feeling scrambled and vulnerable without his armor. More concerningly, he’s begun to feel a fog weighing down on the edges of his brain, a telltale sign of a sedative beginning to kick in.

It’s regrettable, but he needs backup. 

The door is only a short dash from here, and the only thing in his way is the man, who has recovered from the brief surprise of Damian escaping his hold. If Damian was allowed to know how to punch the man in the throat, kick him in the stomach hard enough to bruise an organ, break eight of the man’s fingers within ten seconds, then this wouldn’t be a problem. Right now, though, Damian is the pathetic, scared middle schooler who doesn’t tell anyone about the two hundred and sixteen calls from unknown numbers he’s received in two weeks.

Damian feints in one direction and then throws himself in the other one, using the brick wall of the gym building to catch him when his right ankle buckles under his weight. He’s sure that his shoulder will bruise, but the pain takes a backseat to the dawning realization that his vision has begun to blur and double.

It’s only ten feet to the door. Damian sprints, ignoring the pain in his ankle, but his legs feel sluggish and uncoordinated. He makes it halfway before the cape tied around his neck pulls taut, jerking his neck back. 

His fingers scrabble at the knot, loosening it with a tug, and he continues on his path. He reaches the door, and tugs down on the handle, knowing that Stephanie is on the other side and she’ll be able to help. Nobody has ever raised eyebrows at her pulling off insane fighting tactics before--she’s from the Narrows.

The handle stops halfway down. It’s locked. 

Of course it’s locked. 

Something collides with the side of Damian’s head, a strong enough blow that his teeth rattle. Damian staggers. His arms don’t respond when he tries to catch himself, so he hits the ground flat on his side. He hits the ground, and he can’t get up.

His attacker grabs his ankle, the injured one, and starts to drag Damian away from the door. Overwhelmed by blinding pain, Damian’s heavy, limp limbs refuse to help him resist, and his previously adrenaline-filled mind is bogged down with dizziness instead. A realization lights up in his brain like a sickly, weak candle flame: he’s going to disappear like Allison Price did.

Damian scratches at the ground, his fingernails tearing on asphalt, but it doesn’t do anything. The now triple-vision sight of the back door mocks him, and Damian starts to bargain. With what, or who, he isn’t sure, but he finds himself thinking, pleading, I’m sorry. I should have told someone. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. 

He wants Stephanie to notice that he’s gone. He wants someone to be worried enough about his erratic behavior that they come looking for him. He doesn’t want to die again.

Most plaintively of all, he wishes Richard was here.

Damian hears more than sees a van door slide open, and he hears more than feels his body being dropped into the back. With the last of his faculties, Damian strains to move his arm across his body, reaching for his wristwatch. His fingers are deadened and he can barely tell what he’s touching or if he’s reached it, but he pushes with all of his energy to find the panic button on the underside of the watch face. 

He doesn’t even know if it’ll work. Damian presses it anyway, twice, three times, desperation being the last thing he remembers feeling before losing grip on consciousness.

Chapter Text

The sleep that Damian finds himself in is murky and dense. He doesn’t quite understand what’s going on, but he continues to swim forward through what feels like a dark swamp of his own tangled thoughts.

A few times, Damian’s position changes. Heat radiates up from his ankle, and outwards from a throbbing point in the side of his skull. Damian might have a headache, or perhaps he has a stomach ache. Perhaps he’s already thrown up, or maybe he’s just imagining all of it. 

He recognizes a head rush of going from lying down to sitting up, and he notices his limbs moving by means of someone else manipulating them. It’s never enough to wake him up from the twilight-dim sleep he’s in, but each time he experiences brief flares of panic that immediately exhaust him back into unconsciousness.

Another point of near-wakefulness is when something that tastes like fabric is shoved into his mouth and something else, tight and unyielding, fastens over his mouth, leaving only his nostrils to breathe through, but even that isn’t enough to let him open his eyes. Damian can’t remember how to wake up, and he’s too confused to try. 

He lets go of this return to wakefulness and drifts again, not quite dreaming. Damian’s never been sure if long stretches of a panging loneliness count as dreaming. He wonders if anyone else in his family feels like he does, or if he’s the only defective one.

His first moment of real resurfacing comes when a sharp breeze suddenly rushes over his face and arms. Damian frowns and shifts away from the sensation, though he’s stopped by something that has his wrists bound together behind his back. 

Awareness returns to him enough for him to feel fear at the realization that he’s restrained. Damian woozily opens his eyes to see where he is, but the light is too bright and he has to shut them again right away.

“Shh,” says a voice, before hands slide underneath Damian’s shoulders and his knees and lift him up. “Don’t make this difficult.”

Damian immediately thrashes as hard as he can, pushing away from the feeling of someone unknown touching him. He doesn’t manage much of a struggle before it becomes clear to him that he’s at risk of vomiting, which terrifies him because of the gag still stuffed into his mouth. He could choke, and that would only hasten the death that’s certainly coming soon.

Noting that Damian has stopped struggling, the person holding him starts walking unhindered, carrying Damian away from wherever he’d just been asleep. Damian’s eyes water and refuse to stay open for long, but he sluggishly blinks over and over, trying to change that.

He’s carried down some stairs, and the light disappears when they stop two flights down, entering a hallway that’s only dimly lit and thus is easier on Damian’s eyes. When he manages to clear his vision, he finds that the person carrying him is, indeed, the man who had drugged him earlier.

Damian’s shoulders ache, pins and needles faintly running up and down his arms, which are still pinned behind his back. The longer he remains awake, the more aches and pains he’s noticing--his head, his stomach, his ankle, his wrists. Though his mouth is still gagged and completely dry, a sweaty layer of uncomfortable warmth has begun to collect on the lower half of his face due to a strip of duct tape that wraps almost all the way around his head to keep his mouth closed.

He’s carried down a few winding hallways, taking him further and further into the sub-basement level. They stop in a windowless room, with blank walls and an unfinished concrete floor and a boiler in one corner. It must be some kind of unused custodial level, maybe belonging to an office building, because Damian doesn’t know what other kind of building would have more than one level underground.

The man sets Damian down on the bare ground in the corner, strangely careful that Damian is propped up and not in danger of tipping over. Then he reaches up and, without warning, rips the duct tape off of Damian’s mouth. 

Damian sets his jaw, not even twitching at the smarting pain. While the man pries Damian’s mouth open to tug the gag out, worsening the ache that’s practically immobilizing Damian’s jaw, Damian preoccupies himself with looking around the room and trying to figure out how exactly he’s going to be killed.

There’s nothing lying around besides an old empty toolbox, a rolled-up sleeping bag, and some broken wooden pallets with chunks of splintery wood scattered around them.

Finally, after several seconds of being too close to Damian’s face, the man sits back and Damian can breathe again.

“We got off to a bad start,” the man says. “Do you agree?”

Damian’s jaw cracks when he tries to move it, and his tongue is too dried out for him to speak anyway. He scowls, furious that his voice has failed him again. It’s the least reliable asset of Damian’s; it’s either forcibly taken from him, or it disappears when he needs it most.

“When we met, you told me your name was Timothy.” The man eases himself backwards, sitting on the ground and crossing his legs in front of him. “I wish you hadn’t lied to me.”

Damian barely remembers doing that, but it’s still as funny to him now as it was then. It’s long been his instinct to implicate Drake in any and all of Damian’s delinquent behavior. When Damian tries to bare his teeth and smile, his jaw pops again, wiping the expression from his face.

He doesn’t see that his captor has any kind of weapon on him. This gives Damian the cautious confidence to move, first shifting backwards to lean against the wall, and then pulling his sore legs up in front of him like his bent knees are a shield. The motion makes his head spin, and the place where he’d been struck earlier begins throbbing anew. Whatever he’d been injected with is still making it difficult for him to find coordination, and he doesn’t at this point trust his ability to fight his way out of here, so he just finds a defensive position instead.

The man watches Damian shift around, unthreatened by Damian’s wobbly, feeble movements. When Damian has settled again, his captor says, “Do you know who I am?”

Damian swallows with difficulty and rasps out, “You killed my classmate.”

The man reacts with surprise, eyebrows raising and mouth opening just a little before it curves into a frown. “What makes you think that?”

“Every--” His voice cracks, fails him. Damian determinedly clears his throat and tries again. “Everyone was saying someone was following her around.”

“Your friend, Mia,” the man says, “was she the one who told you that?”

Damian freezes, terror striking him suddenly and completely. He’s been self-centered enough to think that he would be the only one affected by this. If he dies tonight, this man will only turn on another student at Gotham Academy, unless Drake and Barbara manage to solve his murder in time.

“I thought so,” says the man, even though it wasn’t Maps who told Damian anything. “I think I’ll need to become acquainted with her, then.”

“She doesn’t have anything to do with this,” Damian says.

“I disagree.” 

“She doesn’t. Leave her alone.” 

He looks at Damian, caught between amusement and a type of affection that makes Damian’s skin crawl. “I won’t need to get to know her if you play nice.”

One of the first skills that Robins learn is their most vital survival tool: stalling. Damian can do it without even thinking about it by now, which is good because his brain is on the verge of complete system failure with all of the drugs and fatigue and fear. 

“Did you do all of this by yourself?” Damian asks.

“All of what?” The man looks around the unfinished room before catching on to Damian’s change of subject. “Trying to get in touch with you? No, I have some friends in town. And kids like you and your friend Allison are so easy to get information on, with your families so obsessed with keeping your contact information on file.” He smiles. “I just needed some tech support and help renting a car for us. There are a lot of people who are happy to fund do-gooders like me.”

“You aren’t a do-gooder,” Damian snaps.

“Sure I am.” The man’s smile doesn’t fade, even as he heaves a put-upon sigh. “What happened with Allison was…unfortunate, but it wasn’t my fault.”

“I disagree,” Damian says, viciously parroting the words from earlier back at him. 

Distaste flickers over the man’s face, souring his placid expression. “It was hers. She didn’t have to get hurt.”

Damian’s mind, still cloudy and slow, immediately latches on to the underlying implication: that whatever staying here meant, Allison thought that being beaten to death was preferable. 

He shivers, his earlier queasiness rearing its head again, and finds that he’s about to make the same decision as she had. No matter how sick he feels, he has to get out of here.

The only entrance and exit from this room is the door they came through, which doesn’t appear to have any lock on it--if it does, it only locks from the outside. Damian would need to run about fifteen feet to get through the door, which would only take him a couple of seconds assuming his ankle holds up and the drug in his system has worn off. 

Knowing how these things usually go, his ankle will give out and the drug will make it impossible for Damian to run without vomiting. 

He doesn’t know how long he was unconscious, but however long it was, he would already be home safe if his panic button had worked. As his brain continues to work itself back up to its normal speed, he remembers the taser in his ring, and he reaches his thumb up to start charging it up. It’ll take twenty seconds to charge, and it’ll only go off once.

“It doesn’t have to be the same with you,” the man says. He leans closer, again entering Damian’s personal space, and the wall at Damian’s back keeps him from shying away enough to prevent more nausea. “What do you think? From what I’ve seen, I’ve paid you much more attention than the people you claim as your family.”

Damian’s nose wrinkles. He says, dubious, “What are you talking about?”

“I saw you talk to your father all of once in the past few days. And your…well, he isn’t your brother, is he? Dick Grayson. He seems reluctant to fulfill his end of the custody arrangement.” The man’s gaze never strays from Damian’s face, and he rarely blinks. “After the number of visits that CPS had with him, I don’t understand your attachment to him.”

“You don’t know anything about him,” Damian snaps. He finally circumvents his fear enough to feel rage building in his chest. It’s not at full strength yet, because he knows that this stranger is, to a certain extent, correct--even after Richard stopped going by Ric, things have felt distant and strained between them. “Do not speak about him that way.”

Frustration grows in his stalker’s voice, and he only leans closer to Damian, boxing him in further. “You’re so eager to settle for the scraps of attention that he throws your way. I’ve seen the contempt that the others treat you with, as well. Didn’t Timothy shout at you in the car? He hit you.”

Damian frowns, confused. He supposes from an outside perspective, whatever irritation Drake could have directed at him could seem severe, but Damian barely registers that sort of thing anymore. Considering that he’s made attempts on Drake’s life, the fact that the two of them can drive in the same vehicle is a testament to the fact that Drake cares about him, for some reason. 

“You’re wrong,” Damian finally says. 

“You are. You’re desperate enough to even hang out with the ex-girlfriend of your brother, because she’s polite enough to pretend to like you.”

“She isn’t pretending.” 

“Which of the two of us has read her texts?”

Before Damian can remind himself that this could be a bluff, he blurts, “You read her texts?”

Bolstered by the mismatch in information between them, the man digs his heels in, further committing to his argument. “The family that you want to go back to doesn’t want you in return. Not like I do.”

Damian has heard worse things said to him while under the influence of fear gas. Even if the man is correct, it doesn’t matter what his family feels about him. Damian wants to go home, and he’ll settle for Titus being the only one who loves him just as much as Damian loves them in return. 

Even if Damian has made himself unlovable--even if Talia never cared enough to visit after she sent the Heretic to murder him, and even if his father will be furious with him for sneaking out to the dance, and even if Drake and Barbara will both want to kill him for not helping to solve their case--it doesn’t matter. 

…It shouldn’t matter.

The doubt creeps in, no matter how hard he tries to fight it off, but Damian can’t hesitate now. The alternative is staying here and eventually being murdered; he tries to remind himself of that. Even if everyone hates him (Jason will be livid that Damian used him as basis for a lie, he’s already alienated Duke by lying to him and then harshly brushing him off, and Cassandra will side with Stephanie when Stephanie realizes how Damian used her as a means to an end), there’s no reality in which Damian allows himself to die here.

A tiny snap of electricity in his fingers tells him that his taser is charged. Damian has no way of being able to predict if his limbs will cooperate when he attempts to use them, but he can’t stand the feeling of someone else’s breath on his face any longer. 

He’s going home. 

Damian lurches forward. His skull drives into the man’s nose with all of Damian’s strength behind it. Cartilage crunches underneath Damian’s forehead, and he revels in the sound as he draws back and kicks his leg out at his opponent’s chin. 

His leg works more slowly than normal, but the kick still lands. Drake’s boots have steel toes and make for an excellent weapon. Damian hears a gasp of pain as his foot connects with the man’s windpipe. 

Within the few seconds that the man is stunned, Damian struggles to plant his feet again and manages to work his bound hands out from behind his back by pulling them under himself and around his legs. His shoulders scream in protest, and his arms are still mostly asleep, but he forces them to comply with him and swings his hands together like a club.

He makes contact with the man’s face and the taser discharges, sending fifty thousand volts of electricity into his attacker’s body. Damian watches the man writhe and jerk around, hearing an involuntary roar of pain and frustration, and he welcomes the new clarity in his head that comes from rage. 

The taser’s built-up charge runs out. Damian sees the man go limp, gasping as he recuperates from the electrical shock, meaning that Damian now has only a few seconds before his window of opportunity closes.

Damian plants his uninjured foot and stands, before pitching himself towards the exit. His balance wavers, sending the room wobbling and his vision sliding around, and he has to pause to keep himself on his feet. 

He should stay and fight. An old instinct, one of the oldest ones he has, tells him he needs to kill this man, before he can hurt anyone else. It’s the only way Damian will feel completely safe again.

Damian isn’t Robin right now. He can rationalize getting this far by sheer luck, but he can’t murder someone with his bare hands and not expect some questions.

Behind him, he hears movement. Damian bolts.

He shoves through the door and into the narrow hallway they came from earlier. Everything down here is dusty and sound is muffled by the low ceilings. For a few seconds, all Damian hears are his own footsteps, but then he hears the door slam open behind him again, and the sound of a pursuit fills his ears.

Damian doesn’t remember the exact path they took earlier; he was too disoriented from the drug. Even now, he’s uncertain of himself and he feels sick--he’s not even sure he’ll be able to keep his feet straight when he reaches the stairs. 

If he reaches the stairs.

Feeling his breathing getting shorter and shorter, Damian urges himself onward, using his teeth to attack the duct tape on his wrists as he goes, before giving up and jerking his hands down in a sharp motion to his side and just snapping the tape off without regard for whether or not his pursuer notices his skill in escaping the restraints. 

Damian has to make a guess at every turn, becoming less and less certain that he’s taking the correct path. He’s not even able to keep his footsteps silent--his sprained ankle, which increasingly feels as though it’s sustained a fracture, doesn’t let him.

His first strike of luck all week comes when he turns the third corner and sees the stairwell stretch up in front of him. It couldn’t come at a better time; Damian’s energy is threatening to run out, and if he hadn’t found it at this turn he would have started to consider doubling back and trying a different direction.

As he expected, the stairs are difficult. Between his poor balance, the agony in his ankle, and the poor lighting, he keeps tripping and misplacing his feet. Damian falls forward a third time and makes the decision to scramble on all fours, desperately clawing his way upwards as the man behind him closes the distance between them.

A few floors above him, Damian thinks he hears a sound. It may be his own feet echoing up through the stairwell, but Damian clings to it as a sign of hope. 

Damian opens his mouth to call upwards, planning to beg for confirmation that he isn’t alone in the building with his stalker. His intended shout turns into a bitten-off scream when a hand grabs onto his injured ankle and wrenches him backwards, sending Damian’s chin banging into the corner of a step.

“Where are you going?” the man growls, politeness and false affection gone. Then he steps up and drives his heel down onto a spot below Damian’s right knee, and a sharp, heavy crack splits through the air.

Damian twists, bending his torso towards his leg in a futile attempt to stop the bone from fracturing, and involuntarily lets out another scream even louder and more agonized than the first one. Blood courses through his ears, whiting out all of his other senses.

A hand clamps over his mouth, and Damian finds himself dragged backwards, then lifted into the air so that his legs dangle freely. The man’s free arm clamps around Damian’s midsection, pinning both his arms to his sides. In his ear, a voice hisses, far too close, “Be quiet.”

