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Bruce Wayne is eighteen when he meets Talia Al-Ghul for the first time.
He’s young, and more naïve than he’d like to admit, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders. When he leaves — now at nineteen — he knows it won’t be the last he sees of that family.
But he never expected to see Talia’s son — much less that her son is also his son. The DNA test only confirmed what Talia told him, and he can’t help but hold resentment for her along with his not-quite-romantic love for her in his heart.
Bruce isn’t sure what he feels for Damian more than pure responsibility. Unfortunately for him, there’s no guide to raising your ten year old assassin son.
He knows Talia probably had a good reason for keeping Damian a secret, but since he doesn’t know what that reason is (not for sure, as he always has his suspicions), he thinks it’s fair game to be pissed at her. At least a little bit.
Damian is young, but he’s already a complex kid with problems Bruce can’t understand and doesn’t know how to address.
Bruce is twenty-nine when he realizes that he’s more naïve than he previously thought — apparently, pushing thirty doesn’t instill you with everything you need to know.
Though, he supposes, Alfred could’ve told him that. Alfred probably did tell him that.
Parenting Damian, or at the very least trying to, makes Bruce realize that there really is no guide book and maybe he should’ve been nicer to Alfred these past few years.
The easiest part is being able to focus on just patrol and just Damian without Wayne Enterprises work — but that eventually becomes just Damian.
Bruce figures he shouldn’t leave a homicidal child alone with Alfred in a large mansion, so he doesn’t. He doesn’t patrol, either.
Right now, Gotham is under Batwoman’s protection, and that should be good enough for the time being.
Damian sits next to Bruce at the table, with a good distance between them. It’s where he sat the first night, so it’s where he sits for every meal now.
He’s picking at his food. First, Alfred tried some recipes he thought Damian might like, but that didn’t go so well with the boy throwing a tantrum over it.
Bruce can’t figure out if Damian threw tantrums with the League — he highly, highly doubts it, but he also doesn’t really want to admit that Damian is testing him and his abilities to match Talia’s skills as a parent.
“How was your day?” Bruce tries.
Damian tuts, and doesn’t say anything.
Eventually, Bruce stops trying for the night and gets up to put his plate in the sink.
Ever since Damian came along, he’s been trying to teach him to do things for himself and treat Alfred with respect.
Damian gave up on begging to go on patrol weeks ago after no avail, especially when Bruce stopped going out altogether.
Tonight, though, he asks a question.
“Why can I not accompany you out on patrol, Father?”
Bruce has been expecting this — hell, Damian’s even asked this before. It’s just that he hasn’t asked so civilly.
Now, Bruce knows he can’t give the same reasons he would give any other child. Damian’s been in situations more dangerous than patrol, they both know this, and he has the skills to deal with what may came up. But it’s not just skills that he needs.
“What do you think Batman is?” he asks in response.
Damian scrunches up his nose. “What do you mean?”
Bruce shrugs. “I want to know what you think.”
“Batman strikes fear into the hearts of criminals,” Damian says, “to stop them from committing crimes.”
“I used to think that, too,” Bruce says. “That was when I first started out. I became Batman to stop criminals and stop people from becoming criminals out of fear. But Batman doesn’t just inspire fear. He inspires hope, too. Hope that there’s somebody out there helping, and that there’s more people like that who’ll help, too.”
“Hope?” Damian asks, though it’s less of a question and more of a judgment.
Bruce nods. “Yeah. Hope.”
Damian’s face twists again. “What part of beating people up inspires hope?”
“Batman doesn’t just fight people who are doing the wrong thing,” Bruce says, changing the phrasing with deliberation. “He helps the victims home or to police stations. He gives alternatives to criminals who are committing crimes out of necessity or circumstance. It’s not only about an imposing, impossible to reach figure. It’s about providing safety and a steady hand to those who need it.”
He’s surprised that Damian’s listened this long, intently staring at the table with a fierce glare. But Bruce knows him well enough by now to at least know that’s his thinking face.
“The League taught you a lot,” Bruce says, because he’s learned that they have and Damian draws offense when he insinuates otherwise, “but not how to be like Batman or all the skills you need to be like Batman.”
Damian doesn’t say anything yet.
“You don’t even have to be like Batman if you don’t want to, but I’ll still teach you what’s important.”
Damian scowls.
“You’re capable, Damian,” Bruce insists. He doesn’t want to backtrack, but he thinks his son misconstrued the last thing he said. “You’re smart and you have your whole life ahead of you. But you don’t know everything. That’s why Ta—your mother brought you here. To learn.”
She said so herself, just not to Damian.
Please, beloved. I don’t have anything left to teach him and I want him to be better. Better than both of us.
“There’s a lot you have left to learn, and that’s why I’m here. To—To guide you.” There’s more he’s supposed to do, Bruce is sure, but he’s not sure if Damian is ready to hear it. I’m here to love you and protect you, even if I don’t know you yet. I’m here for you.
He thinks, eventually, they’ll get there. Just maybe not today.
It takes two months and three days for them to reach an agreement on Damian’s code name.
After a lot of arguing and debating, Alfred’s passing comment on a bird right outside the window becomes his code name.
Robin.
