Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Cave is a study in stillness as Tim stands there in the middle of it with a heaving chest and a heart that feels like it has broken into a billion pieces. Water is drip-drip-dripping from the stalactites, plonking down with a deafening smack that’s almost loud enough to make Tim flinch. He would – if he wasn’t as frozen as he is.

His mouth opens like a fish, gaping and silent as he struggles to speak, to find the words – the right words – that would make Dick stop and listen! Make him believe him. Those words seem very far away and out of reach right now.

“But–”

“Tim! I won’t hear of this,” Dick cuts in before Tim can rally his brain cells to form a convincing argument. “Bruce is dead. You need to accept that. We’ve all seen the body, League specialists have tested it and analysed it to confirm! I know you think everything is a puzzle that can be solved and every little thing that looks off must be a clue to a bigger conspiracy, but this is not one of those times!”

“Dick, listen–”

“I have listened! And all I’ve been hearing is denial and your inability to accept one more death. And I get it, Timmy, I do,” Dick entreats, voice turning softer and sadder, and all it does is make Tim want to scream at his brother because he doesn’t need platitudes, doesn't need to be treated like fragile china liable to break! He needs his brother to believe him! “You’ve lost so much in such a short time and I know it hurts, sweetheart. I know. But I need you to understand how insane this sounds and that my concern for you is real. I want you to be my Robin and I want you by my side, buddy. I need you here with me. Not going off on a wild goose chase.”

“It’s not–”

But once again, Dick cuts him off.

“It is. I would give anything– anything to have Bruce back, Tim. But he’s gone. And for better or for worse, I’m what’s left. Batman, household runner, your guardian. I’m responsible for you and I’ll be damned if I let you lose yourself in your grief-fueled delusions or, God forbid, get yourself hurt or killed chasing after Bruce’s ghost.”

“So what are you saying?” Tim asks in a hollow sort of way, shoulders slumping as the hope that’s been keeping him upright this entire conversation leaves him with the realisation that there is no moving his older brother. He won’t believe Tim. Maybe he can’t – the same possibility that has the ability to fuel Tim and make him go to the ends of the Earth to prove himself right could very well destroy Dick completely. So maybe he understands, a little. It still doesn’t make the refusal, the outright rejection sting any less, and the disappointment he feels in his oldest sibling is nearly enough to send Tim crashing to his knees.

He’s never been particularly blind to Dick’s flaws – Tim likes to think that he’s a realist with a healthy dose of hope and optimism to keep him going and prevent something like Gun Batman from happening. He knows Dick can be obsessive and angry, bullheaded and mean. He’s even been on the receiving end of those lovely traits once or twice, predominantly at the beginning of their relationship. But for all of that, he’s always carried this unshakeable belief that no matter what, come hell or high water, Dick would always be there. That if Tim were to lose all of his allies, all of his friends, if every member of their cobbled up family were to turn their backs on him – Dick would be right there at Tim’s elbow, propping him up.

It’s sobering and soul-crushing to have that belief dashed against the Cave floor like an expensive vase crashing into unforgiving marble.

“I’m saying that you’re still a minor and my ward. And as much as I hate pulling this card, until you’re eighteen and on your own, what I say goes,” Dick declares finally, coldly, in a way that Tim doesn’t recognise. Who is this stranger that grief and anger and loss have carved out of his brother? But most importantly, how dare he?!

“Excuse me?”

Dick meets Tim’s eye unflinchingly. There’s warmth in there and regret, Tim can read that much in the sky-blue eyes he knows like the back of his hand, but all of it is smothered under the steel will Dick is exerting at the moment – or trying to. After all, Tim has never been very good with respecting authority figures and he’s not about to start with Dick.

“You will stay right here with me and Alfred, go to school, join me on patrol, and leave this painting nonsense alone. Clark got me in touch with a respectable child psychiatrist in Metropolis before he left and I’ve already booked an appointment for you on Friday. It’s clear to me that Bruce had too much faith in your ability to bounce back from all the losses you’ve suffered lately and I won’t make the same mistake. You’re getting help, Tim; whether you want it or not.”

Tim can’t help it. He laughs. It comes out like serrated knives up his throat and into the gnawing, empty space between them, and Tim feels every hope and belief he had in Dick like drops of blood dripping down his esophagus and threatening to choke him.