Damian sluggishly blinks, trying to clear his vision, but even beyond that, he can hear that something is, indeed, making noise a floor or two above them. There are footsteps rushing around, pounding on the floor. There’s no way they hadn’t heard Damian a moment ago.

The man holding Damian begins to back down the stairs, back towards the sub-basement level. Before he can reach the foot of the steps, a door to the stairwell above them bangs open and a voice shouts, “Damian?”

The familiarity of the voice overwhelms him. He knows who that is. Damian puts up as much of a struggle as he can, but he knows that even if he can’t make the man let him go, he’ll be safe in a few seconds. 

Richard is here.

Against his back, he feels the breath of his attacker catch, getting shallower with anxiety as he continues to retreat, feet stumbling backwards.

A light thud hits the stairwell landing, a floor above them. A moment later, another one sounds as familiar black boots land at the top of the stairs. The boots waste no time in leaping forward, bringing Nightwing fully into view as he skips the stairs entirely, flying forward and catching himself in a smooth roll a few yards from where Damian’s captor has frozen still in fear.

Nightwing straightens, falling into a fight-ready stance. Damian can see by the sharp set of his jaw that he’s terrified, that he’s only seconds from one of his blowout breakdowns, but to the man holding Damian still, he must look intimidating. 

“Let him go,” Nightwing says, solid and threatening. “It’s over.”

More feet are sounding on the stairs. Damian’s head spins too much for him to determine exactly how many of the others have accompanied Nightwing, but there’s at least one more of them. Behind Nightwing’s head, he sees shadows of the next person to reach him, promising more backup in the next second or so.

In response, the hand over Damian’s mouth moves and rests on the side of Damian’s jaw, making Damian flinch away from it. It’s an overfamiliar gesture, but it also reminds Damian that if the man wanted to, he could twist Damian’s head to the side and snap his neck in an easy motion before Nightwing crossed the distance between them.

Nightwing seems to have come to the same conclusion. One of his hands freezes in midair, not quite halfway to reaching for his escrima sticks.

“I’ll kill him,” the man says, like a promise, “unless you get out of my way.”

Damian sees Red Hood appear at the top of the stairs. He takes a few steps down and then stops still, seeing the situation in progress. Unlike Nightwing, his face is impossible to read behind the helmet. This is not reassuring.

“He wants to stay with me,” the man says. His fingers won’t stop touching Damian’s face. “It’s not like his folks will miss him. Right, Damian?”

The sick, woozy feeling plaguing Damian intensifies. He swallows thickly. Nightwing looks like he feels just as nauseous as Damian does.

Damian looks up at the ceiling, unable to face Nightwing anymore.

“Bullshit,” Hood says, and fires his gun.

The man screams out, right next to Damian’s ear. His arm around Damian’s midsection tightens like a vice, but he’s losing his balance. Damian sees blood beginning to trickle onto the floor in a pool. Hood’s bullet has found a foot or shin. 

Taking advantage of this distraction, Nightwing pounces. He wrenches the unwelcome hand away from Damian’s face and snaps three of the man’s fingers without hesitation. Then his other hand bunches in the back collar of Damian’s Superman costume and, with a planted foot on his captor’s chest, Nightwing pulls Damian out of the man’s grip with one smooth motion.

Damian swings free, the toes of his injured foot hanging limp and brushing over the ground. Before he can be dropped, though, Hood is there to catch him. As though this has been rehearsed, Nightwing passes Damian off and then stabs his escrima stick down into the man’s jugular, discharging electricity into his skin.

The man screams. The voltage he’s experiencing is even higher than Damian’s taser. Damian smells burned skin.

Hood has caught Damian with hands under his shoulders, swinging Damian just a little so that his momentum calmly carries itself out instead of being interrupted. He lowers Damian to the ground, settling him in the least painful way he can manage. Then he’s gone, darting over to rejoin the scuffle.

Without Hood holding him up, Damian lists sideways and hits the ground on his side with a painful thud. After a paltry failed attempt to sit back up or contribute to the fight in any way, he gives up. Going still helps his dizziness subside, enough that Damian can turn his head and see clearly when Nightwing forces Damian’s kidnapper down to one knee, one hand fisted in the guy’s hair to hold his head up.

Hood crouches in front of the man and takes his time putting the barrel of his gun to the man’s temple. The man tries to recoil, but Nightwing holds him firmly in place.

“Are you scared?” Hood asks, taunting. His voice threatens untold amounts of hurt.

“Don’t kill me,” the man pleads, struggling for air. 

Nightwing’s hand tightens, wrenching the guy’s head back further, prompting a sharp cry of pain. The tight clench to Nightwing’s jaw makes him look angrier than Damian’s ever seen him before. 

“Say the magic word,” Nightwing dares him.

“Please,” the man gasps, one of his hands feebly reaching up to try and pry Nightwing’s hand out of his hair. “Please don’t--”

Without flinching, Nightwing catches the man’s hand and twists hard enough that Damian hears bones crackle and fracture. The man screams again, but Nightwing’s face remains fixed in that unflinching fury.

“I could tell from the start you were chickenshit,” Hood says. He cocks his gun, and the man chokes off his groan of pain and goes even paler in renewed terror. “You had to go after kids.”

The man’s eyes are wide enough that the whites look scarily large, almost cartoonish. He strains against Nightwing’s hold on him and his eyes land back on Damian, desperate. 

Damian shudders, his sick feeling from earlier immediately returning full force.

The man says, “He wants to stay with me. Damian, tell them--”

“Do not fucking look at him,” Nightwing snarls, and yanks the man’s head back again so his eyes are forced away from Damian’s spot on the floor.

“I picked…” The man’s throat works, his Adam’s apple bobbing desperately as he fights for breath. “I wouldn’t ever pick a kid someone would miss.”

Damian’s relief at no longer being stared at is replaced with dread. He curls his fingers in despair, finding them the only part of his body that he has the energy to move. The room goes abruptly silent, still save for his stalker’s ragged breaths. 

Hood loses even his veneer of sardonic amusement as he asks, “What?”

“Gotham Academy kids are--it’s just--their folks don’t give a damn. I do. I can take care of him,” the man babbles. He tries again to rock forwards, seeking relief from the uncomfortable crick to his neck. Nightwing doesn’t budge. “I can, I can do it.”

“Like fuck you can.” Hood gives a sharp jerk of his chin, a signal to Nightwing. “You’re done.”

Nightwing’s face has frozen, his expression still angry but now looking more like a brittle mask than anything else. He follows Hood’s cue, letting go of the man’s hair and letting him slump forward so that Nightwing won’t be in the path of a bullet. Then he turns his head, and though Damian can’t see his eyes he knows that his older brother is staring at him.

Their gazes are still locked as Hood says, “Go to hell, creep,” and pulls the trigger.

The gunshot startles Damian, even though he knows it’s coming. He flinches, and breaks eye contact with Nightwing in favor of watching the man fall to the side, towards the spray of gore that’s splattered up across the white wall. His eyes are still stuck on Damian.

The man’s head smacks into the floor with a gut-wrenching thunk. 

Before he’s even completely still, Hood and Nightwing spring back into motion.

Hood pushes the man onto his side, beginning to maneuver him into a position that will make this look, at least at first glance, like a suicide. Meanwhile, Nightwing rushes forward and drops to his knees in front of Damian.

He scoops an arm underneath Damian’s torso and begins to haul him upright again, easing him off of the ground. As he goes, he says, sounding faint, “Dami, sweetheart, hi, hi. It’s over. We’re getting out of here.”

When he’s been lifted enough to have some momentum on his side, Damian surges forward and throws his arms around Nightwing’s neck and unashamedly clings there.

If Nightwing is surprised by this, he doesn’t say anything. Nightwing’s arms wrap around him and he holds Damian to his chest, warm and safe. One of his hands braces the back of Damian’s head, his gloved fingers pushing into Damian’s hair.

The motion is so familiar, so comforting, so loving. It feels too soft for Damian to deserve it.

Over Nightwing’s shoulder, Hood forces the gun into the man’s hand, pressing the limp fingers onto the handle so that his fingerprints will show up.

“You’re safe,” Nightwing promises. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s over. I’ve got you.”

When Damian goes to apologize, desperate to get ahead of how angry his family must be, his voice catches in his throat.

He hears Hood’s footsteps coming nearer, close enough that Damian can see his boots through the gap between his own arm and Nightwing’s suit. A hand hesitantly pats Damian’s shoulder, just as awkward as it is reassuring. 

“You,” Damian tries to say, but his voice stops. He clears his throat and tries again. “It’s, you didn’t have to--you had a year-long…”

“That doesn’t mean shit to me,” Hood says, completely unmoved by the loss of his no-killing record. He’s starting back at zero, all because of Damian. “Plus, I didn’t break anything. He killed himself.”

“He shot himself,” Nightwing echoes in agreement. He slowly rocks both himself and Damian back and forth, swaying to and fro just a tiny bit. “Isn’t that what you saw, Damian?”

Damian weakly presses a hand to Nightwing’s chest, trying to sit back. Nightwing won’t let him go. 

“No,” Damian insists. His next inhale catches, and he sobs out the next words: “That’s not what happened. You killed him because I wasn’t--because I failed, and--”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Nightwing says.

The words strike such discord in Damian that his stomach surges and finally loses the battle for control over himself. He gags and Nightwing, sensing that something’s wrong, lets go of Damian enough for Damian to wrench his upper half sideways and vomit somewhere that isn’t all over Nightwing’s suit.

There’s nothing for Damian to really bring up. He heaves anyway. If Hood and Nightwing didn’t work together to keep him somewhat upright, their hands on his shoulders, Damian would have hit the ground face-first.

“Shit,” Hood says, his voice losing some of its edge. His thumb rubs back and forth on Damian’s shoulder, unexpectedly gentle. “Did he dose you with something? Do you know what it was?”

Damian makes a disgusting gurgling noise, failing to pull himself together to answer.

“Could you hold off on the interrogation?” Nightwing snaps at Hood. 

“This is time-sensitive. We can’t stall just because his little tummy is upset--”

“Just shut up for a second--”

“You shut up for a second!”

Another involuntary retching noise from Damian cuts off their building argument. Nightwing’s hand drops onto Damian’s back, rubbing in a comforting circle while Damian dry-heaves. The soft touch reminds Damian of the first time Damian got really sick after his father’s disappearance, when Richard sat up with him on the bathroom floor all night, even after Damian started crying from frustration when he couldn’t keep water down. Damian had felt completely undeserving of this affection back then, too.

After Damian brings up more bile, his stomach stops wrenching itself around. He settles enough to rest his head against Nightwing’s chest again. Hood lets go of his shoulder as Nightwing wraps his arms back around Damian.

“When did he drug you?” Hood asks, now that things are quiet again.

Damian’s throat burns. He doesn’t even have the energy left to lift his eyes to keep track of what’s going on anymore, let alone move his mouth to answer.

“Was it something that knocked you out?” Hood presses.

Damian shrugs feebly; it’s more of a twitch than anything. He remembers being jabbed with something, but he was unconscious long enough for any number of extra drugs to have been administered while he was out.

Before Hood can get fed up with Damian’s unhelpful response, Nightwing says, “We need to get out of here.”

Hood lets out an irritated snort; what Nightwing has said is glaringly obvious. “Yeah. I’m right behind you.”

Damian’s watches, eyes half-lidded, as Nightwing shifts and scoops him up with one arm under his knees and the other around his shoulders. It’s unavoidable that Damian’s broken leg is jostled in the process, but it still takes him by surprise.

“I’m sorry, bubby, keep breathing,” Nightwing says when Damian whimpers. He tightens his grip, but he has the good sense not to stop moving despite Damian’s protest. “The ambulance’ll have drugs for you. We just have to get up the stairs.”

They start climbing. Damian’s eyes are beginning to burn with strain, so he has to close them. He’s too tired to keep track of what’s going on anymore; it doesn’t matter, because Nightwing will keep him safe. 

After the first flight of stairs, Hood says, “I’m turning my comm back on.”

“Could you get mine too?” Nightwing asks. Damian presses his ear closer to his brother’s chest, listening to the comforting rumble of his low voice to distract himself from all the trouble he’s about to get in. “B’s probably wrecking shit right now.”

Hood scoffs, an audible rolling of eyes. “For once, I can’t blame him.”

Nightwing pauses for a moment, giving Hood a chance to reach up and turn his comm back on. They must have planned from the start to escalate the situation in the way that they did--they came down here expecting to kill.

“Brat, remember, what happened to that creep?”

Damian scrunches his eyes shut tighter as he says, “You killed him.”

“Don’t be a snitch,” Hood says sharply, loud enough that Damian jumps.

“Don’t yell at him,” Nightwing cuts in, though he doesn’t sound any less annoyed with Damian as he says, “Damian, just don’t answer questions about it tonight. Can you do that?”

Damian turns his head sideways, hiding his face in the front of Nightwing’s suit instead of answering. If they want him to be quiet, fine. The truth about everything that happened tonight will eventually come out, but his brothers have apparently decided that that can happen after someone has given Damian medical care.

Taking Damian’s lack of response as an affirmative, Hood sighs and drops the issue. A moment later, over his own labored breathing, Damian hears the beginnings of a tinny electric buzz, a sign that his brothers’ comms have been turned back on.

“--Back online?” Nightwing asks, faking the beginning of his transmission being interrupted by poor connection.

Buzzing follows. 

“Oracle, we were underground,” Nightwing says. He starts up the stairs again as a loud buzzing says that both Oracle and Damian’s father are shouting at Nightwing. 

Hood interrupts the scolding to say, “We’ve got him. He’s safe.”

Somehow, the buzzing gets even louder. Damian assumes that that’s the rest of the team joining in on the shouting, but his ears aren’t quite able to keep up with the streams of information that Hood and Nightwing begin to give in response to the rapid-fire questions.

They stop climbing stairs. Damian can’t pry his eyes open for more than a second or so at a time, but soon he feels the fresh breeze on his face, and that tells him that they’ve emerged from the building.

The subdued hum of light traffic, the clammy air, and the dim light filtering through his eyelids all tell Damian that it’s early morning by now. Voices call out to them. They’re unfamiliar adult voices that don’t exactly sound angry, but don’t sound quite pleased either. 

Nightwing runs both of them forward, speeding up and then prying Damian away from his body. Damian cracks open his eyes as he feels himself lowered onto something that feels like a stretcher, maybe from an ambulance, and realizes that Nightwing’s starting to draw his hands away. 

It is indeed just pre-dawn, the air a gray-blue color. Dark silhouettes of Gotham buildings rise up around him, and they’re the most beautiful thing Damian’s ever seen. Several police cars have crowded on the street, parked haphazardly, their lights all flashing. An ambulance has stopped and the back doors are open, ready to receive Damian.

A flock of EMTs are swooping around him, trying to box Nightwing out. All of them are talking, and some of them are asking Damian questions, demanding answers he can’t verbalize.

Damian doesn’t want to be alone. He says the only word he can manage to remember: “No.”

He flings his hand out, finding Nightwing’s arm by sheer coincidence. Latching onto his brother’s wrist as tight as he can, Damian forces Nightwing to trail along with the stretcher so that he won’t slow its path down.

A different hand lands on his, trying to pry it off of his brother’s arm. Voices pick up volume around him. Someone says, “Kid, we’ve got you, it’s alright. Let go.”

Damian raises his voice and protests, “No! No, no, no--”

A particularly strong tug does the trick. Damian’s grip slips, the arm pulls out of his hold, and through the blur of Damian’s tears, he can’t see where Nightwing disappears to. The stretcher lifts, leaving the ground, and the light changes as he’s loaded into the back of the ambulance.

Damian’s chest heaves, feeling too tight to hold onto air, and he hears more than feels himself let out a genuine scream. His breath stutters, and he tries to thrash his way off of the stretcher but is held down by his shoulders.

He’s babbling by now, half-sobbing and half-wailing any words he can think of, needing Nightwing to come back. People are taking him away, and they’re strapping heavy strips of thick duct tape over him to restrain him and throw them into the back of their car. He bucks hard enough that his leg screams out in agony before someone presses down on his thigh to keep him from jostling the broken bone again.

Pressure on his forehead stops him for a second; Damian falters and lifts teary eyes to find a familiar domino mask looking down on him. Nightwing’s mouth moves, his words lost in the hum of activity and the sound of the car’s engine.

Damian’s sob cuts off halfway, turning into a lurching hiccup. The pressure on his forehead stays, and he realizes it’s Nightwing’s hand when he feels his hair brushed out of his face with gentle care. Nightwing leans in closer to keep talking, and his breath breezes against Damian’s face. With that sensation, Damian remembers that he needs to breathe, too.

It feels manageable now. Damian manages an inhale, and tries not to blink due to the fear that Nightwing will disappear the moment Damian takes his eyes off of him.

The vehicle they’re in jolts into motion. White walls and lights above are reminiscent of an ambulance, which would make sense given the wail of a siren above his head. 

Nightwing’s thumb sweeps over Damian’s forehead, and his mouth moves with more words. This time, Damian hears, “--Okay, you’re okay. It’s okay.”

At the same time, something cold on his forearm says he’s been rubbed with antiseptic wipe, and something jabs into his skin. Damian tries to lift his head to look, terrified of whatever they’re about to give him, but Nightwing’s hand keeps his skull resting on the stretcher.

“I’m here,” Nightwing says, nearly inaudible. “You’re safe.”

Damian keeps struggling, but his body stops responding in a way that’s nauseatingly familiar, and he knows he won’t be able to win. Gradually, as the sedative soaks into his blood, Damian untenses. His back fully meets the stretcher instead of arching against his restraints. His hands have been restrained by his sides--it’s possible he had been trying violent means to keep Nightwing by him--but he stops straining and the raw, duct-taped skin at his wrists stops spiking with pain.

