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They had just finished dinner when Damian spoke.
“I’m a twin.”
The sentence dropped like a stone into water, rippling through the room. Forks paused midair. Even Jason, who had been halfway through a snide comment, stopped cold.
Tim squinted at him. “You’re a what?”
“A twin,” Damian repeated calmly, as if he’d just said something completely ordinary.
Jason leaned forward on the table, narrowing his eyes. “You’ve never mentioned a sibling. Ever.”
“Because he left me long ago,” Damian said, quieter now. His posture was stiff, like he had rehearsed this in his head a hundred times and still hated saying it. “His name was Danyal. He was… my other half.”
Dick sat back slowly, eyes softening. “Danyal? You had a brother?”
“I have a brother,” Damian corrected, voice tight. “Or… I did.”
Bruce didn’t speak immediately. His gaze was locked on Damian, silent but intense. “Where is he now?” he finally asked, and there was grief in his voice, grief and something else. Regret, maybe. Guilt.
Damian looked out the tall window of the Wayne Manor dining room, toward the cloudy Gotham sky. “Up there,” he said, raising a hand. “He told me, right before he died, that he would guide me from the stars. But Gotham’s skies are too polluted. I can’t see him here.”
Tim blinked, trying to make sense of it. “So… your brother is dead? Like in heaven?”
Damian looked over at him with a hard stare. “He is with the stars. He always loved them. He said if he died, he’d find a way to watch over me from above. And Danyal never broke his promises.”
Jason rubbed a hand over his face. “Okay, so just to be clear… you had a twin. Died young. And now you think he’s… in space?”
“In the stars,” Damian corrected sharply. “He died when we were eight. I watched it happen. I buried him myself.”
Dick’s voice was quiet. “Why didn’t you ever tell us?”
Damian’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Because he was the only part of my life that felt pure. The only part I didn’t want tainted by war or assassins or… any of this.” He motioned vaguely to the room around them.
Bruce’s face was unreadable, but his voice was rough. “We should’ve known.”
“No,” Damian said. “You shouldn’t have. The only other people who knew were grandfather and mother.”
The silence after that was heavy.
“I believe he’s still with me though,” Damian said firmly. “Even if no one else does.”
Bruce nodded slowly. “Then we believe it too.”
Damian’s shoulders relaxed a fraction.
Outside, above the clouds of Gotham, something small flickered. A light. A pulse.
And somewhere far, far away, an Ancient being smiled with all their teeth , knowing that after all these years, their brother still remembers them, even more, still misses them.