“Fuck you,” Tim says breathlessly, gasping it out between hysterical giggles steeped in rage. “Honestly, go fuck yourself, Dick. Who the fuck do you think you are? You think you’re my dad? Think you’re Bruce? Jesus Christ.” The affronted look on Dick’s face – not quite able to mask the hurt beneath – is almost funny enough to send Tim into another laughing fit. “I made up a whole ass fake uncle to avoid Bruce’s adoption, what makes you think you have any power over me? If you won’t believe me, fine. I don’t need your stupid help anyway! I’ll do it myself and when I’m right and Bruce is home again, I’ll blast fireworks into the sky to spell out ‘I told you so’, you complete and utter prick!”

Tim’s screams bounce off the walls and high ceiling of the Cave, echoing for long after Tim has stopped speaking. A few brave bats that had been hanging around close to the arguing pair finally fly off further into the Cave. Tim clenches his jaw and turns his back on Dick.

“Tim! Tim, get back here! Where do you think you’re going? TIM!”

But Tim spares Dick no mind as he marches away from him, grabbing his collapsible bo staff on the way to the vehicle bay, and swings his legs over his Robin bike. Dick’s alert walking turns into a jog and then a sprint when Tim revs the engine, but he’s too late. By the time he gets there, Tim has taken off, leaving the Cave with a loud screech of tires and dark skidmarks on the ground.

Dick doesn’t know it yet, but that’s the last time he’ll see Tim for a long time. He’ll curse himself for being too slow, for being insensitive, for being pushy and demanding and not actually listening to what Tim had to say in the intervening months. But right now, all he does is let out a loud string of curses as he kicks a nearby bike furiously and resolves to track Tim down in a few hours if he isn’t back at the Manor by then. He just needs to cool off, that’s all. They’ll figure it out later. They always do.

***

Tim doesn’t return to the Manor. After leaving the Cave like a bat out of hell, he takes routes that happen to coincide with broken cameras that won’t let Oracle track him, and holes up inside one of the many safehouses Tim has stashed around the city that nobody knows about. If there is one useful thing Bruce instilled in him, it’s the paranoia. Because is it truly paranoia when they’re really out to get you?

(And if it hurts to lump Dick in with the collective “they”, then that’s something only Tim and his mattress soaked in tears have to know.)

His phone blows up with texts and missed calls from Dick for the first few hours after it’s been made clear that he’s not coming back, but Tim turns it off and makes sure Babs can’t track him using it not long after.

He also gives himself a few hours to cry his eyes out and sob like a little kid because he’s all alone this time, no allies, no friends, no family – because they’re all dead or assholes – and feels sorry for himself for exactly three hours and twenty minutes before he wipes his face, straightens his shoulders, and lets the petty need to prove all those bitches wrong drive him forward. He then makes quick work of getting himself emancipated – it’s amazing what some light hacking and a sizable donation or two placed in the right place can achieve!

With that taken care of, Tim then raids one of Jason’s safehouses, hoping he won’t catch some kind of rare form of plague in the dilapidated building full of mould that would give even Poison Ivy pause. He’s not really sure where the other boy is or what he’s been up to after that whole crazy Batman rampage fiasco but what he does know is that Jason won’t be missing this particular piece of wardrobe any time soon.

Tim spends the next week or so after that just researching. He uses the Justice League database – and wasn’t it cute how Dick tried to restrict his access using Batman’s codes? – to get his hands on any relevant or slightly useful information then scours the internet and every obscure archive for anything remotely similar to that painting in the Manor. It’s like searching for a needle in a billion haystacks when you don’t even know if you’re truly looking for a needle or what a needle even looks like, but Tim figured out Batman and Robin’s identities at nine with less evidence than what he currently has.

Once he has some possible leads, Tim packs up a bag with essentials, tries the stolen suit on to make sure it actually fits, then leaves Gotham quietly and without a trace.

He has a dad to find and no time to waste. Dick can go fuck himself.

***

“No, no, this is hilarious. Please, go on.”

Dick clenches his jaw and gives Jason an annoyed look that does absolutely nothing to subdue that shit-eating grin. Not for the first time, he wonders why he even bothers with the man at all.

“If you're going to be unhelpful, just tell me so I can move on to someone who actually gives a shit,” Dick bites out through gritted teeth.

“You know I'm all out of shits to give, Dickhead,” Jason drawls, smirking. “Doesn't mean I won't help. After all, Robins don't have a good track record with running away from home. Last time that happened, I got blown up! And the less said about the disaster that was your Discowing era, the better.”

