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Damian finds him in a freezer.
“The Court of Owls is no more,’ Damian says. Pauses. Swallows back nausea at the Talons obvious youth, black veins on paper-white skin.
Dick Grayson , he doesn’t say. Sorry it’s taken us so long .
No obvious understanding shows on the Talon’s face. Damian takes him home anyway.
After Damian had bought him back to the manor and run all the immediate tests on him, Damian sat him down.
“ Your name is Dick Grayson. You are biologically 12 years old.” The Talon tilted his head - infinitesimal but undeniably present all the same, the first of reactions Damian had managed. Encouraged by the reception, Damian continued, “Your parents are Mary and John Grayson, you were an acrobat at Haley’s Circus.”
“Haley,” he repeated quietly, monotone.
Damian nodded, recalling the contents of the file burned into his memory. “The ringmaster calls himself Pop Haley. The circus had many animals, amongst which an elephant named Zitka was your favourite.” He wasn’t sure how much the Talon was absorbing, but Damian hoped for - well. For something.
Suddenly desperate to see some form of Dick Grayson: Boy Wonder of Haley’s Circus, he pressed on. Took out the picture. “Look, see?”
It was a picture of Dick with his family. By his side, a civilian with black hair and blue eyes kneeled, smiling next to Dick. Tim Drake, he had been a friend of - of Stephanie’s. Before she died. Damian hadn’t talked to Drake since.
Dick Grayson traced the picture, a quick swipe of his finger. Damian watched him, at a loss for words. Do you remember? He wanted to ask. Your parents loved you, they wanted the best for you, they did they did they wouldn’t have abandoned you for no reason, they died, they had no choice.
Talon doesn’t move. “Understood,” he said quietly.
After Bruce had died, Damian cracked open the most expensive wine in the Manor and drank in the Cave.
He’d known Bruce for two thirds of his life, had known as a ditzy Brucie Wayne; as an exacting, untouchable Batman, and as Bruce Wayne - his father, the one at home. Damian knew him well. He didn’t know him at all.
Bruce was dead. “Now what?”
There was no reply. Damian didn’t curl into himself despite the resounding silence of the manor. He thought about returning to the League where he’d be welcomed. He didn’t do that, either.
What he did was this: pick himself up, make his way to the Cave, and read his deceased father’s reports. What he did was this: throw himself into a mission to stop the Court of Owls. What he didn’t do was this: Reach out to his mother, fight Cass for Batman, and visit Steph’s grave.
Then he met Dick Grayson.
One of the first things Damian tried to instill in him was this:
“You can ask questions,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s better for both of us if you ask questions, actually.”
Talon, perpetually wide eyed and prone to taking his words as gospel nodded. Damian waited. “Understood,” he finally said. Damian guessed he was agreeing for the sake of agreeing. He didn’t push it.
Housing a child Talon didn’t leave Damian much to do apart from running tests and taking care of the vigilante side of things from the supercomputer in the Cave.
Cass was out as Batman at all times, these days. He didn’t blame her - the combined loss of Stephanie and Bruce in such short time had hit her hard.
Unwilling to leave a potential threat unsupervised, Damian resigned himself to the task of keeping an eye on Dick at all time. He’d read his files, both on his background and his time in the Court.
Dick Grayson: child prodigy, professional acrobat. An impressive history before he’d even hit double digits.
His parents: dead, a murder. Tony Zucco had been beaten half to death by Batman before being sent to prison. Damian remembered this; he had been present while Batman had unleashed his version of justice upon Zucco, fists against flesh.
Electrum had been pumped into the child’s veins before his parents had had their funeral. The Talon, the Gray Son. the files had said. Dick was a test trial. Damian had read about his training with a critical eye, about the torture, the injections.
Obedient and skilled. A prodigy in combat. Little Dickie Grayson had adapted fast. In mere months he was carrying out missions between bouts of being frozen in the cryochambers and sent away when he wasn’t needed.
I’m sorry I’m late, Damian wants to apologise. He doesn’t. Instead, he rebuilds Gotham bit by bit, damage control after Gotham’s most influential had fallen - all complicit in the organisation creating the Talon.