“Shh, it’s okay,” Nightwing says, his voice nearly lost in the swirl of Damian falling asleep. He gives a reassuring smile, one that says that things aren’t quite okay but they will be. His gloved hand on Damian’s forehead lightens up, no longer having to put effort into keeping Damian still. “I’ve got your back, sunshine.”

Damian’s eyes roll back into his head, leaving the blank lenses of Nightwing’s mask behind. His vision fades into a smear of gray and white, and things become quiet.

His next return to consciousness is less confusing than the last. One moment, Damian is asleep, and the next he isn’t. This time, this awareness doesn’t seem to come from someone moving his sleeping body. He doesn’t feel any pain, though there’s a stiff and cottony feeling to his entire body. Something is wrong, and he just can’t feel it.

Save for some soft beeping and murmuring noises that remind Damian of a TV with the volume turned down, things are quiet. Things are dark, too, but he belatedly realizes that this is because his eyes are still closed.

Damian opens his eyes, and sees his father sitting next to him.

Bruce sits forward, immediately reacting to Damian opening his eyes as though he’d just sat and kept indefinite watch on Damian’s face, waiting for this exact moment. Heavy circles rest under his eyes, and Damian swears he’s never noticed so many gray hairs scattered through Bruce’s hair before.

“Damian,” his father finally breathes, his voice heavy with relief, but that’s all he says. He’s in casual clothes, his hair unstyled, all signs of both his public persona and his masked one completely stripped away.

Not quite able to form words, Damian just blinks slowly. He lifts a hand to rub at one of his eyes, and discovers that his wrist has been wrapped in both gauze and a plastic hospital bracelet.

“The tape was on your skin for a while,” Bruce explains, his voice as perfectly even and neutral as it usually is. “They removed it, but it’ll take a week or so to stop feeling sensitive.”

It’s strange that he doesn’t sound angry. Damian lowers his hand again and lies still, watching Bruce’s face for any sign of dormant fury. Instead, what he sees is Bruce reaching out slowly and patting Damian’s arm, twice, putting so much intention behind the motion that Damian understands it’s in place of a hug. 

“I,” Bruce says, and then stops, fighting to find the words that he clearly wants to say. “Last night, when Tim called…”

Damian watches warily, not willing to interrupt this.

Bruce finally settles on saying, his voice even hoarser than usual, “I was so scared.”

Guilt lodges a flaming knife in Damian’s chest. He averts his gaze to the white ceiling, which is supported by a grid of gray metal. 

“No, that’s not…” Bruce sighs, retracting his previous words even without any verbal response from Damian. “This isn’t a lecture.”

Damian swallows. His throat is sore. He wonders how much screaming he’d done the last time he was awake. He doesn’t remember many details--everything is a blur of white-hot terror--but if Damian had done everything right, he wouldn’t be lying supine in a post-op bed like this.

“It should be one,” he whispers. 

Bruce is quiet for a moment. Then he takes Damian’s hand, carefully lifting it, and he leans forward to press his lips to Damian’s knuckles. He bows his head and rests their joined hands against his forehead, slumping there and taking slow, deep breaths.

Damian’s gaze stays on their intertwined hands. His father’s skin is littered with scars, some of them older than Damian is. In contrast, Damian’s scars are more sparse, and his fresh injuries are more prevalent. His fingertips are scabbed and crusted with dried blood, his fingernails ragged and the nail of the ring finger missing completely. He has no recollection of when this happened, but seeing the injuries causes an echo of the desperation he must have had when clawing for an escape.

Without lifting his head, Bruce asks, “Would you like to know how things played out on our side of it, or would you like to talk about it later?”

Damian doesn’t know which option will keep his father from letting go of him, so he hesitates. Finally, he decides that asking for an explanation will at least prolong the time Bruce spends at his bedside before leaving to find a nurse to check on Damian.

“I want to know,” Damian says, even though dread has begun to cramp his stomach.

Bruce nods. Still remaining hunched over, as though in prayer, he starts to explain.

Ten minutes after Stephanie sent the photo of her and Damian to Drake, Drake checked his phone and recognized the man in the background immediately, due to the man being in his shortlist of suspects. Drake called Stephanie to warn her, and she went into crisis-response mode and checked the entire gymnasium and the surrounding area for Damian, her frantic searching drawing the attention of the other adults in charge of the dance. During this time, Damian was in the back of one of the vans parked in the back of the school, right under her nose, where he would remain for several more hours while the search died down.

At the same time as Stephanie gave up her search and called Drake in a panic to ask for backup, Bruce had finished a call with Jason to ask if Damian and Steph had arrived safely, which is a classic Bruce thing to do. 

What deviated from the norm was the fact that Jason, instead of lying to Bruce’s face like he would normally do, got very nervous and said honestly that he had no fucking idea what Bruce was talking about. Damian’s tracker was in Jason’s apartment, which sparked the beginnings of a raging fight between Jason and Bruce, but after Jason located the tracker stuck on his coat, both of them realized something was wrong.

By the time Bruce and Jason hung up their call, Drake had already alerted everyone operating in Gotham, as well as Richard, to the situation. Only an hour after Damian disappeared, they were all in the Cave drawing up a strategy. Forty-five minutes after that, they were fanning out to look for Damian, the search made much more difficult by the fact that Damian had absolutely no means of being tracked. 

It was Drake who found Damian’s phone during a search of his room, and it was him who hacked into it and started to find all the records of phone calls and emails and photos sent to him. It was then, around eleven PM, that the real panic began, with the confirmation that Damian could have already become the next target of Allison Price’s killer.

Here, Bruce pauses, calming himself down as he’s noticed his own voice getting louder. He lowers his voice and begins to speak again. 

Security cameras across the Gotham Academy campus were offline for the first few hours of the search. Drake focused on Gotham Academy while Barbara handled the broader search--he tried to find archival footage and tried to get streams back online, while she began working through the list of IP addresses pulled from the emails and calls sent to Damian’s phone.

Several tense hours passed of the entire family guessing-and-checking their way through the list of addresses and potential locations where Damian could be. Then, around one in the morning, Gotham Academy’s security system came back online, and Drake was finally able to compare and contrast which people and which vehicles were on camera before and after the blackout, leading him and Stephanie to suspect a white van not present on any footage.

The specifics of the search from there--Barbara and Bruce and Drake narrowing down a database of stolen and rented vans, comparing those with lists of suspicious vehicles from Drake’s open case file, everyone combing through the city and calling to any allies they could think of--start to mix together. All of it feels so bad. Damian gets progressively more overwhelmed as his father continues, and a pressure behind his eyes grows worse as Bruce finally reaches the part in the timeline in the early-morning hours immediately preceding Damian’s rescue.

At that point, everyone except Barbara was split into teams of two and sent to the potential places where Damian could possibly have been held, and everyone split in different directions to check. Everyone came up empty, obviously, except for Jason and Richard, who almost left the building without noticing the basement until they heard Damian’s scream.

Bruce breaks off again, his low and constant cadence interrupted, then collects himself and starts speaking again.

“Dick hasn’t been in touch with me since you got to the hospital, but Jay said not to ask you about what happened down there.” Bruce’s voice is even hoarser than normal, after this past fifteen minutes of explanation. He reaches out with his free hand to gently card it through Damian’s hair, his touch caring and reverent. “I’ll discuss it with your brothers, and only with you if you want to talk about it.”

Damian doesn’t open his mouth. His last concrete memory is hearing the gymnasium door click shut behind him in the freezing-cold air, and nothing after that makes any sense. He doubts that Bruce will be reassured by hearing this.

Bruce nods, mostly just to himself, acknowledging that Damian isn’t going to talk about it right now. “I should let someone know that you’ve woken up. Can I invite your siblings in to see you after a nurse has checked on you?”

Damian nods. He knows that seeing the tired, distraught looks on his siblings’ faces is going to hurt, but a larger, more messed-up part of him has been reassured by Bruce’s account of everyone caring enough to search for him all night. 

Bruce’s face, still lined with the remnants of stress and lack of sleep, softens. He says, “I’m glad that you’re here.”

Damian watches his father’s eyes become glassy with unshed tears.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe,” Bruce says. 

Damian does nothing to respond, just lies flat on his back. Tears slide down the sides of his face and pool in his ears.

The doctor invades Damian’s room to bring news. Damian’s blood test suggests that his organs aren’t shutting down and there’s nothing left to do but sweat the rest of the flunitrazepam out. His knee is pretty thoroughly fucked, according to the X-rays that the doctor shows Bruce, and it’ll be in a cast for a long time. Damian can already feel his skin itching underneath the hard bandages.

“I’m betting you’re ready to get home and rest, buddy,” the doctor says, finally looking at Damian instead of just talking to Bruce. “It’ll take just about another half hour, and then we’ll get you out of here, alright?”

Damian’s getting a headache from the bright lights. He doesn’t bother to respond. 

“Mr. Wayne, I have a few other things to work out with you,” the doctor says. She lowers her voice, like she thinks Damian is too stupid to understand she’s talking around him. “Is there someone who can wait with him?”

Bruce looks down at his phone, briefly flashing the screen on and off to reveal no new messages. He frowns, but the expression is hidden quickly. “His siblings are in the waiting room. How many of them can come in at a time?”

“Two.” The doctor holds up two fingers along with her answer, and stands. “I’ll see you out there.”

“Thank you,” Bruce says. 

The doctor leaves. Bruce swipes his phone open, and Damian sees a chain of messages going to Richard that have gone unanswered for hours. As Damian watches, his father types out a row of question marks and sends them, and they join the cloud of words left ignored by Richard.

Less than a minute later, Damian hears loud voices in the hallway, voices that he can just sense belong to members of his family. They’re the only people he knows who are inconsiderate enough to raise their voices in a hospital ward.

Bruce seems to come to the same conclusion; he stands and briefly pats Damian on the shoulder before going to open the door.

Immediately, Bruce is confronted by the unstoppable force of Richard, forcing himself through the crack in the open door, already spitting furious words at Bruce. “--You told them to keep me out, you asshole, I called my goddamn lawyer--”

“Dickie,” Bruce says, in a tone like he means to say, calm down.

As he shoves his way past Bruce, throwing a sharp elbow, Richard hisses out of the corner of his mouth, “You can get out now or I’ll call security.”

Damian sinks lower into his pillows, shying from the immediate tsunami of tension that Richard’s arrival has brought. Richard and Bruce have always had issues being in the same room as each other for too long, but they typically try not to have this type of argument in front of Damian. It usually happens out of sight, though not quite out of mind.

“I’ve been trying to get in touch,” Bruce protests. He catches Richard’s upper arm, halting his progress into the room. He pulls at Richard until Richard reluctantly steps back, both of them going just a little ways into the hallway so that they aren’t directly arguing in Damian’s room but are still able to keep half an eye on him. 

Damian hears Bruce murmur, “Stop. Talk to me.”

“I don’t have to talk to you,” Richard says through gritted teeth, failing to keep his voice out of Damian’s earshot. “I’m his legal guardian too. You had no right to keep me out of the room.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Bruce says earnestly. “There must have been a miscommunication.”

“Yeah, there’s always a miscommunication with you,” Richard says. "Like how you ‘miscommunicated’ with Damian to the point where you missed him being stalked.”

Damian scoots down even further, trying to turn invisible. His fingers start to idly pick at the scabs around his ruined fingernails, flaking dried blood onto the white blankets.

“Dick--”

“I trusted you to protect him,” Richard says, voice thinning and fraying, “but I guess something more important must have come up.”

“That’s not how it happened.”

“You promised you’d pay attention.” 

“He likes his privacy.”

“He--? Oh my god. You are unbelievable!” Richard hisses. “How many kids do you have to lose before you--?”

“Stop,” Bruce says, voice steely and no longer betraying any leniency or compromise at all. Richard’s crossed a line. “Not here.” He gives a very obvious glance down the hallway behind Richard, and then Damian’s way, which draws Richard’s attention to Damian too.

Seeing Damian watching, Richard’s furious expression cracks and falls away, leaving something raw and hurt behind. 

It hurts too much to look at him. Instead, Damian looks down at his fingertips and the way that blood has started to bead around his nail beds, a result of his agitated fidgeting. 

“I know this is more my fault than yours,” Bruce says, just barely audible, “because he lives in my home, but we both missed this and there’s nothing we can change about that now. This isn’t the place to discuss this.”

“Fine,” Richard says. “I’ll put part two of this conversation in your fucking Outlook calendar.”

“Dick…”

“Go. Tell Tim I finished talking to you so he can join me.”

Another tense silence later, Bruce goes. 

Damian hears Richard’s footsteps approaching the side of his bed, slow at first, but then abruptly kicking up to a run accompanied by Richard saying urgently, “Damian, hey.” 

Damian doesn’t react quickly enough. He’s starting to feel fuzzy, like he’s more the embodiment of feeling overwhelmed rather than a person with a body. It’s why he doesn’t put up a struggle when Richard drops onto the edge of Damian’s mattress and grabs onto his wrists, pulling his hands apart and holding them still so Damian can no longer scratch at his scabs.

“Dami,” Richard says, voice a forced, light-pitched friendly tone, “hey, we don’t do that, remember? Shit, you did a number on yourself.”

Damian looks down at his fingers, finding them smeared with more red than he remembers causing. He doesn’t have the energy to pull out of Richard’s grasp, nor does he want to; it’s a relief to be held, even if it’s in restraint.

“Sorry,” Damian whispers, watching his fingers twitch.

“It’s…don’t apologize, you don’t have to apologize. I just don’t want you to hurt yourself.” Richard’s thumbs sweep over Damian’s wrists, and his grip begins to loosen.

Damian shakes his head sharply, and raises his voice. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t Father’s fault.”

“What?”

“All of this,” Damian says, his voice gaining volume. “It’s my fault.”

Richard’s hands tighten around Damian’s wrists. “No, it isn’t.”

“It is.” Damian hiccups. “Don’t--you shouldn’t fight w-with hi-im, he--it’s not his fault. I did this.”

“It’s his responsibility to keep you safe,” Richard argues. 

“Stop,” bursts out of Damian. He curls his hands into fists and yanks himself out of Richard’s hold, and he bangs his knuckles against his head to punctuate his words. The force rattles Damian’s brain around, his accelerating thoughts almost drowned out by the thud-thud-thud . “It’s my responsibility! And--and--and I d-don’t want you two to fight, just because I’m a stupid--fucking--baby!”

Richard forcibly pulls Damian’s arms down, preventing him from hitting himself anymore. Then he drops Damian’s arms and crushes him in a hug, though it’s just another way to keep Damian still without lacing him into a straitjacket. 

Damian struggles. Richard is too strong for it to make much of a difference. 

“Get off of me!”

“You’re hurting yourself,” his brother says, far too calm to be genuine.

“I--don’t-- care--!”

“I do.”

Damian makes a strangled noise, too frustrated to decide between crying and screaming. Now that he can’t shake out excess energy by pounding his hands against his skull, the momentum of his emotions are beginning to become welling tears in his eyes.

“It’s not your fault,” Richard says.

“You’re not listening.” Damian thrashes, succeeding in knocking his head against Richard’s chin. Instead of letting Damian free, though, Richard’s grip tightens further and one of his hands presses Damian’s head to his shoulder so he can’t writhe around as much.

Damian’s lungs struggle to compensate for all of the feelings he’s feeling at once. A harsh gasp leaves him, the prelude to a full episode of hyperventilation. But he can’t just wait for himself to calm down--he doesn’t want to wait because everything is already ruined and it’s cowardly to delay a single second of his consequences.

“I was going to handle it,” Damian hiccups, his voice nearly incoherent as it cracks and breaks around his uneven breaths. He doesn’t even know if Richard can understand him, but he needs to say it. “I was going to fix it, because it was my mistake, and-and now everyone knows and you shouldn’t have had to see any of it--and if I--if I was worth keeping then none of this ever would have happened anyway.”

“Dami,” Richard says, sounding suddenly unsteady himself, “you are worth keeping.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Damian would reel back, if he wasn’t being immobilized for his own safety. He knows he only made things ten times harder for Richard while the latter was trying to recover his memory, by virtue of Damian being a semi-dependent child with too much open, raw hurt about the entire situation. They can’t divert to that topic or it’ll take all afternoon to get back on track. “I promise, I wasn’t talking about that, I promise.”

“Shit,” he hears Richard say, soft enough that he probably didn’t want Damian to hear. He sounds overwhelmed, even after obviously trying to calm himself down. “Damian. Breathe.”

“I’m sorry,” Damian insists. He hiccups again, and pushes his forehead harder against Richard’s shoulder, demanding to be heard. “I’m sorry.”

Finally, the sentiment seems to sink in. Richard’s arms loosen, no longer rigidly immobilizing Damian; when Damian doesn’t try to lash out right away, he relaxes further, and he says, “I accept your apology.”

Damian takes his first full inhale in ten minutes. Relief unlocks the tension that’s been holding his body tight as a spring, and he sags against Richard’s shoulder.

“I hear you,” Richard says. He rubs a hand up and down Damian’s back, bracing, soothing. “That’s it. Breathe.”

Air rattles around in Damian’s lungs, but it at least stays long enough that he stops feeling so dizzy. With the imminent problem taken care of, Damian finally notices the cold sweat covering his skin, the tears streaking down his face, the way his headache has worsened. 

Richard doesn’t appear to be done talking. “The way we all see it, though,” he continues, serious as the grave, “you don’t have anything to apologize for.”

Damian’s smoldering and dying frustration feebly tries to rear its head again. He can only sit there limply and listen as Richard elaborates.

“Tim found everything on your phone. He told us, and we knew about it before we went looking for you. We wanted you home. We weren’t coming to find you because we were angry at you.”

Sharp pain in Damian’s fingertips tells him he’s latched onto Richard’s sweatshirt without consciously deciding to. They’re in a proper hug now, officially, no longer a safety hold.

Richard must be crying. His voice is too warped to be normal. “I know you feel sorry, because you have a big heart, but we don’t expect an apology for getting hurt by someone.” Then, sensing Damian’s coming argument, “Nothing you could have done would have made you deserve that.”