Dick takes a threatening step towards Jason, right hand balled into a fist, before he can check himself; the desire to wipe that mocking smirk off Jason's face is so strong Dick almost gives in. Somehow, though, he manages to hold himself back and take a deep breath to try and calm himself down. The widening smirk on Jason's face clearly shows that he knows the effect he has on Dick and is reveling in it completely. He hates his younger brother's newfound love for being a professional ragebaiter with a passion.

“Nothing's going to happen to Tim. Because we will find him,” Dick says forcefully, as if he is able to shape reality with the force of his will alone.

In reality, he's scared shitless. He hasn't heard from Tim in more than a month, not since he stormed out of the Cave and vanished without a trace. He doesn't know if Tim is still in Gotham or if he went off to gather allies or evidence or whatever the fuck the boy thinks will help him find Bruce. For all Dick knows, Tim isn't even on Earth anymore! It would certainly explain the complete and utter radio silence and Barbara's inability to find him. The only possible lead they have, if it can even be called that, is the fact that one of Jason's former vigilante suits is gone from his stash, the one he wore under the name of Red Robin.

And Dick only knows that – he only found that out today – because Jason accosted Batman on patrol to yell at him about the ‘little shit stealing my things again the second I'm gone for more than a day’ and to demand Dick make Tim give him his suit back. Dick had looked at Jason like he'd grown another head, wondering if Scarecrow was out again and had injected Red Hood with some weird form of Fear Toxin, and asked him to clarify what the fuck he was talking about.

“I'm sure Bruce thought that too before–”

“Finish that sentence and I swear to God,” Dick threatens, fisting Jason's stupid leather jacket and hauling him up an inch above the ground. Jason's grin falters for a millisecond before he covers the reaction up, but while his cocky attitude remains, he doesn't keep pushing Dick's buttons. Maybe he finally learned some tact. Most likely, though, he doesn't want to reset a millionth broken nose after Dick inevitably smashes his face in. He'd feel more guilty about his violent tendencies around Jason if the other man wasn't so insufferable on purpose and if he didn't give as good as he gets every time they come to blows.

(He mourns the little boy who thought Robin was magic and regrets not being a better brother all the time. But Jason is not that boy anymore. He's made that perfectly clear on more than one occasion. Dick can't love Jason back to their side, no matter how much he wishes to, and as cruel and dismissive as it sounds, his priority right now is Tim. The unsupervised and unaccounted for minor. Not the legal adult with daddy issues and unstable mental health. He'd offer Jason Tim's missed therapy appointment if he knew it wouldn't end with Jason's knife lodged firmly between his ribs.)

“Jeez, fine. Touchy subject. You'd think you were the one who died, not me,” Jason grumbles with his hands raised in a mocking gesture of surrender.

“So, are you going to help us find him or not? You've wasted enough of my time tonight if not.”

Jason rolls his eyes and straightens his jacket when Dick lets go of it, Batman gloves crinkling loudly in the silence of the dark alley they're in.

“Yeah, yeah. I'll keep an eye out, ask some of my contacts if they've heard anything. I'll let you know if I find him.”

In spite of all the crushing worry and tension he's been carrying since Tim ran out on him, Dick sighs in relief and even musters up a weak facsimile of a smile for Jason.

“Thank you.”

The other man's face twists into an expression of disgust at that.

“I'm not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. You'll owe me, Bats. Big time. ‘Sides, the kid has already stolen too much from me, can't have him get himself killed on top of that.”

“Okay, Jason. Find him and I'll owe you the biggest favour in the multiverse,” Dick answers tiredly, indulgently, because beneath all the snark and the ‘couldn't care less’ attitude, he can see a spark of genuine worry in Jason's teal eyes. He may not like Tim all that much or even care about him on a personal level, but he cared enough to want him as his Robin when he was out of his mind with grief and rage, and he wouldn't want another Robin to end up like him, personal dislike of the person in the costume or not.

Dick can count on Jason to make good on his promise to look into it. No matter how insufferable he will be about it. That is all that matters.

“You bet your ass you will,” Jason throws back before he secures his helmet back on and readies a grapple. He throws Dick one last look over his shoulder, expression hidden behind the red helmet, body language closed off, then he launches himself upwards and disappears above the Gotham rooftops without another word, leaving Dick behind to stand alone, darkness personified, wishing he felt less like a failure and knowing that will never happen.

Bruce would be so disappointed if he could see him right now.