A few weeks after he moves Talon in, Damian cleans the dishes. He’s never had to do the dishes before, there’d always been someone to serve him - the League’s servants, then Alfred. Regardless, he learns it like any other skill.
The windows were open but the blinds covered them. He’d learnt the hard way that Dick’s eyes were sensitive - both as a result of the electrum and such a long time underground, only let outside at night to complete missions.
The Talon is near him as usual, perched on the counter like a bird. He’s so still, so quiet, that Damian tunes him out as he cleans the plate and dries it.
Suddenly, a cold hand touches Damian’s bare skin. “Permiss-” Damian flinches. The next plate slips out of his hands, his bat trained reflexes don’t bother to catch it as he turns on his attacker instead, blade drawn and readied.
It splinters on the ground, shards flying everywhere. He hisses as a piece flies right into his leg, jerking in a quick movement. Too late, he registers that the inhumanly cold touch was just the Talon. That he was trying to initiate an interaction - a rare occurrence.
The Talon is already on the floor, curled into himself. He stays expressionless and still. For a moment Damian thinks he’s just in shock, then he realises the Talon is in distress.
“ Sorry, sorry, sorry, Talon shouldn’t have asked to go outside. Bad Talon,” he murmurs. “Bad, bad , bad, follow orders, Talon. Don’t let them go, Talon. Stupid, bad, bad bad bad bad Talon, no, stop it, no questions, stop, bad .” Talon claws his arms, digging deep into his skin. The black liquid barely has time to escape the injury before the wound closes up. His lips continue moving, bloodless, soundless, like a mantra.
Bad, bad, bad.
“I studied grounding techniques,” Bruce had told him once, in the early days. Damian had stayed still on the floor, untrusting of his father and resentful of the white country with the white people his mother had left him in.
“It helps to have something repetitive. The human mind forms pathways and connections, it clings onto familiarity. Children’s brains are more malleable - they form connections and habits faster.”
Bruce had walked him through a breathing sequence. Demonstrated what he to do when he experienced a panic attack.
The next time Damian experienced the quick breathing, the black spots, he’d dug his nails into his palms and breathed in the pattern and told himself You are Damian Al Ghul, your mother is Talia Al Ghul, your father is the Batman. Familial connections, something simple. Later, it becomes longer: You’re the heir, you’re the heir, you’re the heir, you have a rightful place in this house, and a place when you go back.
His father was dead.
Damian was still here.
Slowly, he knelt down and prepared himself to restrain the Talon whose chest heaved and hands jerked, punishing. “Breathe,” he says distantly, watching the strange child he didn’t know how to help. “You are Dick Grayson. You are twelve years old.”
Slowly, falteringly, the child quietens, and he lets himself be lulled by Damian’s words.
“You are Dick Grayson.” Your father is dead. “You are twelve years old, you can ask questions.” Your mother, too. You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to help you, how did Bruce do this? “Repeat after me.”
The child’s voice, soft and uncertain but compelled to follow a direct order, “My name is Dick Grayson. I am twelve years old. I can ask questions.” The longest sequence of words he’d said yet. Unheard, but Damian could still imagine it all the same - self-recrimination - a litany of apologies for existing: I am bad, I am bad, I am bad.
You are a child, Damian doesn’t say. “When you experience something like that again, repeat this,” he tells him instead. “Familiarity grounds you, it - it helps to have something repetitive.”
Dick obeys.
Hours after, Damian sits the Talon on the bed and wraps him in blankets to keep him warm. Damian may not know him well, but he does know this: after so long in the freezer, Dick Grayson longs for warmth. He may never be able to step outside and integrate into normal life but he was the most relaxed surrounded by comfort and warmth.
With the heater turned all the way up, Damian clicks on the television for Dick to exercise his language skills. For himself, he settles in to work on a case, gathering evidence like he was taught to do. The quiet lulls him into a state of calm, lowering his earlier adrenaline.