“I should have told you,” Damian croaks. 

“You should have, and you know that.” Richard’s hand smooths Damian’s hair, slowly and gently. Now that Damian’s paying attention, he can feel minute trembling in his brother’s fingers, a residual effect of a panic attack he must have had earlier today. “Why didn’t you?”

Damian inhales, exhales. He uncurls his hands from Richard’s shirt, and instead loosely links his hands together behind his brother’s back. He’s been thoroughly defeated, but he’s still loved--which is what makes his words so ironic when he admits, quiet and pathetic, “I miss my mother.”

Richard stills. After silence stretches a little too far, Damian figures that Richard is waiting for more. He rubs his face against Richard’s soft sweatshirt, wiping tears off of his cheeks and steeling himself.

“She visited last year and tailed me to check my training. To see how fast I could notice.”

That’s enough. Richard is smart enough to connect the dots, and Damian hears him connect the dots as Richard lets out a low, wounded sound and a hushed, “Dami.”

Damian wasn’t expecting Richard to laugh at him, but the genuine empathy still blindsides him. It cracks into something Damian didn’t even know he’d been feeling for the past week--the hurt and betrayal and shame of letting himself imagine his mother watching over him, when she’s made it more than clear she either wants Damian dead, or not at all.

“If I had told anyone, you wouldn’t have let me see her,” Damian says. He sits still and accepts the kiss that Richard presses to the crown of his head. “I just…wanted to talk to her.”

Another voice sounds from the doorway, cutting in without remorse. “And by the time you realized it wasn’t her, you thought it was too late to tell us.”

Damian stiffens and turns his head to find Drake in the doorway, standing with a bundle of folded clothes clenched between his hands and a white paper mask over his mouth and nose, concealing his expression save for his exhausted, drooping eyes.

Quietly, without any apparent desire for an argument, Drake says, “Hi, Damian.”

Damian just watches him, on guard.

After a brief impasse, Drake ends their staredown and holds out the bundle in his hands. “B said he’s almost done out there. I grabbed clothes for you.”

Richard shifts, relaxing his grip on Damian a little, then a lot more when Damian doesn’t leap back into self-injuring behavior. It’s an attempt to make the two of them separate, though Damian doesn’t put in the effort to let go. Moving carefully so as not to disrupt Damian’s grip, Richard takes the clothes and sets them on the table next to the bed.

Drake starts to say, his voice catching some nerves up with it, “Dick, there’s blood on your--”

“It’s all good,” Richard says, cutting Drake off. Damian can practically hear the warning glance he must send to Drake, for Drake to shut up so quickly. “Could you grab either some paper towels or a nurse, actually?”

“Um, right.” Damian peeks out the corner of his eye and sees Drake take a couple of hesitant steps backwards, worry obvious in the slant of his eyebrows. “Okay, I’ll find someone.”

Damian waits to be sure that Drake is out of earshot before he says, “Sorry.”

He still hasn’t moved or made any other attempt to stop bleeding onto Richard’s clothes, so his apology may not be very sincere. It doesn’t seem to matter to Richard, though. He’s reversed his earlier decision to let go of Damian, and has pulled him tight to his chest again. They haven’t hugged this much in a very long time, and Damian wants it to last long enough that he’ll be able to remember what it feels like later, when things are normal again.

“You don’t need to keep apologizing,” Richard says. “It’ll wash out.” He hooks his chin over Damian’s shoulder. Behind his back, Damian hears the light click of Richard unlocking his phone, and then the rushed pattering of his fingers on the screen. “Do you think you want to be in Duke’s car, or the one B drove?”

Damian knows that whichever car he chooses, Richard will choose too, and he doesn't know if he can physically handle the repercussions of putting Bruce and Richard in the same enclosed space at the moment. 

“How many people’re here?” Damian asks, words smushed against Richard’s shoulder. 

“Good question.” Richard hums as he thinks it over. “Me, Tim, Cass, Duke. And B, I guess.”

“Duke.”

“Got it. Well, wait…I know I was the one who gave you the option, but we’ll see if B lets you get in someone else’s car.” Richard huffs. “I’ll fight for you.”

Damian closes his eyes, wishing he had the wherewithal to laugh at that. Instead, he just slips back into a half-sleep, this one at least marginally more comfortable than the detached and confused haze he’s slipped into a couple times in recent memory.

It’s only another minute or so before Drake reappears, announced by a clattering and a weirdly gentle, “Okay, I got band-aids.”

“Don’t sleep yet, bubby,” Richard says, nudging Damian a little. He smooths his hand over Damian’s hair, attempting to wake him up more. “You’ll nap better at home, we just need to do a couple more things. C’mon.”

Being home does sound nice. Damian will be able to see Titus, and won’t be carrying the constant dread of finding his dog eviscerated on the front lawn.

He peels himself back, reluctantly leaving the comforting warmth behind and detaching his stiff fingers from thick fabric. Even before he’s pried his eyes all the way back open, someone has taken his hand in theirs and is carefully swiping at his fingertips with an antiseptic wipe.

Damian blinks slowly, and looks up to find Drake perched next to Richard, laser-focused on cleaning the smudged blood off of Damian’s skin without disturbing the new fragile scabs. He finishes one hand and offers it out to Richard, who accepts it to begin wrapping band-aids around Damian’s fingertips. They’re like an assembly line in their efficiency, Drake moving at a clip fast enough to keep Damian’s skin from crawling at the unpleasant sensation of the wet wipes he’s using.

The two of them finish their ministrations. Richard bundles Damian’s bandaged hands together between his own and holds them up to his mouth and gives them an obnoxious loud kiss. “All better,” he declares.

Damian wrinkles his nose, but he’s caught up in a yawn before he can express more of his displeasure.

“Ugh, me too,” Drake says. He echoes Damian’s yawn, his eyes visibly watering over the top of his mask. “Are those clothes…good?”

Damian lifts his eyes to give him a questioning look.

“Texture-wise,” Drake elaborates, reflecting Damian’s stare right back at him.

It’s a small detail. Really, it shouldn’t mean anything, that Drake even thought to ask. But Richard’s never brought up the issue, and even the person who fits Damian for his suits just snaps at him to stop squirming around when the fabric itches. The question is like a hug of Drake’s own, an acknowledgement of a discomfort that Damian didn’t think anyone else ever cared about. 

The stack of clothes consists of some shorts, a t-shirt, some socks, and a sweatshirt. All appear soft, worn, carefully folded.

He nods. 

Drake nods back, satisfied. “Sick. Well, um, are we waiting for a nurse or something?”

“Yeah, to get his IV out and stuff.” Richard’s voice sours as he adds, “B’s handling it.”

The sickly guilt from earlier makes a resurgence at the reminder that Damian is ruining the relationship between his father and Richard, again. His fingertips try to pick at each other again, but the band-aids get in the way. 

Drake tracks the movement, clearly noticing something wrong. He frowns, and says, “Well, he is Damian’s dad, so.”

“Maybe he should act like it.”

“What does that even mean?” Drake asks. “Do you want him to be more like you, and just fuck off to another city whenever things get hard?”

Richard sits straighter, taken off-guard and all the more angry for it. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” Drake says. He lifts his chin, challenging. “You’re never here. Are you so busy because you’re writing the worst book on parenting ever?”

Before the two of them can escalate this into a true round of arguing, someone knocks on the door twice before pushing it open, revealing a nurse there. She steps in, pushing an empty wheelchair in front of her. Her path is blocked by Drake in front of her.

“Hi,” she says, raising her eyebrows at Drake as he just stands there. “Your brother’s all set to go.”

“Oh. Cool,” Drake says, and moves so she can approach the bed.

Richard stands up from the edge of the mattress, allowing the nurse access to Damian. He and Drake stay in complete stony silence while the nurse parks the wheelchair in the corner and then steps closer to Damian to take a final read on his vitals.

Either she’s used to weird family dynamics, or she’s actively trying to distract Damian, because she starts to talk to him like nobody else is in the room. “How’s your pain, kiddo?” she asks as she crosses to the sink to wash her hands.

Damian shrugs. He hasn’t been thinking about it.

“Could I get a rating on it? One to ten?”

Damian hesitates, not knowing what scale to rank his pain on. He’s not in the worst pain he’s ever felt, though his worst pain was being impaled on a sword and bleeding to death. That’s not a normal benchmark for a civilian.

“Is it distracting or do you feel like you can ignore it?” she prompts. She dries her hands and starts to pull gloves on.

Damian has been ignoring it up until now. His painkillers are still deadening things, plus he’s good at shutting it out. “Ignore it.”

“Does your head feel kinda fuzzy?” She turns back to approach his bed, looping around the side where Damian’s heart monitor and IV stand lie. 

Damian nods, rubbing some bandaged fingers against one eye. 

“Okay. That’s normal. It’ll get more clear within a few hours, but that might mean things will hurt more.” While she talks, she reaches out and starts to detach the electrodes from Damian’s chest. “Your dad has meds for you and I told him how often you can take ‘em, but speak up if things start to get unbearable.” Once the heart monitor is disabled, she loosens up the tape on the inner crook of Damian’s arm, and then positions a little wad of gauze over the insertion site. “Look up at me, bud.”

Damian lifts his chin. She smiles, and then pulls the IV out in a quick painless motion, immediately pushing down the gauze to keep Damian’s blood in as much as possible.

“Good work,” she praises. “You’re being really brave. Okay, hold this right here for a second.” She looks down to indicate the gauze she’s holding to his skin. “I’m gonna grab you a band-aid. Do you want a superhero one? We have a Justice League pack around here somewhere.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Damian sees Drake stifle a smile behind his hand. Nevertheless, Damian asks, “Do you have Batman ones?”

She smiles. “I’m sure I can scrounge one of those up for you.” 

Damian takes charge of pinning the gauze on his skin, careful not to jostle it around so that it won’t hurt. Gauze is an unpleasant texture, injection site notwithstanding.

The nurse pulls open a couple of drawers, searching for the correct bandages. While she roots around, she directs a question at the two statue-still figures of Damian’s weird brothers: “Would one of you move that wheelchair over next to the bed, please?”

“You got it,” Richard says, immediately complying. He’s doing a better job than Drake at pretending like he wasn’t about to start biting his brother a few minutes ago.

The nurse finally locates the box of band-aids she’s looking for. Damian complies when she moves the hand that’s pressing the gauze down and quickly sticks the bandage on. The little Bat symbols smile back at him. 

“I’ll leave you here if you’d like to get changed. Could one of you help him, please?”

“You got it,” Richard says. “Thanks so much.”

“You’re welcome.” The nurse holds out a closed fist towards Damian. “Good to meet you, Damian. Have a safe trip home.”

Damian returns the fist bump as an excuse to not have to answer aloud. She accepts this as an end to their conversation, and she rounds the bed to leave again. On her way out, she says, “Come and get me when it’s time to move him out of bed. I’ll be across the hall.”

“Thanks,” Drake says, scooting out of the way again to let the nurse leave.

She shuts the door behind her. For a moment, Damian is worried that Richard and Drake are going to jump back into their argument from before, but the next sound made in the room isn’t from his brothers snapping at each other. It’s Richard belatedly echoing the yawns Damian and Drake had let out earlier.

“Let’s get changed so we can leave,” Richard says, swiping at his watering eyes.

“Please,” Drake agrees, slumping in relief when he seems to decide an argument isn’t forthcoming.

Excruciatingly carefully, and to Damian and Drake’s mutual discomfort, both of Damian’s brothers have to help Damian replace his hospital gown with the clothes that Drake picked out. Richard helps maneuver the basketball shorts over Damian’s cast in a way that doesn’t hurt, and Drake yanks a large t-shirt over Damian’s head. 

“I forgive you for stealing this,” Drake says as Damian’s head pops out through the collar.

Damian looks down at the front of the shirt. He finds that it’s the one he stole from Richard’s drawer, the one that says “BOY” WONDER on it. The shirt is huge; the sleeves reach Damian’s elbows, and if he were standing up, he’s sure it would reach halfway to his knees. “This isn’t yours.”

“It definitely is,” Drake says, not quite sounding irritated. Damian doesn’t look up to check, but he’s fairly certain he’s hearing a cross between worn-out and endeared. “It’s been missing for three months at least.”

“I’ve been caught,” Richard says flatly. He taps Damian’s thigh and Damian scoots up, pushing himself up on his palms to make it easier to finish pulling the shorts on. “That’s on me, Timmy. He got it from me.”

Damian hunches his shoulders, not having a defense for his actions.

Richard keeps going, basically digging his hands into a layer of muck and wrenching the mood of the room back up into something lighthearted. “I only stole it because your room is too messy for you to ever notice.”

Drake protests, “That’s not an excuse!”

“It is,” Richard says primly. He picks up a sweatshirt, the last item on the pile, and bunches it up to make it easier to slide it over Damian’s head. He’s much gentler about it than Drake was a minute ago.  “Maybe this’ll teach you to clean your room.”

“Why did you purchase this shirt?” Damian asks with a wrinkle in his nose. 

While helping Damian guide his arms through the sleeves of the sweatshirt, Richard lets out a weird half-nervous noise, while Drake just sighs and says, “Can we have the gender conversation another time, please--?”

Damian interrupts with a short shake of his head, “I only mean it’s clearly too large for you.”

“Burn,” Richard says.

Drake blusters, “I’ll grow into it!”  

“Wishful thinking, baby bird,” Richard says with a sympathetic twist to his mouth. “You’re what, seventeen now?”

While his brothers argue, Damian balls his hands in the long sleeves of the sweatshirt; Drake picked out one of the cross-country sweatshirts from their father’s high school days. It’s the one that everyone prefers to bundle up in--Damian thinks he’s seen every single one of his siblings wear it--and Damian has a soft memory of Bruce offering it to him the last time he stayed home sick with a fever. This article of clothing, combined with the t-shirt that smells like Richard’s apartment, is another sign that Drake put actual thought into what would help Damian feel comforted.

Damian pulls the hood up over his head, preferring to have a damper between his ears and the rest of the hospital. He has to be careful not to disturb the raw parts of his face that had been duct-taped. While Damian continues to burrow within the article of clothing, Richard steps out into the hallway and pulls the nurse back in to supervise the moving of Damian from bed to wheelchair.

When the nurse asks who Damian is okay with touching him to help him move, Damian must give enough of a dubious look that the nurse knows not to come nearer to him than she has already. She looks to Richard instead and tells him, “You take up by his arms and make sure he’s supported,” and then gestures to the other end of Damian’s bed and tells Drake, “and you make sure his leg doesn’t hit anything.”

Richard and Drake move immediately, not questioning her instructions. Damian pushes himself up off the bed a little bit and helps his brothers shift him sideways. The two of them lift him with ease, settling him down onto the wheelchair’s seat. It isn’t the most gently that Damian has ever been handled, but considering the overly-affectionate way that Damian vaguely remembers being carried around by his kidnapper, Drake’s too-tight grip around his upper leg is a welcome contrast.

When it’s clear he won’t fall out of the chair, all hands let go of him. Damian curls back into his sweatshirt, lifting one of the strings to his mouth to chew on. 

“If one of you wants to go ahead and tell your ride to come up to the front door,” the nurse says, “now’s your time.”

“Oh, right,” Drake says. He backs up, heading towards the door without looking away from Damian. “I’ll go. See you soon, Dami.”

There’s a hollow spot in his chest where Damian would normally feel irritation at Drake calling him by that nickname. In the absence of this emotion, Damian just stares at where the clunky cast on his leg lies supported by one of the black vinyl footrests. He pulls the string out of his mouth and forces himself to drop it before Richard has to tell him to.

The trip out to the lobby passes without incident. Richard walks a few steps ahead, holding open doors for Damian to be wheeled through. He attracts a few looks, which are then turned onto Damian when they realize who he is. In response, Damian retreats further into his hood to hide from the whispers that start to follow him, and he chews on the inside of his cheek in place of the hoodie string.

Cassandra is the first one to notice when they round the corner. She and Bruce are nestled into the corner of the waiting room, exchanging quiet and serious words. When Damian’s wheelchair rounds the corner, she slides off her chair and stands, darting in front of Bruce and weaving around Richard to reach Damian’s side.

The nurse slows him to a stop, preparing to greet Bruce with last-minute information. Cassandra drops to a crouch next to Damian’s wheelchair, putting herself at eye level with him before offering her arms out for a hug.

Damian doesn’t know how much more touch he can take today, but he’s willing to push past the sensory discomfort if it’ll make Cassandra stop looking so sad. He halfheartedly lifts an arm, doing his best to accept her offer, but of course Cassandra reads him too well to fall for it.

She draws back, mouth turning downward at the corners. “Don’t lie,” she tells him, her voice low and hurt.

Cassandra considers so much more than just untrue words to be lies. And she hates liars. After finding out that Damian’s been hiding this secret for so long, he’s honestly surprised that she waited around in the hospital for him. 

Damian lowers his arm and wraps it back across himself, trying to drown himself in the sweatshirt’s excess fabric. Finally, he just whispers, “Sorry.”

As sometimes happens, Cassandra’s words fail her too. He sees the stifling frustration on her face that comes with losing her speech, and she finally just shakes her head sharply and holds up the sign for I-LOVE-YOU. 

If Damian’s head felt heavy before, it’s now five times worse. He pulls the collar of the sweatshirt up over his mouth and nose, wishing that nobody could see him in this state, and barely remembers to hold up the same sign to reciprocate Cassandra’s message before his wheelchair starts to move again.

The automatic doors swoosh open in front of him. Frigid October air rushes at his face, making Damian shiver, but he won’t have to be out in it for long. Duke has pulled his car up to the curb only about eight feet away. In the passenger seat, Drake waves at them, and then there’s a clack as the doors unlock.

Cassandra pulls open the back door. Inside the car, Damian hears Duke call, “Hey, Damian.”

Damian gives a feeble wave, not much more than a wiggle of fingers.

“Do you guys want help?” Drake asks.