***

One of these days, Tim will learn to stop expecting things to go a certain way.

He didn’t think that traipsing around a foreign continent looking for clues about Bruce would be easy, per se, but even he didn’t expect his path to take him to Ra’s al Ghul of all people. Good thing he decided to ditch the Robin suit for this side-quest of his! Wouldn’t want that mantle to be tainted by being an ally of the Demon’s Head.

Owens, Z, and Pru are pretty neat people, all things considered. For assassins, they make great friends and even greater company for Tim’s self-imposed mission, and they certainly make it easier for Tim to keep the grief and anger at bay when he knows he can’t break down every night before bed like he had been doing before he met them.

He misses Dick. He misses Alfred. He wonders how Cassie is doing. The grief of Kon and Bart and Steph is as sharp and fresh in his chest as it was the day he found out each of them were gone. The loss of his father is ever present, a chunk carved out of his heart and pulsing with the reminder of the empty space left behind. And even if he knows Bruce is alive, even as he’s actively searching for him, or at least for a way to find him, Tim misses his dad and mentor like a severed limb. He yearns for hair ruffles and that deep baritone reverberating against his ear when Bruce would gather him up in his lap every night for weeks after his father passed away, telling him stories from his pre-Batman days, talking about the crazy situations he got himself into while training or looking for teachers, and all the people he met on those journeys, some of whom he’s lost contact with in the intervening years. Tim wants to turn to the left and see Batman’s dark presence; he wants to feel the comforting weight of the Batman cape around his shoulders and smell the scent of kevlar and leather when Bruce would pull him into a hug during quiet moments on patrol. He longs to hear those monosyllabic answers and caveman-like grunts of Bruce’s and see the tiny twitch in the man’s lips when he pretends to be brooding but he’s actually barely restraining his amusement.

Tim is grieving. It feels like he’s never done anything else. And as angry as he is at Dick for pushing him into this, he wishes he could hear his voice murmur reassurances in his ear right now or feel his strong arms around him, scarred but nimble fingers carding through his hair and holding his head against his chest.

He’s even debating giving in and reaching out to Dick – after all, Tim’s just found the last piece of evidence he needed and he’s running out of the cave to tell the others, so he doesn’t have to fear his brother interfering and stopping his search anymore – when the Widower crashes their party and decides to remind Tim once again why he should stop expecting things to go any certain way but chaos.

When he passes out in a hotel room with Pru’s torn throat held tightly beneath his fingers, Tim wonders if Bruce will ever forgive him for dying in his quest to save his dad and how long it will take Dick to find out what happened to him. He just hopes Ra’s won’t send his body back to Gotham in pieces to taunt the Bat.

***

The League of Assassins is not the ideal place to raise a child. Talia knows this. Everybody with a working brain cell who isn’t a maniac knows this. But for all of Talia’s strengths, completely defying her father has never been one of them.

She loved Bruce once. She loved him so much she was willing to do the unthinkable and damn everything to hell in order to join him, be with him. But life had other plans and now her youthful wishes and desires are irrelevant for her Beloved is gone from this Earth and anything that might’ve been will remain exactly that.

She loves Damian. She didn’t think she would – a woman such as her surely cannot make a good mother, surely isn’t capable of the selfless love a mother should have for her child. Yet, she is. She loves her child like the air she breathes. She loves him like the tides love the moon and the Earth loves the Sun. He is her everything.

But everything Talia al Ghul is has always been chained to her father’s will, and her child is no different.

She has tried to get him out countless times. Has plotted and planned and set in motion escape attempts so numerous she cannot remember them all. None of them ever included her – Talia wasn’t so foolish as to believe for even a second that her father would tolerate both of his heirs to escape his clutches – but knowing that her sweet boy was away from Ra’s and in his father’s care would’ve been enough to tide her over and let her dream of the day they would be reunited with no barriers between them, no constraints of imposed detachment and coolness. She would dream of being able to hold her baby and kiss his brow without casting furtive glances around in fear of being caught. And it would be enough.

But all of her plans have been foiled. Time and time again, the timing wouldn’t be right or she would be betrayed or her father would catch wind of her intentions before she could even start setting things in motion. And by the time she finally had a solid plan to send Damian away, her Beloved perished. The strongest protection against her father’s might, the only person who could keep Damian away from Ra’s’ reach… gone.

(The love of her life, dead. The only one, aside from her son, who ever looked at Talia al Ghul and thought she could be more than an assassin, that she had more to offer than her ability to take a life.)