“There’s no blood.” Damian smothers down his initial jump at the unexpected voice. He hadn’t realised before, but without panic and big, gasping breaths, Dick sounded young, like the child he was.
“Pardon?”
“The crab.”
Damian looks at the screen, where a crab was scuttling away. It was missing a claw. “Crabs do actually bleed,” he tells Dick. “Their blood is blue and called hemolymph. A natural defense mechanism called autotomy allows them to detach their claw without significant blood loss in order to escape danger. However, it hurts them in the long term even though they can regenerate the lost limb.”
Dick’s eyes remain unblinkingly on the screen, trained on the crab. It’s on its back now. The crab’s remaining limbs wiggle in the air, fighting to get back onto its legs.
Thinking that’s all he wanted, Damian returns to his police reports, scanning the clinical, professional account.
“But I bleed.”
A pause. “But you’re not a crab,’ Damian says, not understanding. He studies Dick very carefully. Dick’s face tenses the slightest bit before falling back into its usual expressionless state.
Reluctantly, like he didn’t fully agree but didn’t want Damian to know that, Dick says, “Understood.”
Damian makes him waffles. “ Sugary and customisable, Steph had said cheerfully, skillfully using the skillet. What more could you want?”
Snorting, Damian had replied, “A healthy diet.” Steph had winked at him, turning around to laugh. In his memories, Steph is bright and burning, never pausing to do better, do more. In his memories, Steph remains unapologetic and righteous, spitting vitriol at Bruce and always always getting back up.
“What’s that? Damian carefully does not react to Dick’s quiet voice. He remains unable to detect Dick’s movements unless he concentrates - Dick was as good as Cass, in stealth.
“Waffles, a small crisp batter cake that can be customised with fruits and condiments.” He made sure to make it less sweet than he usually would, aware of Dick’s sensitive tastebuds. He sets down a singular piece on a plate and slides it across the table with a fork - a real one, made of metal.
He picks up his own fork and knife, well accustomed to western cutlery. Reaching out slowly, he serves himself fruit and drizzles the lightest amount of syrup on his serving. He watches Dick out of the corner of his eye, never making it obvious.
Slowly, with care, a pale hand reaches out to mimic his actions. Dick was a fast learner, he was determined to complete every task with perfection, to do more, to be better. Damian wasn’t sure how much of it was himself or the court. Child prodigy, acrobat at 7; Talon, exemplary assassin. Maybe it was a bit of both.
“What do you think?” he prompted Dick. His most asked question - your thoughts? Your opinions? Dick hadn’t reacted negatively. With each question, he answered more readily, seemingly bouncing back from his conditioning with ease.
It made sense. His induction had been fast, but he was still only 12. The electrum running through his veins were at the forefront of science, identifying injuries and healing but never stunting his growth in any way. He hadn’t died before he was Talon, and Damian had liaisoned with several scientists and members of the Justice League to help Dick.
He hoped one day Dick would be able to adjust to normal society. The electrum would leave his veins soon, and although his veins would remain black and his features would remain unnatural, physical appearance was easy enough to cover up.
He could return to what he should have been entitled to: life, friends, a future.
One day, maybe.
“It’s - good. I like the fruit.”
“Sweet, huh?”
“Sweet,” Dick echoed.
“Try a full sentence.”
“I like this food, it’s sweet.”
“Good job.”
Dick brightened, like the sun coming out of the clouds, slow and sweet like syrup, the edges of his mouth curl up into a hesitant smile, rare but all the more precious for it. Damian wished Steph had gotten to know him.
When Damian had presented as a beta, his mother had been surprised. She was a smart woman, deadly and prepared with no lack of suitors. Even back then, Damian had been aware up of the stereotypes. As isolated as he was to the rest of the world, he had picked up on societal conventions regardless.
The alphas were the leaders.
But Damian was a beta.
“You’ll just have to work harder, then,” Talia had told him. She had probably meant it to be encouraging. All Damian could hear was recrimination. Inadequate.
Then Talia had sent him to Bruce a few weeks later and Damian never returned to the League anyways.