With a superhuman amount of patience, the nurse pushing Damian’s wheelchair coaches Damian’s siblings through getting him out of the wheelchair and into the backseat without banging his cast into anything solid. Cassandra loops around the back of the car and climbs into the seat on Damian’s other side, helping him buckle his seatbelt. The nurse smiles and pulls the wheelchair out of the way of the car’s wheels and says, “Take care, kiddo.”

Damian blinks at her, too tired to do anything else. 

The nurse’s smile softens, and she waves before stepping back and allowing Bruce and Richard better access to Damian as the two of them emerge from the hospital with frosty tension between the two of them. Before they can say anything, though, Duke calls, “Car’s full, sorry! See you at home!” and Cassandra reaches over Damian to pull the door shut in Richard’s face.

Duke presses the gas, squealing away from the curb before either Bruce or Richard can start to scold him. Damian watches their two outraged faces recede into the distance.

From the front of the car, either from Drake or Duke, Damian hears a snicker. 

“Thank god that worked,” Duke says, his tone weighed down with exhaustion that wasn’t there when he cheerily said farewell a few moments ago. “Those two are so much.”

“You’re telling me.” In the side mirror, Damian can see Drake scrubbing at his eyes with exasperation. 

Cassandra catches the confused look that Damian directs her way, and explains, “Both of them worried for you. Need to talk.”

Trapping Richard and Bruce in the same small space to talk things out either works within minutes or ends with a blowout fight that isn’t resolved for weeks. Damian’s anxiety takes the latter possibility and begins to run with it.

“Driving safe?” Cassandra asks, directing it towards the front of the car.

Duke gives a thumbs-up, held up high enough to be seen in the backseat. “Just had coffee.” His eyes dart up into the rearview mirror, meeting Damian’s gaze before returning to the road. He clicks the turn signal on and merges into the right lane to get out onto the freeway. “We can stop for food somewhere, if you want.”

Damian just wants to go home. He shakes his head fervently, and Duke frowns a little but doesn’t press the issue. He finishes merging onto the freeway and keeps driving, saying something in a low voice to Drake, which Drake responds to just as quietly.

Cassandra sits eerily still, considering they’re in a moving vehicle, and watches Damian out of the corner of her eye. Damian eventually turns away and rests his cheek on his seatbelt, precariously holding himself up with it, and goes to sleep before anyone can try to talk to him again.

He wakes up with his leg hurting again and with a cautious hand tapping at his shoulder. Damian cracks open one eye and finds Duke there, the car parked in front of the steps leading up into the house. Behind Duke, Alfred has appeared, holding two crutches that are presumably for Damian to use.

“Hey hey,” Duke says. He offers an encouraging smile. “Do you think you can walk, or do you want a piggyback ride? We still have a few until B gets back with Dick.”

Damian looks at Alfred, hoping Duke gets the point.

Alfred steps forward, offering out the crutches. He’s tired like Bruce was earlier, worn-down and frayed. When Damian turns his attention to him, Alfred offers a faint smile, but it’s not reassuring like it should be.

“Hello, my boy,” Alfred says.

Damian isn’t sure how to respond, so he doesn’t. He takes hold of Duke’s hand when it’s offered, and he’s pulled out of the car. 

Between Duke and Alfred, Damian gets situated on crutches, and then all of his present family members hover around him in a swarm while Damian slowly walks himself up the front steps and down the entry hall. Duke makes valiant attempts at conversation with everyone, encouraging Alfred’s polite meaningless small-talk, but Drake and Cass just drift along, silent as the wallpaper.

Going up more stairs sounds impossible right now, so Damian’s relieved when Alfred subtly nudges him towards his father’s office instead. The last time Drake was really sick, this is where he was camped out; it’s become the unofficial non-Batcave sickbed because it lets Bruce keep an eye on them. It’s also the room with the most comfortable couch, and Damian doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that the room only has one window, which is curtained and shaded by a large tree, making it nearly impossible to see through from the exterior. 

Damian leans the crutches against the arm of the couch and then falls backwards onto it semi-gracefully, wincing when he bounces too hard. Several of the people surrounding him reach out, too late to prevent this pain, and Damian flinches back from all of them.

Everyone goes quiet, all fragile and cautious about what just happened. Damian takes a breath, ignoring them and their sad faces, and he turns sideways to stretch out on the couch as comfortably as he can.

Alfred, the first to rise above the discomfort, reaches out and unfolds a throw blanket to settle over Damian, and then gently props Damian’s cast up on a couple of throw pillows. Duke and Drake and Cass all lurk behind Alfred, forming the quietest Greek chorus of all time.

“I’ll bring you up something to eat,” Alfred says. He turns and gently flaps his hands around the three kids crowding behind him, and they obligingly back up towards the exit. Alfred doesn’t appear to be expecting any kind of answer from Damian, which is good because Damian has nothing to offer.

Just as Damian is about to worry that he might not actually want to be left alone, Alfred cracks the door open and a dark brown blur bolts into the room, collar jangling. Between one blink and the next, Titus’s nose is in Damian’s face, snuffling around his hairline and then taking interest in his bandaged hands and the scent of blood there. Damian, cheek pressed to the pillow, weakly reaches one hand out and scratches a couple of fingers under Titus’s chin near his collar, so relieved to see his dog that he could cry.

An uncomfortable hot itch sliding over the bridge of Damian’s nose tells him he’s already doing that. He sniffles. Titus starts licking his face.

The door to the study clicks shut, signaling to Damian that he doesn’t have to pretend to not be crying anymore.

“C’mup here,” Damian mumbles to Titus, patting the sofa cushion. 

Titus obliges, stepping up onto the couch and turning awkwardly in the small sliver of space left before plopping down in an ungainly pile, half-squishing Damian. The dog rests his chin on Damian’s shoulder so his warm, absolutely foul breath wafts over Damian’s cheek.

Out in the hallway, low adult voices buzz back and forth. Probably Damian’s family beginning to confer with each other, starting the debate over whether Damian should be turned back over to his grandfather now, or once he’s recovered.

Titus snuffles, tickling Damian’s neck. Damian stops trying to catch the voices in the hallway.

“I’m sorry I endangered you.” Damian sniffles and scoots down so that he can hide his face in Titus’s neck. “It was s-selfish of me.” 

Titus licks his ear, already having forgiven him. The dog doesn’t move away, even when Damian’s lurching sobs probably make his position very uncomfortable. His immense weight pinning Damian down works as fast as the sedative in the ambulance had; Damian’s dead to the world within moments, still crying even as he slips back into unconsciousness.

Chapter Text

When Damian wakes up, Titus is still on top of him, but that isn’t his only company in the room. Richard is dozing off on the armchair, and Cassandra has taken up a post on the floor in front of the couch, her thumbnail between her teeth as she watches something on the tablet resting on the rug. A pile of snacks has appeared on the table, likely Alfred’s handiwork.

As soon as Damian stirs, both look over at him, their gazes identical in their intensity. Damian blinks back at them, not sure what they want from him, but nobody greets him aloud.

Richard slumps off the chair to approach quietly. He crouches down next to Cassandra, close enough to pass a hand over Damian’s hair, and Damian shuts his eyes again to allow the touch.

His leg must be what woke him up. If he wasn’t trained to lie still and accept whatever pain he encountered, he would be squirming as the throbbing under his cast starts to escalate.

On top of him, Titus shifts and stands. He hops to the ground, freeing Damian. Damian cracks his eyes back open to see Cassandra tugging the dog away. Richard takes advantage of the opportunity to help Damian sit up, resituating him and placing the pillow back under Damian’s heel so his leg is re-elevated.

The movement makes Damian wince, a spike of pain taking him unawares. He tenses at the shift in mood his show of pain brings to the room, freezing as though staying completely still will make him invisible, as though his family members are a pair of hungry Tyrannosaurus Rex rather than human beings.

The silence holds them all hostage for a few seconds. Then Cassandra picks up a sports drink from the table and holds it out to Damian, rescuing them all when she says a short, “Drink up.”

Damian accepts the bottle. The drink is an ectoplasmic off-gray color, arguably one of the better flavors. He cracks open the lid, his copious band-aids making fine movements of his hands difficult but not impossible. 

Richard sits down on the couch next to Damian’s propped leg. “It’s time for your next dose,” he holds up a bottle of prescription painkillers before continuing, “but you have to eat first. What sounds good?”

Damian takes a sip of the fog machine-flavored drink and thinks over options that won’t make his stomach churn. Nothing comes to mind that won’t be difficult for Alfred to prepare without a trip to the one grocery store in Gotham that carries the right ingredients.

“Oatmeal?” Cassandra says.

Damian wrinkles his nose before he can think about it.

“Peanut butter and pickle sandwich,” Richard says next, almost certainly a joke.

Damian frowns harder.

“Cheeto-ham salad,” Cassandra counters.

“Raw shrimp and hashbrowns,” Richard offers, a quirk to his mouth.

Damian shoots them both a glare that only has Cassandra and Richard smiling more, some of their exhaustion appearing to melt for a moment.

Richard reaches over to pick up one of the meal replacement bars left on the table in Alfred’s pile of offerings and unwraps it, offering it to Damian. “Try some of this, Grumpyface. I don’t want your stomach to get upset.”

Damian hands the drink back to Cassandra and accepts the snack, though it doesn’t look very good. It’s going to have to do, because Damian hasn’t eaten in a very, very long time due to all of the…unpleasantness. He asks, picking at the crinkly wrapper, “Did you catch him?”

The answer doesn’t come promptly. Damian realizes he’s abruptly changed the subject, maybe enough to throw everyone off. He looks up and Richard’s face is doing something weird and twisty.

Richard’s eyes meet Cassandra’s, and stay there instead of moving to Damian’s as he responds too-calmly, “Yeah.”

Cassandra’s own expression tightens, an unspoken message having reached her. She looks back to Damian. She asks, “You don’t remember?”

Damian remembers being scared, and being sure that he was going to die a failure. He remembers unwelcome hands on him, and the feeling of his leg snapping. There had been a lot of blood splattered on a wall, but the cocktail of chemicals that’s gone through his body in the past day is making everything else too hard for his mind to grasp. 

“...Not everything,” Damian evades. The protein bar looks gross now, too blocky and chalk-brown. He re-wraps it as best as he can and tries to hand it back to Richard.

Richard holds up a hand, not accepting the snack. “You’ll feel better if you get some food in you, Dami. Just try a few bites.” 

“I don’t want it,” Damian snaps. 

The room stills. Damian cringes underneath the weight of the new uncomfortable, tense air. He wants Titus to climb back onto him, but the dog has started nosing around on the ground where some of the snacks have fallen. As Damian watches, Titus wanders farther away, restless from lying still for so long.

“What sounds good, then?” Richard finally asks, circling back to the same question that Damian dodged earlier.

Damian shrugs. He shifts, trying in vain to find a position that eases the dull, throbbing pain in his leg. “I don’t need the painkillers,” he says. “I’m going to take a nap.”

“Nice try,” Cassandra says. She gets to her feet. “Alfred will know what to make.”

Damian has no chance of stopping her. He’s stuck on this couch and he doesn’t even have any of his knives with him. He scowls and ignores her until she goes away. 

Titus goes after her, which feels like a betrayal.

Richard is watching him, head tilted to the side. When Damian chances a look his way, Richard smiles but he doesn’t look very happy. He picks up the sports drink and offers it out.

“I’ll trade you,” Richard says.

Damian swaps the protein bar for the beverage and sits very still until Richard stops watching him so intently, at which point Cassandra returns with Alfred. 

Alfred has a tray balanced on one hand. He gives Damian a small smile when he sees Damian sitting up. 

“I don’t blame you for not being tempted by those protein bars,” Alfred tells him. “Are you willing to try some soup instead?”

Cassandra lurks behind Alfred, watching Damian like a smug hawk. 

Damian tries unsuccessfully to hide from her sight and says reluctantly, “I can try.”

Alfred sets the tray down. Damian can see that the bowl on it is filled with a goldenrod-colored soup. Damian’s surprised that his mouth has started to water at the smell alone.

“What is that?” Damian asks, forgetting about his short-lived hunger strike.

“A very kind woman at the supermarket told me her family recipe because I was asking how to cook lentils correctly,” Alfred says. He moves the pillows behind Damian’s back so that Damian can sit up more comfortably, and Damian tooth-clenchingly allows himself to be adjusted because he knows it will make Alfred feel better that he’s done something to help. “My go-to is a chicken noodle soup that I didn’t think you would appreciate.”

Damian accepts the warm bowl between his hands, and Alfred puts a spoon in it. The steam softens his face, fills his vision for a moment. Damian tastes salt and decides he’s sick of constantly being on the verge of tears.

“Some space, please,” Alfred says, and then he crouches next to Damian in the spot where Richard had been occupying a moment ago. His hand smooths Damian’s hair, and then a kiss is pressed to Damian’s temple.

Damian sniffles and sees a tear splash off the handle of his spoon. He leans back just enough that he won’t contribute to the flavor of the soup any more, and picks up the now-damp spoon to try a sip.

It’s not a soup he’s specifically tried before, but it’s close enough to something Damian ate when he was small that his tears only come faster. His hand shakes but he gets the spoon back into the bowl without spilling anything, and then Alfred thankfully moves the bowl out of his grip so that Damian can get a hold of himself.

He presses his now-warmed palms against his face and Alfred pulls him into a hug even though it’s an odd angle. Damian leans sideways, letting his head slot under Alfred’s chin.

Out of the unpleasant miasma of memories from the previous night, Damian remembers being told to his face that his family doesn’t love him. Damian came out of the experience with the distinct understanding that he was chosen as a target because nobody would miss him.

Alfred’s hug doesn’t feel fake. 

The way Richard and Cassandra have looked after him, too…their monitoring of his condition has seemed suffocating in certain ways, but their intense bird-of-prey hovering over Damian’s condition is the same way that Damian’s father has always shown he cares, too.

“It’s alright, my dear,” Alfred says. His hand rubs up and down Damian’s trembling back. 

Damian leans harder into his grandfather and makes the most pathetic sound he’s ever made in his life. He’s still so tired, and he doesn’t have the energy to cry with the same force he did back at the hospital. Whatever rage he’d had at himself earlier has been replaced by something much more melancholy and soft. Tears roll down his face of their own accord.

“It’s alright,” Alfred repeats. He keeps rubbing Damian’s back, the motion being the only thing keeping Damian in one piece. 

He cries himself out a lot more quickly this time. Damian runs out of tears and slumps, feeling completely drained but somewhat lighter for it. Alfred kisses the top of his head and then Cassandra reappears next to Alfred to offer the soup back up.

“Thank you,” Alfred tells her, and Damian accepts the bowl with fewer theatrics this time.

The soup has rice, lentils and a blend of spices that Alfred rarely uses. Damian eats half of the bowl before losing steam, at which point Richard finally hands over some ibuprofen. Damian takes it with an unsubtle sigh of relief. The pain in Damian’s leg is already lessened by the effect of having someone embrace him in a way that isn’t a safety hold, and the drugs will only help.

While Damian finishes the bowl, moving much more slowly as exhaustion catches up with him, Cassandra and Richard resettle near him with more caution than before, now that they’ve seen how fragile Damian is acting right now. Richard sits next to where Alfred is still kneeling, and Cassandra perches at the far end of the couch beyond Damian’s propped-up leg. 

“It seems like the lady at the grocery store knocked that one out of the park,” Richard says.

“There’s some more downstairs if you’d like to try it.” Alfred takes Damian’s bowl to set it back on the tray. “I wish I’d gotten her name. It’s hard to go wrong with anyone’s beloved family recipe.”

“Well, I’ve run into some unfortunate ones,” Richard starts to tease, and Cassandra doesn’t bother to stifle her laugh.

“If you’re referring to my mother’s blood pudding, you’ll be hurting my feelings,” Alfred says evenly, turning his gaze on Richard.

“I would never do such a thing, Alfie,” Richard says with wide innocent eyes. “I love that stuff.”

“That’s wonderful to hear. I’ll have to make it again sometime soon,” Alfred says.

Richard’s face takes on a greenish tone, his smile looks more like a baring of teeth. “I wouldn’t want you to inconvenience yourself.”

“It’s no problem at all.” Alfred’s smile is terrifying.

Cassandra makes eye contact with Damian with a face that says she doesn’t understand what blood pudding is but she’s too afraid to ask. Her widened, amused-but-out-of-her-depth eye contact forces a smile onto Damian’s face. It’s just a twitch of his mouth, and he’s too tired to actually laugh, but it makes both Cassandra and Richard’s faces light up like Damian had let out a deafening peal of laughter.

Alfred’s scary smile softens back into a kind, protective, loving one when he looks back at Damian. His hand passes over Damian’s hair one last time, and then his thumb dries Damian’s cheeks. He asks, “Would you like to try resting again?”

Damian nods. He knows that this will mean that Alfred will leave and the casual, kind touch will end, but Damian’s beginning to fall asleep sitting up and it’s only a matter of time before Alfred’s old knees force him to stand and depart anyway.

Alfred gets to his feet and collects the tray. “Master Dick, if you wouldn’t mind, I could use your help downstairs.”

Richard nods, though he casts a glance in Damian’s direction.

“I’ll stay,” Cassandra volunteers. She settles further into the couch. “He’ll be safe.”

Damian believes her. Richard does too; he stands and follows Alfred without much protest. 

When the room is empty save for Damian and Cassandra (Titus having run downstairs to be let out into the backyard), Damian scoots into a more horizontal position. His eyes are dragging themselves shut, and he isn’t in the mood to fight that anymore.

Cassandra takes her phone out and sits perfectly still, an invincible guardian. Damian falls asleep feeling lighter and calmer than he’s been in a month.

The rest of the afternoon passes with less excitement. Cassandra stays for a couple of hours before being replaced by Duke, who brings in Damian’s Switch and Duke’s own so that they can play Smash until Damian’s head starts hurting. When he notices Damian squinting in pain but is too stubborn to cede the fight, Duke runs himself off the stage five times until the match is called in Damian’s favor.

