Chapter Text
Damian and his mother arrived at Gotham harbor, blinking at the shabby city before them.
"I can only follow you this far. If I go too far, I'll alarm him. I don't want him getting involved in this–do you remember what you need to say?" Talia kissed Damian's forehead and turned to check his luggage.
"Yes! I'm not little anymore, Mom," Damian grumbled, wiping away the lipstick mark on his forehead.
"Also... kill anyone if they get too close to you. I packed enough canned food to last you about half a year... If I still haven't returned after that, then you–"
"I know, Mom, stop talking! We'll be fine, I'm leaving," Damian pushed his mother away. Talia pouted.
"You're not going to give me a goodbye kiss?" Damian irritably pecked Talia's cheek before wiping his mouth and dragging his bag away. "You're a grown-up! Act like one"
Talia smiled as she looked at her precious little child. Fuck it, only 8 years old, basically a fetus to a vampire, and her heart sank a little. She had no choice but to entrust her precious child to her lover.
Speaking of Bruce, she couldn't help but feel nostalgic about the pain of being separated from him about a century ago. The pain of losing that child still ached as much as ever, until recently when technology had advanced enough that she could somehow hope to bring back her child. Complete everything with the DNA of the child she had lost and bring him back.
But being new to everything, she experimented and made mistakes in many things, causing Damian to be born... a rather failed experiment. His structure was strange, his body was hot, and his heartbeat was stronger than normal. Talia thought he would die quickly, but she held the warm bundle of her lost child in her arms. Talia couldn't help but cry, holding him, caring for him like her own child, as if he wouldn't die again because of her failure.
Talia was a good enough doctor to know he wouldn't live much longer. But every second, every minute with her son was still precious. Talia stared at the boy sleeping in his crib for nights on end, feeding him a little blood and formula, holding him, whispering to him, soothing him to sleep, cooing to him as if he were okay, as if he wouldn't die from overheating at any moment, as if Talia wasn't broken by helplessness, by not being able to save her child, by not having the courage to let go and start another experiment.
Days, weeks... months.
Talia looked at Damian, her baby babbling against her chest, wondering if there really was a god. And what she had done to deserve this blessing.
Damian was warm, too warm for a healthy vampire. She couldn't cool him down and didn't know if she should, because this was an extremely strange case.
Her father, Ra's, just laughed heartily and said his grandson was a miracle.
Let's just say that the five-thousand-year-old doctor here was also clueless. The blind leading the blind, both of them sitting there poring over book after book searching for information about diseases.
She was extremely careful protecting Damian. No one knew of his existence except Ra's and one or two trusted servants working on the experiment. Ra's wasn't even allowed to touch the baby for a while, but that was just the instinct of vampires with their babies. They just didn't expect her to count this "experiment" as her own child too. A few weeks later, it got better after Talia had a bit of a mental breakdown because she couldn't bond with her young and thought he hated her. The scientist was more optimistic, assuring her that maybe because his biological structure was a bit messed up so bonding would be a more difficult.
It wasn't until she was a bit more stable that Talia let Ra's hold the baby, pinch Damian's rosy cheeks, and comment.
"Hmm... warm like a human body."
"Hah, how would you know? Have you met humans before?" Talia joked back.
"Hah, yes I have. About one thousands years ago, they were daily food for the nobles. They tasted good, but it's a pity they all died..."
"You're joking. Humans aren't real, are they? Just children's stories to fool people," Talia laughed awkwardly.
Ra's just stared at Talia with lifeless eyes.
"I'm older than those ancient books in the library."
So that's how Talia created an ancient creature that only existed in books, a mystical entity that only existed in children's stories. After several arguments, breakdowns, worldview shifts, and bloodshed involving a group of vampires who obsessed with human that the two scientists were connected to and had a hand in. This secret would be kept until Damian went to his grave, meaning in a few decades. Talia tried not to think much about it. She devoted all her time to protecting the child.
Living in the League of Assassins, Damian’s existence would be exposed someday, so she and Ra's were determined to train him to be a good warrior to protect himself from becoming dinner for vampires. Damian was a good and sensible boy. He knew his situation and was very serious about learning the deadly weaknesses of vampires and his limits and advantages as a human.
Honestly, his biggest advantage was that even with fairly obvious evidence in front of them, who would believe that mystical creatures like humans existed in the first place? Besides, if the information about him being born from a test tube wasn't false, then he could just blame it on that, Superman's glasses theory or whatever it was called.
Damian told himself this as he walked through Gotham's streets, carefully observing his path to avoid stepping into other vampires' territory. Usually, vampires would be more aware of each other's territories for warning purposes, but not him. Damian was walking through a minefield with pure luck and skill, hoping not to step on anyone until he entered his father's territory.
Of course, all of Gotham vaguely belonged to Batman. But now he was entering Bruce Wayne's territory-his father's.
Damian carefully concealed himself, politely dropping Talia's signal to enter the territory to be welcomed by Father himself. His father must have recognized when his mother entered Gotham.
"Talia's?" His father growled. Damian had learned enough to recognize vampire threat signals. If he were one, he would surely have to submit to the higher's command.
Except he wasn't.
"Yours too. Hello, Father. I am Damian Al Ghul. Here on Talia's orders to learn and gain experience."
Damian should have instinctively bowed his head like a vampire to hide his identity, except he was feeling quite upset about having to leave his mother to come to this cold, shabby, and desolate place in Gotham, so yes he was being petty.
Bruce stared at him expressionlessly before turning away. Damian dragged his luggage into the house. The temperature here was cold, not suitable for Damian, but luckily, he had put on three layers of clothing as a precaution.
A servant brought a cup of tea before him. He opened it to observe. Fortunately, Damian thought when he saw it was normal tea with a cup of blood beside it. He had expected a whole cup of artificial or maybe animal blood, but to be fair, no one would treat an intruder like him to such "luxury."
Damian didn't add blood to his drink, of course not. He drank his tea and waited to be interrogated.
His father took out a laptop and began.
"Name and date of birth."
"Damian Al Ghul, 86 years old, December 20th, 1939."