Dick’s heat comes in. Damian hadn’t known if it was a biological possibility or not, but he’d prepared for it anyway. What he hadn’t expected was for Dick to mutilate himself at the first signs of his cycle.
“Get it out get it out ,” Dick babbles, wide yellow eyes darting to and from Damian. Curled into himself, he looks like the child Damian had logically known he was. Dick thrashes, sobbing. His eyes stay dry. A whine rips out, ugly and raw, like it clawed itself free of Dick’s chest.
“ Make it stop.”
He raises his hand to his throat, and Damian is hit with a sudden sense of bad premonition. He reaches up to stop him - to restrict him, but he’s a split second too slow. Black blood sprays out, staining the carpets.
Dick stops breathing.
When Dick regenerates enough he’s conscious again, Damian is there, beside him. He had told his team of specialists specifically hired for Dick to give them some space as soon as Dick was stable, unwilling to stress the kid.
Damian had never been more relieved for the electrum’s healing abilities.
The heat was the problem. As acclimated to the cold Talons were, the unbearable heat that was characteristic of most cycles would have been a shock to his system. It wouldn’t be the comfort of a heater and a blanket, it’d be all consuming - burning in its sudden onset.
Damian remains by Dick’s side, not bothering to clean the blood up. He’d gotten used to the smell over the past few weeks.
“I know it’s uncomfortable and painful,” Damian tells him when he wakes up. Skittish, Dick stays still despite his obvious want to retreat. He’s perceptive enough to know Damian’s displeased, but not enough to know why. For a moment, Damian wonders if it’s worth it.
(Once, he’d nursed a bird back to health in secret. In hindsight, Bruce had definitely known, but at that time it’d been one of his most important secrets, somehow. The bird’s wings had stayed mangled, and it lived an uncomfortable life.
Later, Damian had asked those online - Should I have let the bird die?
An answer that had stuck in his mind: ‘Maybe it would have been kinder to do so.’)
“The warmth you’re experiencing is a heat.” Dick’s eyes show no recognition of the term. “It’s an indicator of presentation as an omega, which typically occurs at 11-14 years old.” Still no response. Damian hopes they haven’t backslided on any progress.
Carefully, with as much enunciation as possible, Damian leans forward, telegraphing his movements. “I’m going to unlock your restraints.” Saying this, he shows Dick the key. Dick’s eyes track his movements, the rest of his body stays unnaturally still.
Click. The cuffs unlock. Dick doesn’t move.
Hesitantly, Damian rests his hand on Dick’s forehead, memories of Talia performing the same action guiding his movements. “I’ve given you heat suppressors. Usually I wouldn’t, but your physiology means that the suppressors are quite necessary.” Still no response. Damian wishes he were a more comforting person.
“Don’t try and rip your scent glands out again.”
Seconds pass. There is no clock in the Batcave, so it’s just Damian’s breathing. In, out.
Quietly, Dick speaks, “Why not?”
Damian flounders, he wonders how to respond. He hadn’t known this needed an answer. How do you tell a child they didn’t need to be in pain? That he shouldn’t hurt himself, end his own life to avoid more pain? He doesn’t have a good answer.
“It’s like the crab,” Damian says in a sudden flash of inspiration. “They can rip their limb off. They can even regrow it to avoid greater danger, but it still hurts them, and can harm them more in the long term.”
It strikes a chord in Dick, or, at least Damian hopes it does. Dick looks at him, tilting his head like he’s listening, really trying to understand.
“Hemolymph,” he says. Clarity.
“Yeah. Hemolymph.”
(He’d forgotten this, too fixated on the thought of potentially prolonging suffering. Bruce, wreathed in shadows, firm in his conviction:
“Everyone deserves another chance.”)
The doctor’s mouth flattened into a straight line. “His body is consuming itself - the reliance to electrum to keep his body in the best physical state possible left his body unmoored despite the gradual adjustment, presenting as an omega didn’t help either.” Dread sinks in, a physical sensation.