“I’ve had enough screen time,” Duke says, while Damian glares at him. He smiles and pulls Damian’s Switch out of his hands. “Do you wanna do a crossword instead?”

Damian grumbles, trying to cloak his relief that the blue light is no longer attacking his eyes.

“Uh-huh, cool.” Duke pulls his phone out and takes his time picking out one of his eighty crossword puzzle apps to amuse the two of them. “Here’s hoping you know more about professional golf than I do.”

There is no earthly chance that Damian is more of an expert on that than Duke, who’s such an unstoppable force that he’s been banned from at least five different bars’ weekly trivia nights.

Still, Damian says, “Of course I do.”

Damian lays down and watches the sun set outside while Duke pretends to need Damian’s help with crossword puzzles for a couple of hours. Titus occasionally lets out enormous sighs of boredom while time passes.

“Nine-letter word for ‘whirlybird,’” Duke says. He’s slumped down quite a ways by now, sinking into the same couch that Damian’s on. His leg is pressed against one of Damian’s; this touch and the pressure of Titus on top of Damian combine to keep Damian from drifting too far into his head.

“Propellers?” Damian tries.

“Mm, maybe, but it’s singular.” Duke’s eyes flick up off of his screen for the first time in a while. He looks at Damian without any sort of judgment or condescension when he says, “You were lying about the dogs before.”

It takes Damian a moment to catch up with the change of subject. It might be a couple of days before he can keep up with Duke’s rapid bouncing between topics again. “...Yes. I was.”

“Do you think I wouldn’t’ve believed you if you told me what was really going on?” Duke asks. His thumbs move without him looking down at them.

Damian’s curious despite himself. “What was the word?”

“‘Eggbeater’,” Duke says. Damian frowns, halfway to becoming upset about how stupid that clue was, but Duke moves on. “I would have believed you. If you’d told me. Why’d Steph get to be involved?”

“I didn’t tell her either,” Damian says. “She’s the one who agreed to chaperone, so she helped me lie to my father.”

“Huh.” Duke looks sad for a moment. He looks back down at his phone. “Sorry you didn’t get to go to your dance.”

Damian’s been thinking about that too. He’s not upset about missing the dancing part, but considering how it could have been a low-stakes evening with Maps, Olive, and Amala, Damian’s a little bitter too. If Damian hadn’t failed so miserably, he could have spent the evening with everyone proud of him, without Damian having to shoot someone point-blank.

Damian scratches behind Titus’s ears. The dog lets out another heavy sigh. “I wasn’t really looking forward to dancing.”

Duke’s nose crinkles up with the beginnings of a smile. “You sure? Steph said you had a date you were going with.”

“She wasn’t a date,” Damian says, so embarrassed he can barely speak.

“I bet,” Duke teases. Then his smile fades again, and he says more sincerely, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Damian feels shy. He rubs at a spot above his eyebrow where his headache has started to converge, though it’s just an excuse not to look directly at his brother. 

Duke doesn’t press the issue. He just bumps his knee into Damian’s uninjured one and then says with a look of genuine puzzlement, “Five letters, animal that can regrow its eyes.”

“Snail,” Damian blurts immediately, and puffs up in pride when the word fits.

At ten, Duke disappears into the Cave when Jason shows up in the hallway. Jason doesn’t immediately take over, but hangs back in the hall to exchange terse words with Damian’s father. Damian infers from some of the whispering happening outside the study that Jason’s been in the Manor this whole time, he just hasn’t bothered to come say hi. 

“Is she planning to patrol?” Bruce asks in a low voice, his frown audible.

“Beats me,” Jason says, irritation poorly hidden in his voice. “You wanna ask her?”

“You didn’t?”

Jason’s whispering gets harsher. “I’m not your fucking carrier pigeon.”

“I’m--”

“Whatever,” Jason says aloud, drowning out Bruce’s reasoning. “I’m going downstairs.”

He strides through the door of the study, towards the grandfather clock behind the couch Damian’s still reclined on. As he enters the room, Damian immediately notices a weary, anxious air about Jason, one that doesn’t make Damian any less sick about missing this very important night of patrol. He rarely sees Jason this uneasy, and the shadows under his eyes aren’t helping matters.

“You resting?” Jason asks.

Damian frowns, because obviously he is.

“Sorry your costume got all fucked up, or you’d be able to trick-or-treat this year.” Jason spins the hands on the clock. “Better luck next time, creepazoid.”

The clock swings forward.

“Who were you whispering about?” Damian asks.

“Who do you think?” Jason asks. He slides through the opening behind the clock with a parting, “Smell you later.”

The clock closes again. Damian slumps back against the pillow he’s propped up on, disgruntled.

His father comes into the room a few minutes later, eyes glazed over with some deep thoughts that Damian doesn’t have the energy to guess at. Bruce blinks and focuses on Damian’s face once he’s approached enough. His words come slowly, which means he’s thinking very deeply about several other things while he goes. “Moving…might be unpleasant,” he says, “but I would feel better if you were down in the basement. It’s safer there.”

Damian reaches for the crutches propped up on the arm of the couch behind him. Before he can even try to get himself across the room, his father closes the distance between them and he sweeps Damian up into his arms, one arm under Damian’s knees and the other under his shoulders.

Damian starts to protest, even as his head spins with the sudden change in altitude, “I am capable of--”

“Let me do this,” Bruce says gruffly. 

Damian shuts his mouth and averts his eyes. It’s not like he’s in any position, authoritatively or physically, where he could protest. It’s not a good feeling, but it’s one he’s going to have to get used to.

Bruce brings him down into the Cave, where most of Damian’s siblings are already buzzing around as they prepare for the evening. Alfred, already seated at the computer to do a last-minute recheck of everyones’ comms and tracking devices, raises an eyebrow in their direction with disapproval radiating off of him. Bruce ignores him and gets Damian situated on a bed in the infirmary, within eyeshot of both the bank of computer screens and the far side of the Cave where the vehicles go in and out.

Damian lets Bruce fuss. This involves making sure the blanket is covering a significant amount of Damian, that Damian’s leg is elevated properly, that he has a comm and one of the stupid millennial adult coloring books that Richard got into for about thirty seconds last year. Damian grits his teeth and bears it until his father has kissed the top of his head and power-walked halfway across the Cave to get suited up.

It takes ten minutes for everyone to cycle through their gear check with Alfred. Most of Damian’s siblings give him weird looks over their shoulders on their way out, expressions obscured by their various layers of masks and cowls. The rest just pretend like he stopped existing, which he prefers just a little bit.

Bruce is the last in the Cave, exchanging quiet words with Alfred. The conversation is too hushed to overhear, though Alfred’s gaze drifting semi-frequently in Damian’s direction makes it clear what they’re talking about. 

“It would be best if you were going now,” Alfred says a step louder after a few traded remarks, as directly as he’s ever told Bruce to get lost before. “Your colleagues from out of town will be expecting direction from you.”

Bruce heaves a not-so-subtle sigh, though he begins to comply by pulling his cowl on. “I sent them a briefing.”

“You should have written your briefing at an eighth-grade level or lower,” Alfred counters. (If the “friends” Alfred is referring to are the Justice League, Damian would argue that a fifth-grade level would have been preferable.) “Not all of them have the time to decipher your personal code.”

This gentle ‘I-told-you-so’ is not taken with gratitude. Bruce turns on his heel and walks towards his car, not hesitating until he’s opening the door to the Batmobile. Here, he looks over at Damian, his mouth pressed into a flat line. Based on how Damian has just been struck anew with the reality that he won’t be driving around helping his father tonight, he can safely assume Bruce has just experienced the same reminder.

Damian doesn’t have any words of encouragement. He’s too heavy and foggy and--anyway, Bruce has never reacted well to the way that this kind of affirmation is embarrassing when coming from a middle-schooler. Richard’s semi-condescending brand of reassurance is bearable, but Richard left earlier with only the most fleeting of guilty looks over his shoulder at Damian, and had absolutely no words to spur Bruce on to greatness despite the spectacular failure of his Robin.

Before Damian or Bruce can say a word, the elevator door creaks open, signaling someone else’s arrival. Damian cranes his neck to see around the awkward angle, but freezes still when Stephanie steps out of the elevator.

She…doesn’t look well. 

Jason’s words from earlier echo back to Damian now--the uncertainty around Stephanie patrolling must have had something to do with her health. Her skin is paler than normal, her hair disheveled and a little damp. As she gives a cursory glance around the Cave, not quite spotting Damian, her eyes are wild and unfocused.

“Miss Stephanie,” Alfred says, half-rising from his seat, “are you certain that--?”

“Hi, Alfie,” Stephanie says, cutting him off more flippantly than anyone’s ever cut Alfred off before, “I’m good. I’m good to go.”

“Steph,” Bruce says, his voice too stern for comfort, but Stephanie ignores him entirely as she drifts towards the bank of lockers along the back wall.

Her movements are a little stiff, but natural enough that people outside of Damian’s family probably wouldn’t notice. She pulls her oversized hoodie off to reveal that she’s wearing most of her suit already; it was designed for comfort and it’s entirely possible that she slept in it after last night. The sweatshirt is traded for a grapple and a glorified fanny-pack of emergency supplies and her rebreather all strapped to her hip.

Bruce tries again to get her attention. “Steph, you aren’t cleared for patrol tonight.”

Stephanie must be listening. There’s nothing else to be listening to. Her face betrays nothing. She snaps her cape onto its anchors in the shoulders of her suit, and presses her mask on to fasten it in place.

Alfred watches the situation unfold impassively, though he must be searching for an opening or a method of de-escalation. Damian feels tense just hearing the tone Bruce is using, recognizing it from times Bruce was upset with him. 

“Miss Stephanie,” Alfred says, “if you are under the weather, there is nothing wrong with a night off.”

“Not under the weather,” Stephanie says, walking over and picking up her comm from the desk. She puts it in her ear and smiles without looking at Alfred and then strides towards the motorcycle that’s been put in her semi-permanent possession while Kane test-drives a new one.

“I told you that you weren’t welcome until we’ve worked out our disclosure issue,” Bruce says, shifting into Stephanie’s path as she nears him.

Stephanie starts to dodge around him, still not looking up. Bruce steps in front of her again, saying, “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Still ignoring him, Stephanie jukes in one direction and then lunges past Bruce. He fails to stop her this time, and he has the self-restraint not to reach out and grab her. 

“I’m taking you off the clearance list if you won’t talk to me.”

She’s picked up the helmet hanging from the handlebars and she glares at the floor while she puts it on. When Bruce finishes his latest pointed comment, Steph lifts her chin to finally answer him, and catches sight of where Damian is sitting, propped up. 

In a moment, her anger fades and is replaced with something that looks like nausea.

The immediate flip in her attitude makes Damian realize in an instant what’s happening. Bruce didn’t bring him down here just to keep Damian safe. The lack of surprise in Bruce’s reaction to Stephanie’s reaction is proof enough that Damian’s a pawn here.

Her eyes swerve back to Bruce, the top half of her face pale above her mask. Her eyebrows furrow together. “What is wrong with you?” she spits at him. 

Damian holds his breath. He’s pretty sure Alfred is holding his, too. 

Bruce murmurs something, inaudible from Damian’s distance. Damian only catches “best judgment” surrounded by a few other condescendingly-toned words, and this statement has Stephanie turning and throwing her leg over the motorcycle, her patience frayed and snapped all with one comment.

“Steph,” Bruce warns, his voice rising. 

Stephanie revs the motorcycle loud enough to make Damian cover his ears, but he still hears her yell “Go fuck yourself,” over the roar before she pivots the bike and zooms out of the Cave.

Damian feels gross. He leans far over the edge of the bed to grab at the crutches leaned there; he hooks his fingertips around one but the other clatters to the floor, attracting attention from Bruce. 

“Damian,” Bruce says, beginning to walk towards him.

“Don’t,” Damian says, holding out a wobbly hand to ward his father off. He props the crutch under his armpit and slides off the bed, keeping his balance on one foot through sheer force of will. The coloring book tumbles to the floor with a smattering of spilled colored pencils. His vision swims for a moment, enough of a moment for Bruce to reach his side and for Alfred to begin walking over too, worried.

“Just rest here,” Bruce says, hands on Damian’s shoulders. He tries to push Damian backwards to the cot again. 

Damian swings a hand to smack one of Bruce’s off of his shoulder. “That was cruel.”

Bruce sighs. “I was only--”

“You only wanted to mess with her head.” Damian stoops and picks up the other crutch, relieved when the second support gives him the balance required to scoot away from Bruce. 

“No, I thought that seeing you sitting up would put her mind at ease.”

“No, you didn’t!” Damian snaps. His crutch lands on a colored pencil and his balance shifts, jolting him to the side. 

He expects to slam into the floor face-first but Bruce grabs him by the elbow and wrenches him back upright. Bruce says, “Damian, stop,” but the large hand holding him in place does the opposite of reassure Damian.

“Don’t,” Damian says, heart in his throat. He brings his shoulders up around his ears and his next sounds aren’t words at all; they’re a high pitched hum of apprehension. His hands on the handles of his crutches are sweaty and slippery.

Bruce, for once, listens. He steps back and puts his hands up and says, forcibly calm, “Look. I’m not touching you.”

Damian cringes away from the sound of Bruce’s voice. His father is only pretending not to be annoyed.

“Please lay back down,” Bruce says. “Alfred will bring Titus down, if that will make you feel better. You can’t be wandering around.”

Damian’s teeth are clenched so tightly that his jaw aches. Slowly, he steps back until his back finds the side of the bed, and he drops the crutches to pull himself up. Without looking at Bruce, he eases himself into his original position, and lowers his cast onto the stack of pillows.

Bruce lets out a heavy sigh. “Do you want Titus?”

Damian nods, not looking up from his hands clenched in his lap.

“Okay.” Bruce pauses, then sighs again and walks away. 

A few minutes later, Titus hops up on the bed and carefully chooses a spot, resting his front legs and his head on Damian’s lap, looking up with sad eyes until Damian relents and starts scratching behind his ears. It’s possible that Bruce says something to Damian in parting, but Damian misses it. 

Soon enough, the Cave is empty save for Alfred pattering away on the keyboard. Damian slumps and Titus sits patiently with him, ears pricked towards the door in case of intruder. He tells himself he’ll rest his eyes for a few minutes, and then get up and help Alfred run comms.

Instead, Damian reopens his eyes to find a darkened Cave, with Titus moved down to a spot by his feet, with all vehicles re-parked back in their places. He isn’t sure what woke him up, as everyone seems to have departed for the night. Either they were all too tired to deal with Damian, or they just forgot he was there.

Something moves in the darkness all the way across the Cave. Damian squints and makes out a blurry form too tall to be Cassandra, too long-haired to be Richard. Stephanie’s shuffling around in the dark, dragging a sweatshirt over her head as she prepares to go upstairs for the night.

She flicks off the remaining lights. The ghost lights flick on in their place, illuminating the high rocky ceiling with slate blue. In these, it’s easier to see as Stephanie moves towards Damian, away from the elevator, but her face is still cast in shadows.

Someone else’s voice murmurs from the general location of the elevator, out of Damian’s sight at the moment. Perhaps it had been the screech of the metal accordion over the elevator entrance that woke Damian up. The voice, too high to be Duke’s and too low to be Kane’s, asks, “My ringer’s on if you need to tap out.”

Stephanie grunts. She starts the considerable process of untangling her hair tie from the ponytail that somehow gets wilder and wilder, night by night. Damian’s seen photos of her hair in her Robin days, and he figures that the ponytail is a much easier maintenance task than the mane barely held at bay by a headband over her forehead. 

“Are you, uh, sure you don’t want a buddy?”

“I’m fine, Tim.” Stephanie’s voice is raspy, nearly as bad as Damian’s. 

Drake’s voice lowers, and he says, “Sure. See you later.”

The metal manual door over the elevator screeches shut, and clicks into place. Drake leaves, and Stephanie spends another two minutes wrestling the elastic out of her hair before it simply snaps and her hair falls down around her shoulders and she slumps, defeated.

Damian relaxes his face and pretends to be asleep when she starts walking again, this time towards him. He keeps his eyes open just enough to see her blurry form past his eyelashes.

Stephanie folds like a house of cards onto the chair next to Damian’s bed. She ends up leaning on the mattress with her tired head drooping onto the blankets, facing Damian. The upper half of Stephanie’s face, the part not hidden by her mask, is littered with tiny cuts and scratches. There’s a sharp line dividing a reddened patch on her cheek, the red starkly contrasted with white where the mask cut off the exposure to the burn. She must have showered before taking her hair down; her cuts are clean but her only-slightly-damp hair carries a smattering of dust and small chunks of either gravel or rubble.

Her eyes blink slowly, and then after a lifetime of silence, she rasps, “Are you awake?”

Damian lays still. He keeps his breathing mindfully steady, 

Stephanie snorts humorlessly. She rubs at her eyes with the back of her wrist, muttering, “This is probably the first time I’ve ever deserved you being pissy to me. So I’m gonna just practice apologizing now, as a dress rehearsal, and I’ll do the real thing when I can see you not-in-the-dark without throwing up. Cool?”

Damian almost frowns. He only barely manages to avoid scowling and snapping at her to shut up. She’s annoyed Damian almost every day since he met her, but right now he has no particular grievance with Stephanie at all. It’s disturbing that she cares enough to get physically ill when his injuries are in plain sight. Damian doesn’t like that.

She lifts her arms and folds them to rest her head on something that isn’t the mattress. Her voice thickens. “Okay, so. I guess, um. God.” Her face turns downwards, hidden from sight. Her voice wavers. “Damian, I’m so fucking sorry.”

He opens his eyes and stares at the darkened ceiling far above him, listening to her words and biding his time to interject. 

“It was my job to make sure this specifically didn’t happen to you.” She sniffles. “I should’ve said something. It was obvious something was up with you, but I thought it was normal middle school angst and not…this. I’m sorry.”

