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It's Saturday morning, and Damian is tired down to his bones and his muscles are stinging with energy. The Robin suit is heavy and it clings as he peels it off and leaves it in puddles that refuse to neatly fold themselves of their own accord -- even beneath a withering glare.
Bruce pauses a few steps from the Batcomputer, head slightly down -- uncharacteristic indecision holds him still and Damian hates to feel like he's its cause.
"What?" he asks.
"Captain Marvel has requested a new authorisation for the Watchtower," Bruce says. "His recommendation seems about your age. I'd like you to come with me, give me your opinion on him."
"Who is he?"
"Phantom."
Damian already knows Phantom. Phantom is --
- An exchange of taunting words: "You think Grandfather will revive you?" -- "Do you think he trusts you?" -- "He can smell the traitorous thoughts on you, Damian."
- Damian's gasps of living breath as Danny pulls him from the glowing green waters of the pit.
- Mother's scolding voice "Daniel, don't falsely accuse your brother," as Damian rolled his eyes and Daniel laughed, "I was just kidding!!"
"... Damian?" his father connects him to the present.
"I know him -- Daniel "Danny" Fenton. He's loyal to Grandfather, a member of his inner circle. He thinks I retain that privilege too. I'm not sure why Grandfather allows the misconception to persist."
Perhaps it was a kindness -- to allow him to maintain a relationship with his brother. They had grown together in Grandfather's palm, and he had crushed them in his iron grip, squeezing fear and awe and love from them until they were drained, the feelings running through Ras' fingers, dripping. Danny remained welded to Grandfather's side, reminding Damian that cold iron was said to contain ghosts. (Danny told him that was a lie.)
"Start from the beginning," Father says. "How do you know him?"
"We were raised --" as brothers, Damian tries, but his glottis closes and pressure fills his ears "-- like tools. He was another student of Mother's. He is my..." (brother) "...my friend."
Why is it so difficult to tell the truth?
He gets some of it out. When he admits he's planning a camping trip with Danny that afternoon, Father insists it is delayed until Damian can prove himself against a ghost.
When three o'clock rolls around, Damian stands next to a summoning circle with a suitcase containing two changes of clothes, his favourite towel and an extra as a gift for Danny, a board game from Dick, and some house slippers he's been meaning to break in.
A burning green spark shoots up from ground, squealing until it reaches just over head hight, then pops, sending glittery ectoplasm into the air that flows into the word "Boo!"
Damian gives a quiet laugh, then steps forward to hug Danny as he appears in the flesh. There is cheap, thin fabric under Damian's fingers, and he plucks at it judgementally. "Let's get something warmer for you."
"Nah, I'll be good."
And... yeah. With his superpowered thermoregulation, Danny would be good. But while Damian had been looking forward to a cabin and running water, Danny seems to be planning some experimental archaeology via a faintly-glowing military tent he'd borrowed from the ghost of an ancient Roman.
"I caught three criminals last night, I don't need to catch my own food," Damian grouses, looking around the game park Danny had landed them in. There are giraffe in the distance.
"Then starve," says Danny.
When the tent is finally built and the tiny wheels of Damian's suitcase have been scored by rocks and dust, he is at last able to shoo Danny inside their insufficient abode and unzip his bag, pull out a game from beside his slippers, and start explaining the
Rules to Azul:
- choose tiles to
- place tiles to
- make rows to
- earn points
"So you just choose the tiles you want?" Danny asks suspiciously.
"Of course," Damian lies.
Danny makes sure to take the tiles Damian wants. Damian looses. Danny shoots him with a finger gun, and Damian lets his eyes go wide, patting his chest as if checking the state of his body.
"You... wound me!" he says dramatically, and it's easy for a smile to come over his face.
(It's easy to forget the wounds he put in Danny's chest. And when Damian gathered him against his own -- that long moment Ras had made him wait before nodding his consent and stepping aside to allow Damian to place him into the pit.)
Maybe it's not easy to forget at all.
Maybe it's all effort, trust -- Damian wants to be allowed to forget.
Does Danny feel the same way? Does he cling to Grandfather's approval for his own sake, or for Damian's?
