Chapter Text
Hood is seething.
Or at least, he’s pissed and patting himself on the back about it. Since the asshole drag racing through his territory screaming is glowing brighter than his vision, he’s calling it a win. It’s a miracle no one’s been hit yet-- the Alley isn’t busy at night, but its residents don’t tend to stay indoors if they have things to do, now that the Hoods have a hold on the area again.
Sorry brother, I just gotta apologize to my girl real quick then we’re gone! We’ll be in and out I swear!
The note is clear, short, spiky handwriting on what looks like a diner napkin that took a bath in uranium. Dropped off a massive, custom bike when it landed from the sky, on the building Hood was staking out.
There’s something wrong about this guy being in the Alley, something deeper than bone and more instinctive than breathing. Hood wants to call it his usual territorial feelings about his niche of his city, so that’s what he’s going to call it. This friggin’ guy is pushing ninety five on residential streets, near Park Row Elementary, even cut through a park according to Oracle. The one thing in Crusty Asshat’s favor is that, despite the path he’s taking, he apparently decided not to run straight into the new children's apparatus Jason had installed in April with an anonymous donation. No, instead, Crusty Asshat decided to ride his bike fully through the jungle gym-- no crash, no dent, not even a scratch. He hasn’t hit any cars either, for the same reason.
Great for the community, but Hood and the Bat are still struggling to actually catch the guy. So far tonight, they’ve cataloged its powers as levitation, telekinesis, intangibility, and shitfuck--
Hood doesn’t see the mass of darkness with glowing eyes and a jagged pseudomouth when it shorts out a block’s worth of streetlights. It seems to leave an impression on the backs of his eyelids when he blinks. He has the sneaking suspicion that, had his helmet been on his head instead of back home after tanking that mid-cal shot yesterday, the sensors wouldn’t have picked it up at all.
Shadow manipulation. Great. That doesn’t make things infinitely more complicated.
Levitation? Barely even a blip these days. Telekinesis is more annoying, especially at high speeds, but Hood’s reflexes are good. Intangibility presents an escalating threat; Manhunter and his niece are adamant that everyone train against it, but they’re always off-world and the tech to imitate intangibility is expensive, specialized, and most importantly frail. Past experience is all Jason has to go on with intangible baddies.
Now shadow magic-- or whatever it is --is involved, and even if calling for help didn’t make Hood’s blood feel prickly, their only on-call expert is on a class trip to Vienna until February. Fuckin’ rich people schools.
Oracle is saying something about a third presence in Old Gotham, near where some coed just dropped unconscious on 6th. Not ten seconds later, Hood is screeching to a halt just in front of the Kane Highway overpass.
A blinding flash of white-blue light flares on the other side of the concrete bridge, enveloping the green glow he was pursuing. As quickly as it appears, it's gone, and so is Hood’s trespasser.
His gear tonight is armored, but leaves his joints free; his head can whip around fast as anything when he needs it to.
Which is how he's able, for a split second, to catch a glimpse of something wholly, spine-shiveringly ancient when he feels the whisper of a hand on his utility belt. A presence with enough substance to have just slipped something into one of the pouches.
As quickly as he senses the presence, it vanishes entirely, leaving Jason alone but for the occasional car.
After several minutes, Crusty and his friend are nowhere to be found. Hood takes the moment to check what the unwelcome addition to his supplies might be-- carefully. Usually when people plant things on him, they explode.
His hand brushes a piece of paper. Normal printer paper, not even folded to conceal identifying factors. The language is like nothing he's ever seen. He can almost read it by crossing his eyes, but the rough message is enough to set his teeth grinding anyway, from rage or dread he can't quite tell.
Elder -------, once-injured bird,
--------- pardons ------ intrusion. My wayward souls -------------- according to their crime. ------------- your home no longer and you may ---------.
Regards,
------- High King -------, He Who ----- Between, ------ Of --- Who ---- And Never Lived
Scratched there in pen, as if an afterthought, is a symbol that looks almost like a bird footprint. The faint tug of recollection pulls him into that particularly foggy part of his memory that can only mean one thing.
He mutes his comms. Voice hidden by the sound of traffic, Jason Todd swears with a violence and creativity earned in years spent with Gotham’s Slimiest.
He unmutes, switches to the Bat's private channel. “Rendezvous at the Cave. B and Gremlin, you're gonna want to see this.”
Five Days Later.
“The answer remains no, Robin.” Father’s tone brooks no argument. The cowl hides his face, but the firm set of his mouth supports his position on the topic.
But he doesn’t understand. Of course, he can’t possibly, when Damian has not given him the details. And he’s not inclined to, when the details are little more than a series of hunches.
It’s just the two of them in the Cave tonight, or Damian would not have broached the subject. Drake and Thomas are on patrol for the evening, and Damian had asked for the night off for this exact purpose.
“I’ve done all the necessary research,” Damian presses, holding out the stack of paperwork he spent the last day and a half compiling. “This is more than some whim, there may be--”
“Amity Park and its surrounding area has been designated a zone of total non-interference,” Father cuts him off, turning back to the Batcomputer when a chemical analysis is completed. “Even if I were interested in disrupting your school year to send you there, Justice League Dark says keep out. So we keep. Out. We aren’t equipped to handle threats at that level without one of the League’s arcane experts.”