Stephanie sits up again and miserably scrubs at her face, not noticing that Damian has opened his eyes. Around her palms, which still block her face from view, Stephanie mumbles, “Okay, thanks. Um, I’ll practice that a little more. I’ll understand if you don’t want to accept my apology.”

“I accept it,” Damian says. 

Stephanie jumps out of her skin. She jolts so hard her arm bangs into the metal frame of the medical cot and she yelps, “Ah, shit!” 

After a moment, Stephanie’s shoulders leave their frightened spot around her shoulders and she gives him a wobbly glare in the dim lighting. Her hands swipe the remnants of tears off of her cheeks. “What the hell is wrong with you? How long have you been awake?”

“The whole time,” Damian says, not willing to come up with a lie.

Stephanie rubs at the spot where her arm made impact. Her eyes skate away from Damian, heavy with embarrassment. “Cool. Well, awesome.”

“Where are the others?” Damian asks.

“Mostly everyone had to go to the Watchtower,” Stephanie says. Her mouth does a weird, fake-nonchalant twisting thing. “Zatanna’s looking at Duke and Harper and making sure nobody else has a curse on them, haha. Alfred left to be a getaway car for Cass, and you have to promise not to tell B that.”

Damian nods. He doesn’t intend on snitching on anything to his father, not after Bruce’s upsetting decision to use Damian as psychological warfare against Stephanie earlier.

He isn’t going to let her keep talking to distract him, though. “Why were you apologizing to me?” 

Stephanie’s eyebrows furrow like Damian said something very stupid. “Um, hello?”

“You think it’s your fault?” Damian asks, just as incredulous as she is. 

Stephanie screws her face up in exaggerated confusion. “Dude. Do you have a brain injury nobody told me about? I’m--”

“Shut up,” Damian says sharply, and doesn’t wait for her to think of something rude to snap back at him. “You weren’t even supposed to be involved. You still managed to help. If you hadn’t been there to text Drake, then…”

Stephanie’s face looks noticeably greener, even in the gray-blue light. Recalling how sickly she had looked earlier, it’s entirely possible that it’s Damian who’s been making her ill.

“What are you talking about?” she asks.

“Drake was able to trace the vehicle because of the photo identification, correct? So--”

“No, not that. What do you mean, ‘supposed to be involved’?” 

Damian’s revealed too much. He curls his shoulders a little bit, torn between retreating and lashing out. 

Stephanie demands, “Was it your genius plan to confront him all on your own?”

“It was my responsibility,” Damian says. He glares at her, feeling cornered.

“How in the fuck do you figure that?” she asks, narrowing her eyes.

Damian glances around, paranoid. He wouldn’t put it past Bruce to have hearing devices installed in the Cave. There’s nothing he can do about that now. “You have to promise not to tell anybody.”

Stephanie looks more suspicious, if that’s even possible. “Sure.”

“My father told everyone not to answer calls and emails from unknown numbers, and I did,” Damian says, cutting right to the chase.

Stephanie stares at him, utterly blank. Maybe she’s the one with a brain injury. “...What?”

Damian sighs. He makes an upturned-palmed gesture of frustration.

“No, what are you talking about? You disobeyed your fascist dad so you deserved to have your knee stomped out?” Stephanie asks.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then what are you saying.”

“It was…him,” Damian says. He never learned the man’s name. “He was the one who hacked Wayne Enterprises. Or at least he paid someone to do it for him, maybe.” He looks down at his hands, ashamed. “If I hadn’t confirmed to him that he was calling me, he probably would have left me alone. So it was my job to take care of the mess I made.”

Things are quiet for a long moment.

“Jesus Christ,” Stephanie eventually says.

Damian retorts, “Hey,” but is ignored.

“Really, you think that would have stopped him? He killed that girl in your grade. I’m sure that whether or not you read one of his emails, he’d have come after you.” Stephanie has regained most of her normal bravado. The vulnerability she’d shown while apologizing has been expertly re-hidden. “Creeps don’t care about setbacks like that. It sucks to learn that the hard way. I’m sorry.”

“Is that something you learned the hard way?” Damian asks, grasping for any kind of escape from her intense rebuttal.

Stephanie rolls her eyes. She folds her arms tightly across her chest and looks away, which is a tacit admission to something she won’t ever tell him about in detail. Then she shakes herself and refocuses with more resilience than Damian thought she would have in her, considering how exhausted she must be. She says, “If you think it’s not my fault, and I don’t think it’s your fault, how about we just blame that fucking weirdo for all of it?”

The idea of doing that feels wrong to Damian, overwhelmingly so. Being the one to blame for the situation gives Damian a certain ownership over what happened to him. If he gives that up, it’s just something scary and bad that was outside his control, that happened because someone wanted to hurt him.

Damian doesn’t think it’ll be that easy just to renounce all of that guilt. He considers doing it anyway, and ultimately reasons it would be good to at least try.

“I guess,” Damian says begrudgingly. 

Stephanie’s faint smile tells him that she’s thinking many of the same things that he is. Neither of them voice their reservations, though, and she settles for saying, “Do you want to keep sleeping down here, or come upstairs for snacks with me?”

“What kind of snacks?” Damian asks, because he really does want to take some painkillers before he goes back to sleep.

Stephanie’s crooked grin solidifies. She stands up. “I don’t know, let’s find something good.” 

She finds his crutches and lets him hobble himself to the elevator. Titus follows along, smart enough not to walk where Damian’s crutches could stomp his paws. They get upstairs to find the Manor dark and quiet, which is rare. They don’t encounter anyone until they get to the kitchen and find Drake using chicken scissors to cut marshmallows in half.

“What’s up?” Stephanie asks.

Drake doesn’t look up. He has a growing pile of sticky marshmallow halves next to him. “I’m going to fill Bruce’s sock drawer with these for pulling that bullshit on you earlier.”

“You’re a sick freak,” Stephanie says, but her voice is filled with such admiration that Damian has to assume this is a compliment.

“Uh-huh.” Drake looks up and his tired eyes flare wider in surprise when he sees Damian accompanying Stephanie. He stops with the scissors still open in midair and says cautiously, “Hi, Damian. Are you…hungry, or anything?”

Damian utters a noncommittal verbal equivalent of a shrug. He hobbles to the counter and climbs up on a bar stool, though he won’t be able to sit here for long. He’ll need to elevate his foot again, sooner rather than later.

“We’re evaluating potential snack options,” Stephanie says. She gives Drake and his scissors a wide berth and goes to the pantry to swing the door open there.

Out of sight, she rustles around for options, making the restless sounds of a raccoon going through someone’s trash cans. Drake resumes his grim work, and Damian reaches down as far as he can, his fingertips brushing the top of Titus’s head while the dog looks up expectantly for Damian to drop some food for him.

“I backed up what evidence I needed from your phone,” Drake says haltingly. “I didn’t look at anything except the WE email and the call history.”

Damian will have to just trust Drake on this one. The emails and the incessant barrage of phone calls are embarrassing on their own, so anything else Drake may have stumbled upon wouldn’t really make things more humiliating on Damian’s end, regardless.

“Is my father going to see them?” Damian asks, keeping his eyes on the end of Titus’s snout.

Drake hums, picking out his words carefully. “Well…yeah. It’s just going to be timestamps and the emails printed out, though.”

Damian can remember the contents of the emails in perfect clarity--photos of Damian from a position too close for comfort, of Damian either crying or otherwise acting in a manner that would be shameful to the Wayne image. His father had seemed nothing but relieved that Damian is safe, earlier, but any review of evidence will only prove that Damian brought all of this on himself.

“It’s just for the writeup,” Drake says. The scissors snip thickly through another marshmallow. “But I brought this up to say, do you want your phone back now? I can go grab it.”

“No,” Damian says immediately. He gets a shiver of anxiety just thinking about feeling his phone vibrate in his hand again. 

“I think your friends maybe have been trying to get a hold of you?”

“I don’t want it,” Damian reiterates. He hasn’t even thought about Maps and Olive this entire time, but the guilt isn’t enough to make him strong enough to face the device again. He knows that Maps was in danger too--that’s one of the things that has stuck in his brain and passed through the fleeting dreams he’s had since last night--but she’s safe now. She’s safe as long as she’s far away from Damian.

“Dude, he doesn’t want it back,” Stephanie says.

Drake sighs. “Yeah, I get it, thanks.” He rolls his eyes. “I just didn’t want you to think I was stealing your shit.”

Stephanie emerges from the pantry and Damian looks up. She’s come up with an enormous carton of goldfish crackers and a bag of semisweet chocolate chips, which aren’t conventional hearty snacks but will have to do for now.

She drops them onto the counter where Damian can reach them. She looks past him, not quite focusing her eyes--perhaps avoiding any reprisal of her nausea from earlier--and asks, “Do you want drugs, buddy?”

“What kind?” Damian asks. “Drake’s, or--?”

“Oh my god, can you calm down about that,” Drake says. “It’s weed. I’m not a coke dealer.”

“Maybe if you were, you’d have a job that contributed positively to society,” Stephanie says.

“She’s right,” Damian says. “What do you contribute besides the accumulation of capital?”

Drake looks between the two of them and is for once at a loss for words.

“I would like painkillers,” Damian says to Stephanie when his broken leg throbs again, first in his ankle and then through the enormous fracture below his knee.

“You’re the boss,” she says with a fake smile, and turns to go find wherever Richard left the bottle of pills earlier.

Damian and Drake sit in utter silence for a little bit, steadfastly avoiding conversation while Drake finishes up the preparation for his prank. Before Stephanie can return, the light above the fridge flashes, a silent coded signal that someone’s entered the Cave downstairs. Damian’s reprieve from the heavy tension of a house with Bruce in it is over.

Drake has come to the same conclusion. He sighs and sweeps all of the sticky marshmallow halves into a plastic grocery bag and then gives Damian an awkward nod. “I’m upstairs if you need me.”

“I won’t,” Damian says.

“Cool.” Drake’s grin briefly reappears, genuine and then gone in a flash. There’s something heavier in his gaze now that’s never been there before. The closest he’s gotten to this was during the weird looks he started giving Damian at school in the last few weeks.

Then Drake says, “It’s good that that creep’s dead and you aren’t.”

Damian stares at him.

Drake doesn’t get self-conscious or retract his statement in any other way. He holds Damian’s gaze even though both of them are known to be averse to eye contact. 

Damian finally asks, feeling rather fragile, “He’s dead?”

Drake’s expression flickers. He glances at the signal light on the wall even though it isn’t flashing anymore, then down to his grocery bag, then back to Damian with a cautious nod. “You didn’t know that? That’s what Jason and Dick told me.”

Damian frowns. His brain feels like mush today; he’s been floating from hour to hour like he’s the dead one. At no point has he been able to fully remember the events of last night. It seems odd that Richard hadn’t mentioned this earlier when Damian asked, but knowing that his memory of blood splattering against unfinished drywall hadn’t been something he dreamed up--that makes some of his disorientation settle.

“Are you joking?” Damian hedges, desperately hoping Drake isn’t playing a trick on him. It’s rare that Damian’s in a state where someone could do that to him, but Damian’s memory is malleable and it will be until he fully sweats out the flunitrazepam he was dosed with. 

Or, if his body has already processed all of that drug--until Damian gets enough sleep that he can feel any strong emotion without being pushed to the verge of tears like he is right now.

Drake shakes his head. His eyes are concerned now, which is an emotion he rarely expresses, much less directed Damian’s way. “No, it was…Jason told us that the guy killed himself.”

That doesn’t feel true. Damian will need to press either Jason or Richard for confirmation, because there are many reasons that they would need to lie about the manner of his kidnapper’s death. He still nods and ignores the burning that his eyes are doing. 

“That’s…good,” Damian says, some of his overwhelming paranoia chipping itself away.

“It really is.” Drake’s mouth twitches in an attempt at a reassuring smile.  

Stephanie reappears in the doorframe, hand clutched triumphantly around the white squarish ibuprofen bottle. “Found it. Also, people’re headed this way, Tim, get a move on.”

Drake nods and slips through the other door, the one that goes directly to the dining room and will let him avoid the hallway entirely. Over his shoulder, he says, “Bye, Damian.”

Stephanie gets a glass down from the cupboard and fills it with water at the sink for Damian. Then she looks at the pill bottle and says, “It says you can take it with or without food. How’s your tummy?”

Damian wrinkles his nose. He doesn’t like the word ‘tummy’ very much at all. “It’s fine.”

“Okay.” She sets the glass down in front of him without directly looking at him again, and then puts one ibuprofen tablet in front of him and uses her fingernails to split another one in half. “If you get sick because you didn’t eat, then don’t blame me.”

Damian begrudgingly reaches out for the goldfish crackers and picks up a handful. Richard can be a mother hen, but not always without reason. If he’d made such a big deal of Damian eating earlier, then Damian should take that into account.

As should be expected with Damian’s luck this week, Alfred breezes into the kitchen just as Damian stuffs the handful of crackers into his mouth. Damian and Stephanie both freeze still and Alfred does too.

“I’m sure this isn’t what you meant when you told me you were getting Damian dinner, Miss Stephanie,” Alfred says.

“What?” Stephanie bluffs through a mouthful of disintegrating crackers. She crunches once, twice, trying to make more room to talk around them. “This is just an amuse-bouche.”

Damian crunches guiltily, but Alfred’s eyes are soft when they move over Damian and Stephanie again. Alfred glances over his shoulder at the sound of footsteps approaching, but must decide there’s no threat approaching. He moves on and is already opening the fridge by the time they’re joined in the kitchen by Duke and Cassandra.

The pair has one black eye each. Cassandra’s is centered on her browbone, and drying blood has streaked down her face since it was cleaned. Duke’s eye is nearly swollen shut from an impact that hit his cheekbone; he removes his ice pack to wave it at Damian in greeting. Both of them appear to be in good spirits, despite their injuries.

“How’d you get hit in the face?” Damian asks, fighting his exhaustion to ask this very important question. “You wear a helmet.”

“Dames, you would not believe the night I’ve had,” Duke says, too theatrically to imply anything legitimately traumatizing happened. “You’re lucky you stayed in.”

Damian narrows his eyes, not willing to believe that. If he hadn’t slept through the patrol entirely, he would have spent it wracked with guilt that he wasn’t helping.

Cassandra has already reached Stephanie. With Cassandra, Stephanie gets the closest she ever is to being physically affectionate. This just means Cassandra kisses her palm and smacks it against Stephanie’s forehead, and Stephanie grabs a chunk of Cassandra’s hair and yanks on it before retracting her hand without making skin contact.

That intimate greeting done with, Cassandra turns her attention in Damian’s direction. She can see his distrust under the surface. She says, “Condiment King.”

Damian’s eyebrows raise. 

Cassandra and Duke exchange a dark, haunted look. Then Duke climbs up onto a stool at the counter next to Damian and flops dramatically forward, intentionally getting into Damian’s space as he does so. “He sucks so bad. And you got to take a nap!”

Alfred has retrieved a glass jar of what appears to be the soup from earlier out of the fridge. He spares a glance in Duke’s direction, and then meets Damian’s eye as if to soften any perception that Duke is legitimately trying to insult Damian.

It’s a nice approach, really--better to focus on the unpleasant instead of pretending like Damian hasn’t forced his family to scramble to cover for him. Damian pushes Duke off of him. “You should be thankful that someone you could actually vanquish showed up.”

Duke lets out an exhausted peal of laughter and stays slumped in his pile over the counter. “Asshole.”

“Ice your face,” Stephanie says. “Aren’t you taking senior photos next week?”

Duke moves his ice pack back to his cheek, muttering vulgarities. Ice therapy or not, it’s unlikely his photo session will be taking place, at least not without a heavy hand of makeup and follow-up airbrushing. The photos are a formality but one that Bruce insisted on; Duke has maintained that nobody takes senior photos for online school. Damian has a suspicion that Duke could have gotten punched in the face on purpose to get his photo session canceled.

Cassandra climbs up onto the stool on Damian’s other side. She approaches him slowly, but Damian doesn’t move out of the way so she rests her head on his shoulder and briefly slumps against him. Damian accepts her weight even as it threatens to tip him sideways off of his stool. She sits up again when Alfred approaches with a bowl of reheated soup for Damian.

“That smells good,” Duke says, perking up. “Are we giving up on Jason bringing dinner?”

“Dude, he was lying to you,” Stephanie says with a snort. She shoves more goldfish crackers into her mouth right before Alfred picks up the carton and moves it back towards the pantry to swap it for a more nutritious snack. “No way is he getting everyone Batburger.”

The light over the refrigerator flashes again. 

“Ten bucks that’s him,” Duke says, pointing.

“Twenty it’s not,” Stephanie says.

Damian takes a sip of the soup, drinking from the edge of the bowl, and thankfully doesn’t cry at the taste this time. It isn’t quite as magical as it was earlier, but that may simply mean Damian is recovering from his worst depths of despair.

Cassandra sits up. Alfred appears with an ice pack wrapped in a towel and hands it to her. Cassandra eases it onto her bruised face with a soft, relieved sigh.

Having everyone else around him injured too is a good equalizer. When Alfred offers to help move Damian to the couch in the living room across the hall so that his leg can be propped back up, it feels less humiliating because it takes place while Stephanie and Duke compare various bruises that are already developing on their bodies.

Damian is settled into the corner of the couch and reunited with his soup soon afterward. While Cassandra, Duke, Stephanie, Titus, and later Drake trickle in and take up comfortable positions around the TV, Alfred finds fresh gauze and bandage clips for Damian to change the wrappings around his wrists. Stephanie produces some Justice League band-aids to replace the ones around Damian’s fingertips, which have started to peel off.

Everyone is tired, but good-tired and not sad-tired now. Damian listens as Drake and Stephanie keep up a constant commentary of the Halloween movie they’ve picked, as Duke and Cassandra whisper to each other a running meta-commentary of Drake and Stephanie’s takes, as the first group overhears the second group’s shit-talking and then launches a full-blown argument about it.