It took an equal amount of time from the start to finish of the argument to decide on a design for his gear — but Bruce is fairly certain he spent far more hours arguing about that than the code name. Because, really, all the hood would do is block his vision. Sure, it could be useful, but it’d be more of a hindrance than anything else.
With enough determination, it was possible for Bruce to move Damian away from using swords, even if he thinks the bat-themed weapons are a bit much.
But, Bruce knows, Damian’s still ten. He might not want to admit that he enjoys it, but he does.
Patrol is rocky and makes their relationship more turbulent.
Damian still thinks he knows best, and Bruce doesn’t know best either, but he knows better. Not to mention the amount of force Damian uses on criminals; it’s more than what’s warranted and is much more cruel than necessary.
“If you can’t listen, you can’t come on patrol,” Bruce says once they come back to the cave. Damian’s sulking and Alfred is trying not to make it obvious that he’s listening in.
“Then maybe you should come up with better strategies, Father,” Damian spits.
Bruce takes off the cowl and glares right back. “When I tell you to go right, you go right. If I tell you to stop, you stop. It’s not because I think you’re incapable, because you’re not, it’s to keep us both safe. This is a partnership and we have to listen to each other. I have more experience than you. And that’s not just my opinion. It’s a fact.”
This time, Bruce hopes Damian will listen.
He goes upstairs before his father does, Alfred choosing now to use his voice.
“And how was patrol, sir?”
Bruce stops himself from taking anything out on Alfred, even if the comment is as scathing as Alfred gets on a normal day.
“I still don’t know if I’m doing anything right,” he says instead.
“You never will,” Alfred replies.
Bruce mulls this over, staring at the screens just to have something to look at rather than taking in the information. Everything these days seems like there’s fifteen reasons behind it, all playing hide-and-seek with him, but he has to close his eyes the entire game instead of just the countdown.
He wonders if Damian has ever played hide-and-seek. Probably not. If he did, there were probably swords or something of the sort involved.
There’s no set way to contact Talia, no reliable form of communication with her, so there’s no way for him to easily ask for advice on how to parent their son.
Sometimes, he wishes he could just talk to her. Ask questions. Maybe yell a bit, too.
There are days where Bruce thinks he’s doing everything wrong, and days where he thinks he’s at least doing a few things right. And then there are the days where he’s not sure what’s wrong or right.
Eventually, probably later then he should, Bruce clambers up to Damian’s bedroom. He knocks lightly on the door, and when he doesn’t hear anything, he asks.
“Damian, can I please open the door?”
He doesn’t get a response that he can decipher — Damian uses grunts to mean many things, including both “yes” and “no.”
Bruce opens the door slightly and stands in the doorway, leaning his shoulder against the frame.
“How are you doing, Damian?”
“Tt.”
Bruce suppresses a sigh. He thinks of something to say, and can’t, so he just looks at his son. He has his AirPods in while he’s scrawling into a notebook.
“What are you listening to?” Bruce asks.
He doesn’t get a response.
So, after a couple more minutes, Bruce leaves and closes the door behind him.
The progress isn’t easy to spot as it’s gradual and not immediate, Bruce has to keep reminding himself. Then, time passes, and there is progress.
He can have multiple conversations with Damian daily without then turning into arguments. They can go on patrol without getting in each other’s way or causing undue harm and danger.
It doesn’t happen immediately, he’d be lying out of his ass if he said otherwise, but Bruce learns to be there for his son and love him and have him know it.
That’s why this conversation is easier than it would’ve been a year ago, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard as shit.
“School isn’t useless—”
“I am smarter than all of those imbeciles—”
“Just because you know more, doesn’t mean your smarter—”
“—and they are all disgusting—”
“—and even if it did, that doesn’t mean social interaction is useless.”
“I’m interacting with you.”
“I’m not one of your peers, Damian.”
“I will not waste my time with a bunch of sniveling preteens who cannot comprehend basic algebra—”
In the end, Damian is enrolled in middle school for his sixth grade year at Gotham Prep. It’s easy for him, and he tells Bruce that as soon as he comes home from his first day at school, but he has to stick it out until the end of the first semester, as per their agreement.
By winter break, Damian doesn’t even mention the agreement, like he’s hoping that Bruce has forgotten about it. He hasn’t.
“So,” he says, cutting into his steak, “are you up for another semester?”
Damian scowls. “I am not a coward, father.”
“I wasn’t calling you one,” Bruce replies. Alfred watches ambivalently from his seat at the table, eyes flirting between the two. “I was just asking, since our agreement was to check in at the end of the semester, if you wanted to continue at school.”
Bruce’s smile is mischievous, he knows what he’s doing, and Damian is trying his best to get over his own pride. But he’s had some practice this past year and a half.
“I suppose I could attend the rest of the school year,” he says. “It would be foolish to only complete half of it.”
“Right. Foolish,” Bruce nods. “And not because you’ve made any friends or because you like some of your teachers?” (Some, not all, because there are a few Damian complains about whenever he has their class.)
“Father.”
Bruce is thirty when he argues playfully with his son over a dinner celebrating the end of his first semester at school.
Damian is eleven when it’s cemented in his head that Bruce is his father and he loves him.