“Too much has happened in such a short period of time, his state is very unstable right now. I’d recommend keeping constant medical supervision if it wasn’t for your circumstances. I’ll confer with the others but this isn’t my field of specialty.”
So Dick’s body was left chasing after its previous state, chasing the perfection at the cost of turning on itself.
“And - and the less concerning factors?”
The doctor was used to Damian’s preference for clinical, unfeeling bluntness by now.
“He’ll likely never have children, and if he did - at this point in time, we predict his body be unable to carry any children to full term.”
The doctor looked at him apologetically. “Dick’s physiology is unique as a child who was turned into a talon before presentation - his circumstances are unprecedented. I’m afraid we need more time. At the worst case scenario, Dick will need to keep receiving electrum.”
Damian fought to keep his face neutral. “Okay. Thank you for all your help so far.”
The doctor’s face softened. “No problem, Mr Wayne.”
So, electrum. Damian already knew how, the files he’d taken from the ruins of the court had been valuable and informative. The - the other problems, the infertility, the slow starvation, only one of them was of immediate danger.
Something in Damian mourned for the chance Dick never had and would never be able to dream of having.
The rest of Damian settled into coldness.
Talons, electrums, medicine. The familiarity of a mission , although not The Mission calmed him.
Quietly, Damian orders child rearing books under a pseudonym and delivers it to one of his many safehouses. It feels like an ugly secret, one of his most shameful. In the quiet of the night, he reads them silently, diligently.
His grief is all consuming, and he thinks this is what Bruce must have felt all the time. He thinks he doesn’t want to inherit the mantle anymore, maybe he never did, maybe he was holding onto it by strings, telling himself Cass has it for now, you can fight her for it when you have time, nevermind that Cassandra Cain was someone he could never beat in a fight.
Communicate, the books say. Positive reinforcement, encouragement. A book on trauma: Be patient, be a constant presence. A chapter of child abuse, and ideal parenting: What do you wish your parents did for you? It remained unhighlighted - to note it would feel too much like betrayal.
Like a mantra, grounding himself in facts:
Your mother loves you loves you loves you, she left you with Bruce to keep you away away away. She did her best for you, she loves you, she’s your mother.
He wanted to talk to his mother. He did not know how to. What am I supposed to do? He thinks to himself, exhausted. The answer remained unhighlighted.
Dick shattered the plate.
Damian carefully did not react in fear of scaring him away. “Is there a reason behind the action?” He could guess: displaced, abused child lashing out to test boundaries. It was perhaps a natural progression as they grew closer, common in abuse cases.
He had not expected it from Dick, had thought the subservience beat into him by the Court would prompt him to test his boundaries in another form as he got more comfortable.
Damian watched the child gather his courage, his spark. The small shoulders square, and Damian felt almost a sense of deja vu as he towered over the child despite not trying to.
“I felt like it,” Dick said.
“Alright,” Damian said.
Two days later, he tries again.
“I snapped the neck of a dog once. It was barking too loudly.” The confession comes unprompted, and Damian very carefully does not react.
“How did that feel?”
Dick falls quiet, taken aback. He considers Damian’s question very carefully. “I don’t know,” he finally answers. “I killed the owners of the dog afterwards.” Looking up at Damian, he blinks. He has to crane his neck to maintain eye contact. He asks, very slowly, “What about it?”
Dick’s neck is bare - biological parents were pack by default and virtue of their blood. Some families chose to bite anyways, a pack claim, permanent, you’re wanted, you’re wanted, you’re wanted.
Talia had never bothered. She had told him he was the heir, that he was irreplaceable. She had delivered him to Gotham. Batman’s neck was bare, Damian’s too.
Once, and only once, Bruce had asked.
“Your neck is bare,” he said said, slowly, and with his typical solemnity. “Displaced children typically require proof of closeness and pack.”
Damian, 15 and proud and quick to anger had bristled. He was not displaced, he was in his rightful heritance. Beta or not, he’d be the leader one day. “You’re not in charge of me,” he’d snapped. “Why would I require proof of being close to you ?”