What point was there in sending Damian to Gotham with Bruce gone? Those squabbling children her Beloved called sons and daughters could never hold their own against her father – if they even would. For, after all, Damian is the son of an al Ghul, the wretched Talia whom Richard hates, Timothy distrusts, Jason barely remembers, and Cassandra despises on principle. Why should they protect her child? Why would they even try?

And so, she resigns herself to Damian’s presence in the League, under Ra’s’ thumb, a little while longer. Her son is strong and so very capable, but he is a child still. She cannot expect an eight-year-old, even one as formidable as him, to be able to fend for himself and evade her father’s agents. She will have to shield him some more until he is old enough to venture out on his own and keep himself hidden from the League. She can do it. She will do it.

Her hopes for Damian need not die with her Beloved.

(Even if, at times, it feels like everything did.)

***

The world comes crashing down on Damian so quickly he almost doesn’t have time to get away.

He’s practicing with his katana as he always does in the evenings when a blaring alarm starts counting down and urging people to evacuate before the place goes up in flames. Damian doesn’t drop his sword in a panic, but only because the reflex has been beaten out of him before he turned five, and keeps his calm as his guards take a hold of him and march him determinedly through the compound and out into the desert. 

Members of the League are scrambling to evacuate everywhere – some are trying to carry equipment and hard drives on their way out, while others are shoving their way through the crowds to get ahead and safely away from the inevitable detonation.

Damian lets himself get pushed around by his guards even if every cell in his body is protesting at being manhandled in this manner – his survival is more important than teaching these idiots a lesson in putting their hands on him and, sadly, doing so would take too much valuable time.

They make it out with seconds to spare but the blast of the compound going up in flames and getting blasted into the sky is too close for comfort and it knocks all of them to the ground, taking the breath from their lungs for a moment and rendering them useless. A moment is all Damian needs.

In the confusion and mad scramble to get their bearings in the wake of the explosion, Damian slips away. He cleverly hides and watches his idiotic guards panic at the clear lack of Damian in their vicinity. If he didn’t know that every one of those people out there would capture him and bring him back to his grandfather’s side without a moment’s hesitation, Damian would take the chance to run those guards through with his sword right this instant. Alas, his revenge has to wait.

Fate bestows good fortune on Damian and a vehicle takes off towards the nearest village right at that moment, the driver too short to be visible through the rear window of the jeep they have commandeered. The guards make the wrong assumption that the driver must be Damian and so they waste no time in grabbing a jeep of their own and giving chase, driving off into the dark desert and leaving only plumes of sand and dust in their wake.

With a self-satisfied smirk firmly plastered on his face, Damian lays back in his hiding place and waits for the rest of the idiots to grab a vehicle and run. Standard protocol dictates that they should scatter and wait for a signal to regroup at a later time.

It takes hours. Damian’s stomach cramps with hunger and his skin prickles with the chill of the night, his training clothes not nearly warm enough to keep him from freezing in the nocturnal desert temperatures.

It’s nothing Damian hasn’t been prepared for.

He bides his time and grits his teeth and doesn’t move an inch for fear of attracting attention. If he were rested and fed and not as stiff as his muscles have grown in the intervening hours, he could take on a few members of the League without breaking a sweat. But as it stands, he doesn’t trust his own strength and agility and would rather not risk his safety and freedom.

While he waits, Damian thinks of his mother. He hasn’t seen her in weeks, gone on a mission according to his grandfather, though he has wondered if there really was a mission that required his mother’s presence or if, like usual, one was created in order to draw her away from Damian. Her absence is something he is intimately familiar with, even more so than her presence, but it never stops hurting when she is gone. It’s a weakness he’s been trying to get rid of, a tumor to excise, but he has been unsuccessful. No matter how much grandfather wishes otherwise, Damian loves his mother. He can do nothing else.

To try and keep his thoughts away from his usual worries about his mother’s safety – wondering if she was safely away from any League bases when they blew up or if she made it out in time if not – and to push down the longing for her soft touch and softer smile, Damian turns his musings, instead, towards the source of the auto-destruct order. He doubts it was his grandfather. He would have no reason to do so, and certainly not with so little time given as warning – just enough for everyone to make it outside and be far enough away not to get caught in the blast, but not enough time to save anything of value.

No, this is the work of an enemy. But whose? Ra’s al Ghul’s or the League’s?

