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You see, here's the thing – Damian has always known Father's flock of children are idiots. Clearly, though, he has underestimated their stupidity.
It starts like this: Richard, who is fluent in several languages, speaks them often.
This in itself isn't idiocy – frankly, Damian is – only a little bit – proud his brother held onto them, even if he’ll never admit it. It's hard, using a language that most would look at you oddly for, which was probably why he didn't speak (or think, for that matter, but that comes with the former) in Arabic or Mandarin as much anymore. It’s nice to see Richard speak in all the languages he does, even if Damian is fairly sure he didn't know the half of it.
Sometimes Richard will write letters in Russian (although Damian doesn’t whom they’re addressed to) in the dead of night, likely thinking Damian wouldn't hear him creaking around and investigate, or say something Timothy had told him means something along the lines of ‘stupid’ in Romani to Jason when he got himself injured, or make a statement that makes no sense and prompt Jason to stare at him until he realizes that’s a proverb in a different language (which leads to several funny situations that Damian definitely does not stoop so low as to laugh at).
He also knows that Timothy has a grip on Russian as well, if only because he once had a two-hour debate with Richard on the grammar of a sentence he had said, that only ended because Jason told them to use Google Translate and the moment they saw the supposed ‘correct way’, they both got agreed that the translation was definitely wrong, and proceeded to insult the program for an additional hour, which concluded the longest dinner Damian has ever had in his life.
And Jason, well, he knows a handful of European languages (Spanish, German, and Italian, he believes), but he wouldn't have lasted long enough in the League to have met Damian as a child without knowing Arabic.
Point is: Damian knows his family speaks other languages. They all use them fairly often, and it isn’t a rare occurrence for them to tease Father over his horrible pronunciations, which to be fair, is one hundred percent warranted – Father’s Arabic, at least, was horrendous, and he only knows basic phrases in Mandarin.
That’s just how things worked with them.
And, well.
He’d gotten used to it.
The Bats hadn’t really been all that surprised when he started picking up bits and pieces from their languages, and eventually, Damian finally caved and told Jason about his secret visits to the restaurant by his school (they sold the best Arabic sweets, sue him) after Jason tailed him there, and soon enough, he’d joined in on the unspoken competition to insult each other in the most creative way that had spanned just about every language imaginable, even if they weren’t fluent in it (the newest example being Timothy convincing Alan to teach him swears in Latin).
And there was Damian’s English: Richard often told him he spoke far too formally for his age, and Timothy often joked that he was a time traveler from the 1850s as a reference to Shakespeare, (to which Jason retorted that Shakespeare was from the late 1500s and early 1600s. How Timothy had yet to remember that was beyond Damian). Which, granted, it made sense. He doesn't remember it, but Jason tells him that he was taught English when he was about three years old, by a rotating cast of tutors that Jason didn’t trust at all (and would often stalk through the vents while they taught Damian his lessons). In general, he doubted Grandfather would have hired anyone who didn’t speak impeccable English, so he isn’t surprised his way of speaking isn't considered normal.
But Arabic on the other hand -- well, Talia and Ra’s didn’t really speak Arabic with the Assassins much, and when they spoke it with Damian, it wasn’t the same way they spoke English.
In the end, it happens like this: Damian, in the middle of a fight with some street thugs and exasperated, growls “Ya akhi, just get over here! ” over the comms to Timothy and Richard, and sets off a chain reaction.
Now in hindsight, he can tell you this: First, he definitely did not mean brother. It’s a kind of slang term that he didn’t fully recognize for its direct translation -- after all, Talia often called Damian over by that exact same expression, usually when she was frustrated. Second, Jason evidently learned Arabic through his own cast of rotating tutors, all of which spoke impeccable fusha, straight out of the Quran. And third, his family is comprised of absolute idiots .
Of course, they show up all too quickly, fighting off the stupid thugs in a matter of minutes. Damian, too caught up in his own embarrassment over needing their help for a dozen street thugs just because he’d lost his katana and toolbelt and left boot, doesn’t notice their confusion until it’s too late.
From what Damian gathers later, eventually Timothy and Richard ask Jason what ‘ya akhi’ meant, who tells them it meant ‘my brother’ because he’d never learned slang, and clearly the only logical explanation was that Damian now considered them brothers. Obviously.
It takes them almost a week to confront him about it, which really hammers in the ‘idiots’ point he’s been making. And, of course, instead of waiting until he had finished, they told him right in the middle of a sip of tea.
“You called us your brothers.”
His wonderful, wonderful shay ahmar spluttered all over the half-rendered sketch of the bird he saw by his window the night before. What has he done to deserve these imbeciles for brothers? He may have killed a few people, but not enough to warrant this.
“No, I didn’t,” he says, voice flat. Timothy and Richard both raised an eyebrow.