Justice League Dark. In this particular case, the alcoholic and the magician who makes a farce of herself as a secret identity. Hardly what Damian would call experts in the undead. The occult, perhaps, and this may be a bit of both, but they certainly cannot have the whole picture.
But Father seems unlikely to change his mind on this subject, and he can feel himself getting desperate. Grandfather used to say that desperation breeds foolishness. Perhaps he was right. It certainly is foolish, what he does next.
His arm unit sends an overblown image to the giant monitor his father is using. Were it not of utmost importance, he would never dream of interrupting Batman while he worked. But it is, and he does, and it gets Father’s attention.
The part of him that expects punishment for such blatant disrespect and entitlement is not silent, but he shoves it aside. Richard has spent the last 17 months, since his return from deep cover, trying to convince Damian that his father favors the carrot over the stick. Damian knows to trust Richard.
Even should Father prove his eldest son wrong, Damian will weather the storm that follows.
The image he casts to the screen is a yearbook photo, two years old and average in every way. Drab background, a portrait taken from the chest up, the words “Daniel Fenton, Freshman Class AP High” printed underneath it as a watermark. But the boy in the photo is what makes Father’s eyes narrow and his fingers still on the keyboard.
The boy has unruly black hair and tanned skin like Damian’s own. He’s wearing a cheap white t-shirt with orange accents. His eyes are a crystal blue like Father’s own, but other than that, he could be Damian’s clone.
Which is, of course, one of the two problems.
“They have never feigned a normal life before,” Damian says quietly. “Not to this extent.”
Father stops for a moment. Whether it is because he is annoyed or because Damian has gotten his attention is unclear. His voice is flat, giving away nothing. “The implications are concerning, but there’s every chance that it’s doing so because it’s trapped in the town by the threat that Dark warned about.”
He did not wish to do this. “The ghost threat, yes. I have looked into that as well. I have read many eyewitness accounts of the vigilante ghost keeping the rest at bay. No images have been recovered without significant corruption, but you saw this ghost yourself two nights ago, did you not?”
“Get to the point, Damian.”
His fingers seem to drag on the touchpad of his arm unit, but he overlays the second image, with inverted hair and green eyes on a face that glows so tan it’s near-orange. The boy in the image has pointed ears and sharper cheekbones, but the similarities remain. The Photo-Shop skills Gordon showed him finally got some use after he read Batman’s report the other night. “Is this or is this not the ghost child you saw Thursday evening?”
Father says nothing, which is as much of a confirmation as he can expect. He’s not offering anymore resistance, so Damian swallows and continues. “I have two working theories.”
“Which are?”
Richard would call this topic of conversation a minefield, but Damian would call it a strategically triggered bear trap. He doesn’t like thinking of Heretic, of the clone that proved Damian and himself a failure in one fell swoop. The title of Heir is not one he covets anymore, but the sting remains-- Mother thought him a failure, and Damian proved her right.
But this clone, moreso than any of the previous, has crossed a line.
“One of the clones may have come back as a ghost. If that is the case, I have… much to reevaluate about myself. The other theory…” He hesitates for a split second. Truly, this was something he never wished to share, even with Father. It’s far too personal. But if right, he cannot afford to wait any longer, and Father is more likely to help him than Mother.
He was the one wedge between Damian and Mother for four years. He would rather not involve her.
“Damian,” Father says, and he doesn’t sound like Batman right now. He puts a hand on Damian’s upper arm in an awkward attempt at comfort. “Why is this bothering you so much? I thought you were unfazed by the clones at this point.”
Part of Damian roils with an ugly emotion he refuses to put a name to. Father was not there, was not responsible for his death and the aftermath the way he was with Todd. Father is the reason Damian is alive at all, and he would do well to keep that in mind.
His death did not rip the family asunder, and that. That is a good thing.
Damian feels his spine stiffen, his shoulders square. “If one of them has redeemed himself in some kind of afterlife, it does not change that he was sent to kill me, and did his best. I would be glad to leave him immediately if that is the case. But if I am right in my second theory, then that is not the case.”
“Then what is it?” He does not like the way Father is looking at him, like he’s a frightened stray.
Maybe he is. Maybe that’s all he has been since he was seven years old.
His tongue feels like sandpaper in his mouth. “I theorize that the ghost vigilante known as Phantom is letting my clone live for personal reasons, and I know what they likely are.”
Father is quiet, waiting for him to continue at his own pace.
“I believe that, in life,” Damian says, forcing the words out as clinically as he can, “Phantom was known as Danyal al Ghul. Twin son of Talia al Ghul and…”
“Bruce Wayne.” Father’s hand drops and he slumps into his seat. “I… How? When?”
“He failed his first mission,” Damian says, voice as steady as he can manage. “When we were seven.”
The inches separating them feel like yards, but neither makes any move to close the gap. Damian is struggling to keep his own grief contained, and he knows Father is processing. That must be why his voice hardens again.
“You never told me. Either of you.”
Damian looks away, focusing hard on the case of Robin uniforms. “I… had enough siblings to live up to in your eyes. Eventually, I chose to keep him secret so as not to cause you undue pain.”
Under the cowl, Father’s jaw tenses to the point of quivering. “Understood. You’ll leave Monday. Recon only. Do not engage unless absolutely necessary for your own extraction. Inform Nightwing and Red Robin.”
You’re not going? he wants to ask. He does not, of course. He minimizes the images without a word. Damian got what he wanted, and they both paid the price. He will ask nothing more tonight. Perhaps not ever again.