Batman: expression shuttered, immoveable. He never growled, although Damian knew he was an alpha. Damian had assumed it was just another form of distance, his reluctance to engage in alpha posturing, establishing his place at the head no matter how Damian would snap and snarl and fight him on everything.
“Alright,” he had said.
Damian had tried to not take the rejection personally. He had tried not to snap in frustration at the ambiguity, at the indifference. He was there, he wanted to say. His secondary gender didn’t mean he was to be overlooked. He was the heir, the son.
Blinking from the sudden memory, Damian looks at Dick, really looks. He sees Dick’s slight tremble, the waver in his frame. He thinks of fathers. He thinks of being adrift and unsure of his place.
Damian maintains the eye contact. He keeps his body language open, forward. He raises his hand to put a comforting, awkward hand on Dick’s shoulder, noting the way he flinches then melts into the contact.
“I’m not mad,” he says. “Nothing you’ve ever done will make me mad.” Unsaid: you were a kid, you still are. How could I possibly be mad?
In his nightmares: Dick, ripping his throat open. Dick, flesh soft, so easy to rip open and crack into his insides. In his nightmares, Dick doesn’t bleed.
One day, Dick asks, gaze downcast and very, very quietly, “Permission to go outside?”
Then he stills, as if by asking he’s been struck.
Damian keeps his hands where Dick can see them. “Of course,” he says. He doesn’t think Dick is ready, doesn’t think they have the adequate preparations and he’s just not ready , but (and here was what really mattered) but Dick had asked for - for such a small thing.
So he bundles Dick up in clothing, sunglasses over his eyes and sunscreen over his hands and face. Light pants and a long sleeved shirt. He waits until later when it is not so bright but the last vestiges of the sun’s warmth linger on your skin regardless.
Dick looks - well. Dick looks radiant. He steps outside and tilts his face to the sun, eyes protected. Before Damian’s eyes, the child transforms into action, previous unnerving stillness shed like a coat, arms hanging loosely by his sides, swinging gently. Wonder in motion.
The breeze ruffles his air and Dick shudders, a wide smile stretching across his face, an open wound, like he couldn’t bare to repress it any longer.
Damian marvels at this, and thinks -
Thinks -
You deserve everything. I’m sorry you’ve lost so much. I love you, do you know that? I’d give you everything if I could.
Thinks that he could almost, almost see what Dick Grayson looked like, if, if.
Bruce had made him go to school. It had chafed at him, the restrictions, the people. It wasn’t all bad, not that Damian would ever admit it. But as a teenager, he had despised it, had spat and snarled and dug his foot in and refused.
Bruce had insisted. Damian hadn’t understood, then.
He had eventually graduated with a diploma anyways and Bruce had shown up as Brucie Wayne. Damian continued on to refuse university and struggle with Cass and vigilantism. He understood now, he thinks, staring at Dick watching the national geographic.
Not an oh moment, but a sudden I want him to have a life . Not a my father was right, but a I want that choice for him.
Then, like karma:
A warm afternoon: Damian’s world comes crumbling down, just a little bit.
The doctor says: “He’s not showing any signs of improvement.”
And says: “He needs the electrum.”
And says: “We’ll keep trying, but right now he will die without the electrum.”
He hadn’t known he’d held so much hope for the doctors finding a miracle cure for Dick until it came crashing down before him.
So much for a normal life one day , Damian thinks. Refuses to feel sad. Doesn’t mention Dick eavesdropping out the door.
Later: a knee down. Damian, finding words. I wanted you to have friends and learn art history and draw pictures of other people’s pets, he doesn’t say. Did you know you won’t have the choice to have children? He doesn’t ask.
“Your body is eating itself,” he says. “I’m sorry, I know I said you don’t have to keep being a Talon, but -”
Dick, eyes too big for his small face, shirt falling off to reveal his frighteningly prominent collarbones: “Continued electrum injections,” he interrupted knowingly.
“But do you know what that means?”
“Being able to keep living. Not being able to age. Not being able to die.” Dick puts his fingers down as he lists the words, a habit he’d picked up from television. Damian flounders in the face of Dick’s too-serious too-mature bluntness.