“You definitely did,” Timothy tells him. “We got Jason to translate for us.”
“You don’t speak much Arabic in general,” Richard added. “We got curious.”
Damian sighs. “And Todd translated what, exactly, as me calling you brothers?”
“This is a trap,” they both say, at the exact same time.
“You’ll make fun of us for saying it wrong,” Richard pouts, crossing his arms.
“No, I won’t.”
“Yes, you will.” Timothy glares at Damian. “And then you’ll say that we clearly don’t know what we’re talking about, even though we know exactly what you said.”
Damian rolls his eyes, resisting the urge to let out the loudest groan he could. Instead, he exasperatedly shouts out, “JASON!”
A loud crash, a pause, then --
“WHAT?” Jason yells through the vents.
“GET OVER HERE, YA HEMAR,”
“THE FUCK?!”
It takes Jason approximatly twenty-three seconds to arive, and Damian spends all of them glaring at Richard and Timothy, who returned the look. Jason stepped between their staring contest.
“The fuck do you want?”
“He isn’t admitting to calling us brothers,” Timothy says.
“But I literally didn’t .” Damian definitely does not whine. “What did you tell them?”
“Oh,” Jason looks aggravatingly close to grinning, and it wasn’t funny, excuse you. “You definitely did, dude.”
“ When? ”
“Last week, during patrol,” Richard tells him, and he’s also grinning, because he’s a giant meanie. “You were fighting those thirty-something thugs without a katana, boot, or any other weapon.”
“There were only twenty-six, I counted.” Damian retorts. “Besides, I literally never called you my brothers.”
“Nah, I was on the comms that night,” Jason tells him. “‘Ya akhi, just get over here’, remember?”
Damian stops. Blinks. Turns to Jason.
“That’s not what I- It’s not- Shut up!” His cheeks are on fire. He’s sure of it it. There is probably kerosene involved as well. That is the only logical explanation.
Richard is grinning that stupid Disney-cat grin of his, and Timothy looks like he’s trying to copy Richard but honestly just looks constipated. Jason just crosses his arms smugly. Damian has the overwhelming urge to scream.
It’s just--
His brothers are idiots, he gripes. Sentimental idiots.
It's a sort of… rite of passage? Tradition? It's a pattern, at least, he knows: the moment they finally called each other ‘brother’, usually after some kind of emotional conversation and a very long hug. They’d mention it often, during breakfast, when picking him up from school, that kind of thing. It's always a casual setting, but Damian can easily pick up on how much it meant to them.
And yeah, maybe he hadn’t really seen himself getting to that point when he was first introduced to the Bats, but it was something he’d been thinking about more often as time went by. He’d actually wanted to -- even taking to thinking it.
But then--
This.
He’d ruined the whole thing by not paying close enough attention to his words, just like his grandfather had warned him against, and now he had to deal with their insufferableness.
And it wasn’t even that big, climactic moment: just a handful of street thugs that he needed help with, like he was incapable, or something. It was annoying, and no , he’s not crying, fuck you.
“Damian?” It snaps him back to the present moment: Richard’s eyebrows are furrowed, and Jason’s lips are pressed into a line, and Timothy is studying him like a puzzle to be disassembled and reassembled, and--
“Thats not, ” He settles on, voice sharp, “What I meant.”
“You’re really that upset about us being your brothers?” Timothy, at the very least, has stopped looking at Damian like he's trying to find the bug in his system. Still, Damian says nothing.
“Damn, that’s its own kind of answer right there, kid.” Richard’s face breaks into a small grin at Timothy’s words, but even that seems strained. And -- ugh, this is not how he wants this conversation to go.
“I’m not a kid,” he hisses. “And it’s not that.”
“What is it, then?” Despite the emphasis, Jason doesn’t really seem frustrated, just curious. It makes sense for him -- Jason ‘Red Hood’ Todd is nothing if not aggressively emotive.
“You guys always said it when it actually mattered. ” Damian finds himself saying. “I simply failed to beat up a couple thugs.”
Richard, for the first time since Damian’s outburst, speaks, “It still counts, you know.”
“But it doesn’t! It wasn’t even on purpose! It wasn’t even actually what I meant! It’s some stupid slang term I didn’t think too hard about, and look where that got us!”
Damian huffs.
“You know, I should probably play the ‘older brother’ here, but I’m still too caught up on the fact that the League didn’t teach me normal speak ” Jason, to his credit, looks shocked. “I don’t even know why I’m surprised. It should have been obvious considering how they taught you English, but I just didn’t think about it. They all gave off natural vibes.”
“Nothing about the League of Assassins ever ‘gives natural’” Damian snorts. “You’re an idiot.”
“I’m a cool idiot,” Jason corrects.
“Please don’t lie to yourself.”