By the time footsteps come down the hallway again and Jason appears with two industrial-sized Batburger bags to victorious screeching from Duke, Damian’s nearly asleep. He accepts the french fries handed to him but dozes off quickly enough that the fries spill out of his hands onto the floor.

Damian cracks open bleary eyes to find Jason crouched next to the couch, bodily wrestling Titus off of the pile of fries with one arm and scooping fries into a messy pile with the other hand, cursing under his breath the whole time. When he sees Damian’s awake, Jason says a very beleaguered, “Don’t mind me.”

“Okay,” Damian says, mostly mouthing the word, and falls asleep to the peaceful sound of laughter around him. 

Damian’s body is too exhausted to support any kind of dreaming, for a while. It’s a gradual-enough shift that his dreams slip through his fingers, passing in short intangible vignettes.

He gets a pinching in his shoulder that tells him his hands are re-bound behind his back. There’s a stale breath of basement air past his face, a sting of duct tape ripped off his skin, the echoing sound of his own running footsteps, the sound of his leg breaking. He runs past a body on the ground, limbs splayed, uniform stained in blood, but the lifeless gaze from the corpse is Maps’s. He feels unwelcome hands holding him still, he feels the barrel of a gun in his hand, he feels himself pull a trigger.

Someone’s brains splatter across a wall, and Damian put them there.

Hands reappear on him, but these feel more solid. It’s an easy distinction, all of a sudden. Damian detaches from the dream clinically, opening his eyes at the real touch, expecting to find either his father or Richard there. Instead, Damian finds an unidentifiable shadowy hulking figure leaning over him, with one of their hands clamped around Damian’s wrist.

Damian lurches forward and sinks his teeth into his assailant’s forearm before he’s even fully awake. His teeth dig into flesh and the sound of a familiar voice pierces his ears as it yelps, “What the fuck!”

Damian pulls his teeth out of the skin of the person’s arm and throws himself backwards towards the arm of the couch to escape in the opposite direction. Before he can slither off the couch, the figure presses down hard on Damian’s upper thigh, preventing him from wrenching his leg in its cast.

“Stop, stop, stop,” they’re saying, their voice much quieter than their shocked exclamation a few seconds ago. “Jesus Christ. Stop.”

Damian looks up at their face. His eyes have adjusted enough to the darkness that he can see Jason’s face now. He can taste blood in his mouth.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Jason hisses. He keeps holding Damian’s leg down with one hand, but lifts the other to examine the new bite marks in his skin. “God damn it. Stay here.”

With that, Jason stands, jumps over the back of the couch, and disappears from Damian’s line of sight.

It’s the least comforting way Damian’s ever been woken up--in Gotham, at least. Before Gotham, some of the ways that Ra’s found to keep Damian on his toes felt similar to this. Jason should have known better than to just grab onto Damian like some kind of medicinal leech.

His heart is still pounding. Damian’s skin starts to itch all over, a sign of worse panic to come.

With his hands shaking, Damian finds a discarded Batburger napkin on the floor next to the couch and spits Jason’s blood into that until he’s fairly certain he won’t get any of Jason’s rabies. Then he hears footsteps coming back and Jason reappears in the doorway to the living room with a newly-wrapped arm and a glass of clinking ice water that he shoves into Damian’s hands.

The ice rattles around in Damian’s unsteady hold. Jason sits on the edge of the coffee table, looking just as uncomfortable as Damian feels, and says, “You were trying to rip your face off.”

Damian looks at him with narrowed eyes, not quite following.

“I woke you up because you were scratching your face,” Jason says, gesturing at nothing with one hand. The other is clamped down over the gauze he’s taped onto the new tooth-marks on his skin. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have risked it.”

Damian can feel faint stinging from his face. He lifts a hand under Jason’s careful supervision and traces a couple of fingers with the least amount of band-aids over the new scratches crisscrossing the spots where the duct tape took off a layer of skin.

“Alfred will want to put neosporin on that,” Jason says. With that, the room is silent again.

Damian takes a sip of water. It’s too dark in the room to see much besides the ice cubes bobbing around, so his brain helpfully conjures back up the images that had flashed through his brain when he was sleeping. Allison’s body, the narrow hallway in that basement closing in on him, the memory of murdering someone.

Jason’s still just sitting there, like a vulture who Damian fed entrails to one too many times.

“Why are you here?” Damian asks against the rim of the glass as he takes another sip.

“Brat,” Jason says. He repositions his hand on the gauze. His voice sounds odd as he continues, “I was on my way out and heard you. Just a coincidence.”

Damian is surprised when he can confidently say, “You’re lying.”

Jason sits still for a long moment before sighing. “Yeah.” His voice lowers. “I was hoping you were still awake. I needed to talk to you without snitches or B around.”

Damian hums, not sure if he should be apprehensive or not. 

“I need to make sure you know that creep is dead,” Jason says. “Dick said you didn’t remember what happened.”

Damian blinks. He lowers the glass of water. 

“Do you understand?” Jason presses.

“I understand,” Damian says, not quite managing to sound snappish.

“Good. He killed himself, and good riddance.”

Damian hears that weird tone in Jason’s voice again and his latent anxiety seizes on it. “That’s a lie.” He tries to squint through the darkness to get a read on Jason’s expression, but he can’t make it out. “Why are you lying about that? It was me, wasn’t it?”

“What?”

“I was the one who killed him, and you’re lying so my father doesn’t send me back to the League.”

“What?” Jason asks. “What the fuck?”

The ice rattles again. Jason pries the glass out of his hand and unexpectedly replaces the cup of water with his own hand in Damian’s grip, squeezing just this side of too-tight and leaning in closer to force eye contact. It’s been a long time since he touched Damian without gloves on. His skin is warmer than Damian thought it would be.

“Brat. Damian. Look at me.”

Damian can’t see him very well, but he knows that Jason’s eyebrows are scrunched with grave sincerity. 

“It was me,” Jason says. He squeezes tighter. His voice lowers. “I put him in the ground myself. Do you hear me?”

Damian can’t respond. He’s a statue, other than the trembling in his arms.

Jason’s grip doesn’t loosen. “I put him down right in front of you so you’d know you’re safe. If you remember being up close, that’s why. I lied so B would get off my ass about it. Not to cover you.”

Memory is easily malleable. Damian knows it’s easy for the human brain to make connections where there aren’t any, to make up events that didn’t quite happen. Whether or not the memory is real, Damian’s mind now summons glimpses of Jason with a gun up to the kidnapper’s forehead, of Richard forcing the man down into a kneel for his execution.

“Okay,” Damian whispers. Jason isn’t lying about this. He and Richard had gone to that extreme length and it was to keep Damian safe--and to make sure Damian felt safe, too.

“Nobody’s sending you back anywhere.” Jason is an immovable object, staring into Damian’s soul. “We’re stuck with you, and we’re keeping it that way. Got it?”

Damian nods again. He doesn’t realize just how much of him is worried that his days in Gotham are numbered, not until Jason’s words remove an immense weight from Damian’s shoulders.

Satisfied that he’s gotten through to Damian, Jason finally lets go of his hand, letting blood flow resume through Damian’s fingers. He hands Damian back the glass, and sits back on the coffee table. “Don’t ever do anything that stupid again.”

Damian’s fingers are still buzzing, but it’s easier to ignore now. His heart is settling down, his breath is coming easier. 

“Me or Steph should’ve said something before,” Jason says, looking at his hands and not at Damian, “but you don’t just go wander off on your own. That’s how Robins get killed.”

“A little late for me,” Damian says, “but I’ll take that into account going forward.” 

Damian means it as a joke but it doesn’t come out as one. The way Jason’s head jerks up, he doesn’t think it’s very funny either. There’s a certain understanding between the two of them in that moment, and one that Damian retroactively recognizes in the way Stephanie looked earlier. It’s something unknowable to everyone else. 

“God damn it,” Jason says. He covers his face with a palm, massaging at some intangible wave of fatigue he feels at this revelation. Then, abruptly, he shakes his head. “No, actually, I’m not your dad. I’m not having this conversation anymore.” He stands up. “Just go back to sleep.”

Jason leaves. Damian takes a sip of water and then almost spills it all over himself when Jason shouts and bangs his elbow into the doorframe on his way out. It’s no mortal threat, but instead the much smaller form of Cassandra emerging from the shadows in what must be a deliberate move to jumpscare Jason.

“I’m so fucking sick of it here,” Jason’s saying, storming his way down the hall, as though he can make everyone forget he was scared if he says enough swear words. His voice fades as he storms away, the words more for himself than for anyone else. “This house is a goddamn nightmare, I can’t believe I still come here, I’m never coming back, it’s…”

Cassandra doesn’t hide her snicker. She moves towards Damian, her satisfied grin visible even in the darkness. It fades as she gets closer, as she steps up onto the couch and settles at the opposite end from Damian.

Damian doesn’t need to ask how much she overheard. Knowing Cassandra, she didn’t let Jason take a step unmonitored in this house; she takes over where Bruce leaves off. 

“Are you going to--?” Damian starts.

Cassandra cuts him off before he can figure out how he plans to end his sentence. She says, “B suspects already.” She reaches over and takes Damian’s water from him. “Sleep. I’m staying.”

Damian repositions himself, careful of his leg. The deluge of information has wired his brain to a point where he doesn’t think he’ll be able to drift off, but he knows better than to ignore Cassandra.

She wraps her arms around her legs and watches him, her cheek pillowed on her knees. A sliver of light from outside bisects her face, so Damian can see her eyes stay open. 

“You’ll be safe,” she tells him. “I’m watching.”

Damian isn’t allowed back at school for the next week. Gotham Academy is closed for three of those days, but even when it resumes classes on Thursday and Friday, Damian is on house arrest. 

The entire…unpleasantness that Damian went through doesn’t cause a one-eighty change in his family, but some small things shift. Rather than leaving Damian alone for hours in the afternoons, Cassandra starts slipping into his room to quietly spend time in the same space as him, never forcing him to talk but not shutting him down when he initiates. Drake doesn’t actively ignore that Damian exists when they pass each other in the hallway, and Damian begrudgingly returns the favor of civility. Duke decides at some point that Damian’s going to learn how to play chess, so he’s found a chess app that will let them do it without a physical board--Damian suspects this is also Duke’s way of re-acclimating Damian to checking his phone without breaking down.

Bruce is the strangest. Damian knew when he saw his father so open and honest about his feelings in the hospital that such an occurrence would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. This suspicion turns out to be correct. To compensate for his brief moment of vulnerability, Bruce turns into even more of a helicopter parent than before. Damian will sometimes wake up to Bruce opening his door in the middle of the night to check that Damian’s still there. Several new security cameras pop up around the estate. Damian overhears grumblings from Drake to his idiot friends that Bruce has started an obsessive campaign to tighten up every conceivable hole in Wayne Enterprises cybersecurity.

It should feel nice to be cared for, Damian supposes, even if Bruce’s method of care makes Damian feel like a zoo animal.

Richard takes off to Bludhaven after the second day of Damian’s imprisonment, reverting to checking in via FaceTime, a constant barrage of texts making up the space between calls. Stephanie takes a similar approach for a similar reason--that reason being Bruce. 

As everyone gets fed up with Bruce’s new attitude and Bruce gets fed up with Damian’s irritating brand of stir-crazy halfway through the week, Damian’s allowed to run backup for Oracle from the computer in the Batcave. He does a great job, no matter what Oracle’s feedback for him is.

Finally, with the police investigation into Damian’s stalker closed and the Gotham Academy campus equipped with a security team that lives up to Bruce’s standards, Damian is allowed to go back three weeks after Halloween, to gather the wheelbarrow of missed work he’ll have to get into over Thanksgiving. 

He gets ready while it’s still dark out. Once he’s figured out how to get his uniform over his cast, he goes down to the kitchen bleary-eyed and uncharacteristically excited to go to school and get out of this accursed house.

Drake drives him. Damian gets up into the passenger seat and Drake tosses his crutches into the backseat.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” Drake asks, though he’s already turning the keys in the ignition and the garage door has been opened.

“Obviously,” Damian says. His wide yawn cancels out any bite to his voice. 

“No shame in needing to leave halfway through the day.”

“I’ll be sure to find my own ride home at the end of the day, then.” Damian tips his head back against the headrest and watches the road at an angle, drifting halfway back to sleep while Drake makes his best attempt at driving in morning traffic without descending into road rage.

They have to drive through a new security checkpoint at the edge of the parking lot, the existence of which will make it a lot harder for Drake to cut class and disappear in the middle of the day. The woman manning the makeshift booth is awkward and too gentle with Damian, a bad omen of worse to come. 

As Drake rolls the window back up and tosses Damian’s student ID back at him, Damian mutters, “I changed my mind. I want to leave.”

“Ha, too late,” Drake says, just as unenthused as Damian. “We’re locked in unless you get in another emergency.”

Damian considers his options.

“Don’t do that,” Drake hastily adds.

They park in the row closest to the back door, thanks to a temporary pass that Drake was granted due to Damian’s crutches. Everyone standing outside turns and stares as soon as they see Drake get out of the car. Damian slumps down in the passenger seat until all they’ll be able to spot of him is the top of his head.

“Come on,” Drake says, unimpressed. He leans into the backseat to grab Damian’s crutches. “Don’t be a baby.”

Damian looks up at the roof of the car like it has any power to save him. 

Drake’s voice changes. “Is this like, an actual thing, or are you being a Bruce right now?”

Damian makes a short frustrated sound and sits up and unbuckles his seatbelt. His bluff has been accurately called. He doesn’t want to go back home, really--that would entail spending another fifteen minutes in his brother’s company.

While Drake gets his own backpack and starts moving around the car to help Damian get situated in a way that will let him get himself to class, Damian checks through his recent text messages. Drake scrubbed all evidence of what happened from Damian’s phone so that Damian didn’t have to face it again, so his inbox is much emptier than it was. It’s a relief, in a way, but it also gives the eerie feeling that none of it ever happened.

Damian’s most recent text, the one he sent to his mother last night before he went to sleep, has gone unanswered. He doesn’t know what time zone she’s in, or even if she still has the same phone number. The odds of her responding at all to a plaintive ‘ Do you see yourself in Gotham anytime soon?’ are fairly low, but not zero. Richard has talked him into trying this whole “direct communication” thing over the course of the past two weeks.

As he checks his phone, a text pops up in the chat he shares with Maps and Olive. Maps is demanding to know if Damian is on campus yet, and Damian responds in the affirmative right away. 

“Chop chop,” Drake says, having swung Damian’s door open while Damian messed around on his phone. “I don’t have all day.”

Damian scoots to the edge of his seat to have enough space to put his backpack on. Then he stands and takes hold of the crutches that he’s more than used to by now. Duke has promised that Damian’s cast will get him “a ton of clout” this week, so Damian refuses to feel shy about swinging it out of the car into plain view of everyone still staring in his direction.

While he stands and Drake positions the crutches in such a way that he can avoid touching Damian even a little bit, Damian hears the metal back doors of the school slam open, letting some running footsteps through. He looks up to find Maps and Olive sprinting towards him, an uncharacteristic burst of energy on Olive’s part and a completely normal display on Maps’s. 

“Damian, hi!” Maps calls, her shorter legs making her lag a few strides behind Olive.

Damian’s mouth twitches, despite himself. He lifts one hand in a pale echo of their enthusiasm.

Olive reaches him first. Drake shuts the door, moves out of the way, and disappears from the scene entirely. As soon as Drake is gone, Olive skids to a stop to throw her arms around Damian’s shoulders. Maps is close behind, their arms sneaking around his waist so Damian’s in a double-decker hug in an instant.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Maps says into the front of his jacket.

“Yeah, Jesus Christ,” Olive agrees, her arms tightening around him. “It’s so good you’re back.”

Damian has been getting better at accepting hugs, thanks to the past few weeks of his family basically trying to smother him with them. Still, he only manages to last a few seconds before cringing out of their hold. Neither of them look particularly offended by this, and both of their faces reappear in his field of vision all shiny-eyed. Maps’s lip is wobbling.

Damian feels warm enough to start crying too, so he diverts as hard as he can by blurting, “I got an elevator pass.”

When Bruce had put on his angry-dad suit and come to campus last week to negotiate the terms of Damian’s return to school, the administration had been so scared of such a high-profile parent filing a lawsuit that they’d kept promising Damian more and more perks. The parking pass for Drake’s car, the elevator pass usually only extended to disabled students--these are the tangible ones. More intangible are the many promises made about pulling Damian’s shitty grades out of the gutter because he was performing as best as he could under “severe emotional distress.”

Olive looks at Damian like he’s started speaking a different language, but Maps nearly shouts, “No way!” She elbows Olive. “We can get to the East wing fifth floor before class!”

That part of the main building has been sealed shut in all ways except via elevator. It’s Maps’s ghost-hunting white whale. More importantly, this distraction has swept away the fragile emotions between the three of them in an instant. Damian begins the walk to the back door, and Olive and Maps adhere themselves to either side of him, barely giving him enough space to put his crutches down without smashing their feet.

When they get to the elevator, Damian’s phone buzzes. The sound still makes his heart skip a beat, but he’s getting better at remembering not to panic. He takes the device out while Olive punches in the passcode that lets the elevator go to restricted floors. 

“How in the fuck did you find that out?” Maps asks, reverently awed.

“Um,” Olive says, “I plead the fifth?”

The text, for some reason, is from Jon. Damian almost doesn’t believe it’s real, but Jon’s weird abbreviations and misspellings would be hard to fake.

‘GD imback in orbit finly,’ Jon has sent. ‘did i miss anythng lol’

Damian gives only a brief moment of thought to this overwhelmingly normal question before he sends back, ‘hi. no not really.’ 

The elevator dings. Damian turns his phone off and steps out onto the fifth floor with his friends. He’s missed enough time with them already, and everything else can wait.