A hand rests on his shoulder, awkward. Dick’s scent, milky and immature like all pups’ scents were warped from the electrum and forever stuck in the limbo between on the cusp of fully maturing into his scent and staying like the child he’d now never be able to grow up from.
His scent settles clumsily over them like a blanket, hesitant but earnest in its desire to help.
Sincere, Dick tells him, “I understand. It’s okay.”
I love you, Damian thinks about saying. He rolls it around his tongue at night, testing the syllables out quietly, whispering. His voice dips too low on the ‘o’, and strains the rest of the sentence. The ‘you’ falls flat . أحبك. he tries, like something forbidden . 我爱你 , dying in the dark, the swoop of 你 cutting it short, jarring.
It doesn’t feel profound, or like any sort of declaration at all.
The shame of trying and his sheer inadequacy grips him by the throat and seizes his air. Damian is 27. His father is dead, his mother does not talk to him. He does not remember the last time he told his mother he loved her. He does not remember telling anyone in his life he’s loved them before.
Damian can’t cry anymore. He dry sobs anyway, or tries to, the sound unfamiliar and uncomfortable. It brings him no catharsis.
He thinks maybe he doesn’t want to be Nyx anymore, doesn’t want to be Batman’s shadow. He wants to forgo the heavy cape of the dead, wants to be better than Bruce Wayne ever managed.
He thinks that maybe Dick won’t ever be able to mourn for the choices he’s never had. What will Dick do once Damian is dead, if he never ages? What will happen if Dick has to stay locked up forever, and grow to resent Damian for it?
“ I love you, ” Damian whispers to himself in the dead of the night. Gathering his courage, he mimics Dick, squaring his shoulders. Voice barely above a whisper: “I love you.” Three syllables. It still falls short, falls flat. The vowels wither and the consonants tumble out awkwardly, out of place.
He imagines a cape falling down, abandoning the weight, coming out of the shadows. He thinks of that stupid crab, ripping off its own claw. He thinks I love you, I love you, I love you , and finds it lacking in all the ways that matter.
Shamefully, like he hasn’t done since he was 13, he falls asleep like that.
Mere hours later, he wakes to Dick’s yellow eyes and black veins.
“I’m sorry for being so much trouble,” Dick miserably, tone even and monotone.
Damian sucks in a sharp breath and sits up immediately, groggy mind snapping to action. Dick lets himself be moved with Damian’s sudden motion, and doesn’t tense as Damian reaches to put a hand on his shoulder, the other hovering.
“You are not trouble,” he says vehemently, surprised at how much he means it, at the depth of his affection.
“The doctors are perfectly happy to look over you, and you do not need to be sorry for such things out of your control.’ He flounders, trying to go further, catch this moment before it spirals into something ingrained in Dick’s psyche forever. Words, he thinks, wild.
Slowly, with consideration:
“I care for you a lot. Please don’t think of yourself as a burden,” he says plainly.
Dick’s shoulders stiffen, and before Damian can panic, or take his words back, his vision is suddenly obscured by warm, yellow clothing.
Dick’s thin shoulders are trembling, shaking like a leaf. He’s sobbing, and Damian’s clothes stay dry. “I’m never getting better,” he says quietly, warped scent souring. Damian breathes, quiet. He gently strokes Dick’s back up and down, feeling the bumps under his clothes. Dick’s frighteningly thin, body consuming itself as they fight to find him sustenance.
“That’s fine.”
“I’m not following all your orders.” His voice wavers, scared, unsure in his own promise. The sudden wave of affection he feels takes his breath away.
“That’s fine.”
Loud, gasping noises next to his ear. “I’m a bad person,” Dick tries.
“I’m staying with you forever,” Damian reassures, suddenly unable to take another second of this. His voice doesn’t waver despite the sudden burning behind his eyes. “It’s alright, you can be as bad as you want.”
Dick’s bony limbs tighten further around Damian’s neck, clinging on like he’s the first and last safe harbour he’s ever known. “Okay,” he says.