Danny laughs. Danny's putting in that effort, too.
In the morning, after befriending and saying farewell to a handful of lions, the brothers' peace is rudely interrupted by a gamekeeper who drags them off to an office where a banner depicting three circling fish around a central circle marks this as a meeting place of the followers of Manba al Furat, enemies of Ra's al Ghul.
They must feel safe here, to show their banner so openly.
Damian's eye wanders from the banner to Danny. Danny gives him a smirk, and when the gamekeeper's back is turned, he reaches into his backpack and draws out a vial and waggles it side-to-side.
Poison?
Damian raises an eyebrow, ready to ask "Oh, what's the plan?" ready to fight to keep his cover, to keep the gamekeeper alive, to foil his brother.
Then--
Sparking light covers Danny, crackling over his body and he seizes. Danny has explained it's an omen: deaths past and future resonate in him, calling forth a memory of his death to tell of upcoming loss of life. The poison falls from his hand and Damian lets it break on the floor. He steps in the puddle with his dusty shoe as he reaches for his brother's hand where the sparks originate. He can't feel them.
This death is Danny's alone.
Damian feels the old urge to beg Grandfather to fix this, to cure Danny of being a halfa, the need to prove himself and Danny so invaluable they'll never be left behind. But if Ras could help, he'd only tie Danny closer. He keeps Phantom closer than he ever kept Daniel.
Danny's eyes open on the vial broken at their feet. He draws in a breath, quick, sharp, shocked. Something has changed. He notices the ruined poison. He sees it as sabotage.
The world is spinning out from underneath Damian's feet as a tension he's never seen before runs through Danny. No, he thinks. Not this, not yet. Give me another year of him believing we're on the same side.
Danny raises his eyes from the broken vial, and Damian meets an enemy's gaze.
They've had three years of borrowed time.
Danny goes straight for a paralysing strike at Damian's soft gut, but Damian gets his head in the moment, tenses up, evades Danny's hand and activates his panic button in one movement.
They'd been evenly matched the last time they'd fought, but now Danny is a meta. Damian throws a chair at him, and Danny blinks into intangibility. That will tire him fast in human mode.
"He will kill me if he thinks I have betrayed him."
- Damian, to his father
When the chair hits the wall behind Danny, he goes ghost. The exchange lets Damian activate his spector deflector and get his hands on his ecto-net gun. If Danny is trying to kill him so that he can deliver his corpse to Grandfather, he will fail.
Danny can ice over parks and carry buildings through the air, but Damian knows his weaknesses and he uses that secret information against his brother. And that hits Danny with the knife of betrayal. He stops, stares at the shining green net gun, and hesitates just long enough to get caught. The netting twists around his body and topples him to the ground.
"You didn't save the poison. You're a traitor," Danny says to the ground. The intonation is strange. "You wanted to save the gamekeeper. She's of al Furat."
"You don't need to follow him," Damian answers. "Danny, he asks us to follow him like a god--"
"--It's not poison!" Danny interrupts, " I... I needed an excuse for when it didn't work-- I-I panicked, I thought breaking the vial would justify why it didn't work! And, well, then I realized you had sided with the Furat, and you thought I was your enemy..."
Danny is a spy, Damian reminds himself.
He feels heavier and older than the Earth, and the weight of their lives pushes him down. He joins Danny on the floor. As the brothers look at each other, their breathing slows and falls into synchronicity.
"You didn't try to save the vial," Danny says again. "That was out of character. You hate mess." It gave you away. If you were loyal to Ra's, you would have taken the vial and done the deed yourself.
Damian snorts. "That was a leap. What would your plan have been if I'd saved it?"
Danny shrugs a shoulder. "Rely on your incompetence, I guess."
"What was in the vial? Did you even look at the likelihood of permanent injury--"
"Don't talk to me about permanent injury--"
Damian presses a button on the ecto-net gun, and the bonds on Danny loosen. Danny slumps against him. Two arms come around his torso, like they are seeking hidden pockets to steal from, or gaps in the ribs to slip a blade between.
But it is a hug.
And minutes later, when they part, it is still … just a hug.