Archive of Our Own ^beta

He isn’t supposed to come back for another week. And even if he did return earlier, there’s no way he’d enter your apartment through the window of all things.

Startled, you sit up and strain your ears for any more sounds. Footsteps walk all over the living room—the sound faint and clearly trained. Anyone else may have missed it, but you aren’t anyone else.

You are Damian Al Ghul’s fiancée, and you’d be damned if you let anyone break into your apartment and get away with it.

As quiet as possible, you rise to your feet and silently tiptoe to the vanity. The side panel detaches when you press two disguised buttons to show the small collection of weapons Damian kept in case an emergency. He’s taught you how to use ever last one of it, and while you had teased him for being paranoid about it once, you were very much grateful for the feeling of safety your knowledge and training provided.

Your fingers hover over the selection, hesitating in picking which one before out reach for the handgun. The metal is cool against your skin, it’s weight grounding and heavy when you allow yourself to acclimate to the feeling of it in your hands.

You nod once—a quiet gesture of reassurance to yourself—and allow the shadows to be your cloak like Damian taught you.

The living room seems normal from where you’re crouching behind the wall. Nothing is amiss—not the expensive sculptures, not the paintings on the walls or even the TV. The small wall light you always keep on flickers occasionally, but the dim golden hue bathes the furniture and walls in that familiar comfortable homey feeling.

The only sign something maybe amiss is the cold draft coming from the slightly open window. You know you closed it properly before going to sleep, so now you’re very certain someone else is in your apartment.

With trembling hands closed around the gun, you creep forward to check the kitchen—with no luck. The hallway is empty, just like the bathroom and the storage. The only place the intruder could be is Damian’s office at the end of the hallway. Though office is a generous description, the room functions more as an atelier for his artwork than anything.

You think of the canvases and paintings in that room, your heart heavy at the thought of someone stealing or defacing them. You know how much Damian treasured his art, so with new found determination, you carefully make your way to the door and linger in front of it.

The door is slightly ajar—a red flag—and from behind the thick wood, you can hear two voices murmuring quietly. Their footsteps are light, the scraping of a chair against the floor masking the sound.

Two individuals at least, both trained to be quiet.

The odds aren't favourable, but they exist. Damian’s training flashes in your mind and you know you can make it, you just have to be quick.

When the voices seem to move to the farther side of the room by the window, you kick the door open and press the light switch at the same time. Light floods the room just in time for you to make out two shapes by the window, and when you do? You don’t hesitate.

You aim and fire three sharp shots, narrowly missing one of them and managing to graze the other’s foot.

The next few moments are a blur, but when they pass you come face to face with…two children?

The older one is a scrawny boy, maybe twelve or thirteen at most. His hair is black, his eyes so blue they could have been sapphires. You realize that he looks incredibly similar to Damian—to Bruce even. He’s wearing some ridiculous combination of dark red Kevlar pants and a black shirt, probably meant to help him blend in with the dark. His boots are dented from the bullet, and there’s a little blood but not too much so far.

The boy is pointing a sort of throw star at you (why on earth does he have a weapon?), glowering while he does his best to hide the other boy younger boy behind him. That kid—short, trembling and most definitely no older than nine—is clutching the older boy’s jacket. His skin is darker, but he has the same eyes and hair like the other kid so you assume they’re brothers.

“Who are you?” The boy with the weapon barks in what you think he believes is an intimidating manner. To you, he sounds like wet scared kitten playing pretend.

“Me? I should be asking you that,” you reply in disbelief. Not only did they break into your place, now they’re acting like you don’t belong here?

Man, kids these days.

”I ask the questions, this is my brother’s apartment so what the hell are you doing here?”

“Yeah! You’re the thief with a gun shooting kids here,” the younger boy exclaims with a shaking voice.

Your rain blue screens for a moment before you realize what they just said. “Wait,” you ask confused, “you’re Damian’s brothers? What on earth are you doing in Bludhaven? How did you get here in the middle of the night?”

An hour later and after several calls, you finally learn that Jason—the older boy—and Dick—the little menace—had snuck out from the manor because they were convinced Damian was hiding some sort of criminal activity from them.

He wasn't.

He just hasn't told anyone but his mother that he was seeing someone for a few years now, much less that he's engaged to that someone.

And that's how you end up sitting at the kitchen table with your fiancée's little brothers, the two of them sipping hot chocolate and devouring the last batch of cookies a friend had given you.

"I'm sorry about shooting you, by the way," you tell Jason for the millionth time. He watched you over the rim of his mug with the quiet kind of intensity no twelve year old should possess and smiles.

"It's okay, we kinda had that one comin' didn't we Dickiebird?" Dick nods enthusiastically, though you think that might be more so due to the food he's devouring rather than whatever is actually being said.

"Yeah, you looked super cool when you stormed in with the gun!"

You wince, realising you pulled a gun on two kids. Your fiancé's brothers no less.

Yikes, what a great first impression.

There's silence for a few minutes, only interrupted by the sound of the refrigerator humming and the rhythmic swinging of Dick's legs against the chair legs.

Then, Jason breaks the silence with an awkward cough. "Soooo, will you talk to Damian so he doesn't lecture us?"

You give him an unimpressed look, sipping your own drink.

"No."

"Damn it, worth a shot."