“God, is this what I get for trying to be a good person? I’ll stick with the shooting next time, thanks.” Jason says, affronted.
Damian rolls his eyes. “You already do,”
“ Shhhhhhhh, you’re ruining it,” Jason stage-whispers. Damian is not in the slightest surprised that Richard transcended all laws of biology, psychology, and common sense to pass his dramaticism to Jason.
In the end, he says, “That wasn’t the right moment.”
He’s keenly aware of the crowd he has gathered around him, but Richard tilts his head and leans toward him, and suddenly Damian sees the difference between hearing and listening.
Because, well -- He isn’t used to being listened to. And now he has a handful of people older than him, watching and paying attention, and it’s weird. They’re nothing like the League, like Mama and Grandfather. They aren’t waiting for him to say what they’re already thinking, thirty million steps ahead and impatiently waiting for him to catch up.
They’re… attentive.
He takes a moment. Breaths. Orders his words, shuffles them in his mind. He's not going to get out of this mess through more verbal mistakes.
"I said it." He says, every word measured. He doesn't try to hide the rises and falls of his tone, because Richard would probably make a sad face, and Damian has done enough upsetting him for today, thanks. "And I don't want to take it back. But I think the context overrules that, because it's less of a label and more of a slang term. It's comparable to the term 'bro', I suppose? It's something to be said to someone not quite old enough to be considered an uncle or grandfather."
Richard turns to Timothy almost as soon as Damian stops talking, eyes pleading. They stare off for almost thirty seconds before Timothy sighs, and says, “Fine,”
Richard lights up, turning to Damian with a conspiratorial look. “I don’t think we’ve actually told you the full story. You see, back when Tim was about six months into his time as Robin…”
And he keeps going. Turns out, Timothy has always had sleep issues, even before his time as Robin, but that definitely didn’t help. Six months in, half asleep and on the verge of insanity, Richard’s attempts to bring Timothy to sleep had led to Drake saying something along the lines of: “You’re like a mom-brother. What’s a word for that? Mother,” and almost four minutes later, “Oh. Wait.”
Jason, of course, is now cackling, like the heathen he is. Richard is engrossed in his retelling, all animated hand gestures and exaggerated expressions. Timothy is… suffering. His face is very, very red. Damian mildly wonders if he runs the risk of exploding.
It’s odd, though. The fact that Timothy had agreed to Richard telling the story. Willingly giving Damian that kind of blackmail was a bit stupid, and Timothy was nothing if not smart. Damian, although grudgingly, has to admit to that. Which leaves the question of why tell anything at all? And Damian, having lived in this manor as long as he has, may have an inkling of an answer.
Because he cares about you, Richard’s voice says, in the back of his mind. He doesn’t want you to feel bad.
It’s a gross oversimplification of the emotions he’s experiencing (embarrassment, shame, and a weird, gooey feeling that Damian won’t touch given a ten-foot pole) but Damian can see his mental Richard’s thought process. Actually, if he didn’t, it would be highly concerning. He would probably be hallucinating. But he’s not, so he knows what Richard means: Timothy is willing to subject himself to discomfort. For Damian.
Considering Damian has tried to murder him, replace him, exile him, that is… significant. And although Damian doesn’t know how to go about it, he decides that he needs to repay in kind.
“My brother has a very silly story indeed,” he says, testing the waters. Tim’s face goes through a cycle: confusion, realization, surprise, pride. It settles on something between the latter two. It shades his cheeks a soft dusting of pink.
“My brother,” Timothy says, every word emphasized, just enough emotion that it doesn’t feel like sarcasm, “Now has a similarly stupid story as well.”
Damian sits there, for a moment. Breathes. It’s done, the right way now. Richard is grinning, Jason’s smile is crooked. Bit by bit, a beam blooms on Tim’s face. And Damian, well. He can’t help but join in.
“ihwah,” Richard is very deliberate in his pronunciation, but still messes it up.
“ikhwa,” Jason corrects.
“ik-wa?” Timothy tries. “What are we saying, exactly?”
Richard laughs, and Jason follows, and Timothy and Damian topple soon after, like dominoes.
“Brothers,” Damian says, once they’re through with their giggles. “Akhwan.”
“Neat,” Timothy nods. “Now. Since we’re brothers and all, can you please stop calling me Timothy? It’s Tim. Just Tim.”
Damian’s lips stretch into a grin without his consent, but he can’t find it in him to be ashamed. “You see, Richard often tells me it’s a brother’s prerogative to annoy his siblings.”
Tim groans, half-heartedly socking Richard in the chest. “You're a fucking meanie.”
For the second time in, what. Thirty seconds? They burst into laughter again.
So. Yes. Damian’s family may be idiots, but they’re his idiots. The misunderstanding says nothing about his own brain cell count, thank you. His IQ is miles above all of these imbeciles. Shut up.