A League enemy would have no qualms about killing Damian or using him against his mother or grandfather – therefore he cannot risk getting caught by them, let alone approaching them. But an enemy of his grandfather’s specifically? There may be some hope there. Heroes tend to despise his grandfather more than villains and Damian thinks that, depending on who it is, they might be willing to offer Damian some temporary shelter, at least until he can reunite with his mother. Surely, someone who has the nerve to target League bases has to be strong enough to withstand his grandfather’s ire? They wouldn’t be foolish enough to do something like this otherwise.

It’s certainly something to look into once he finds somewhere warm to hole up in.

Once the last of the stragglers have left, Damian carefully and cautiously makes his way out of his hiding place and scans his surroundings. The sky has begun to lighten shyly, as if unsure if it should let night fade away and make room for another day, and Damian wishes he had access to his carefully concealed charcoal and paper so he could sketch the view, leaving the colours of the pre-dawn sky in his imagination until he can nab some crayons to bring them back to life.

A handful of vehicles remain, most of them bikes. Damian knows how to drive them, but he is hesitant about leaving himself so exposed while on the road. The only alternative is a beat up truck Damian doubts would pass an actual inspection, but the tank is full and the engine is intact. With no real alternative, the young assassin clambers into the truck, adjusting the seat and improvising a method to reach the pedals while keeping his eyes on the road, and starts driving. He needs to find shelter and some technology invented this century – he has an enemy to look into and determine if they could be turned into an ally instead.

***

In Tim’s defense, he wasn’t sure if he was going to do it until the moment he actually did it. Blowing things up isn’t something he does all willy-nilly – he isn’t Jason, after all – and the risk of real, actual human deaths isn’t something Tim is comfortable with, but when you are pushed into a corner, you carve your way out Shawshank Redemption style. Besides, Tim made sure to give the assassins plenty of time to get away if they prioritised their lives over their master’s knick-knacks.

Afterwards, Pru and Tam in tow, Tim returns to Gotham one spleen lighter but with the evidence he needed to prove that Bruce isn’t dead, merely lost in time, and the information the Justice League will need to form a plan of attack and retrieve his dad.

Of course, things aren’t easy enough to let him waltz into the Watchtower, toss the hard drive at them, flip them all the bird for being assholes who didn’t believe him, and waltz back out and into the sunset. Why would they ever be?

Before he can get his dad back, Tim has to take the scenic route of stopping a hostile takeover and flip Ra’s al Ghul the bird a second time. Tim leaves his evidence with Pru and Tam both, as well as backing it up in a folder that will be automatically forwarded to the League upon his death should it come to pass (Tim is confident but not stupid, and he is very much aware that the likelihood of emerging on the other side of a confrontation with an enraged Ra’s al Ghul alive is pathetically low, but he was prepared to die for Bruce in the desert and he’s prepared to do it now too) and then he starts his ultimate ‘Fuck you, you immortal prick’ plan.

(Oh, and turns out Steph is alive too now, not just Kon and Bart. But at least those two were actually gone to begin with, one way or another, and didn’t just fake the entire thing while actually being A-Okay! But that’s fine. Tim’s used to this hollow feeling in his chest. What’s one more person betraying him and hurting his feelings? Hey, they should form a club or something.)

Tim’s plan goes off without a hitch, as he knew it would. All of Bruce’s people are safe, WE is safely out of Ra’s’ clutches, and Tim can confidently say that no one has ever enraged the immortal assassin more than Tim Drake has done in the past few days. He finds out just how bad of an idea that is only a few moments later, when aforementioned immortal kicks Tim through a window and then he’s falling from hundreds of feet down to a ground that is rapidly approaching. Tim has no grapple, nothing to catch himself on even if he did. He looks up at the window he’s just been kicked out of, growing smaller and smaller by the second, and closes his eyes with a smile on his face. He did it. His mission is complete. His job here is done.

He wishes he could stick around a little while longer, see Bruce again, hang out with Kon and Bart one more time, yell at Steph and maybe cry into her shirt and tell her how much he’s missed her. He even wants to see Dick again, if only so he can tell him that promised ‘I told you so’.

But maybe this is for the best. If nothing else, he’ll see his mom again. His father. Dana. That’s not so bad, now is it?

Tim falls and lets himself slip into the oblivion brought on by months of improper rest and constant stress and the relief of finally being done. He doesn’t feel it when a hard body collides with him, when ribs crack upon impact, or when trembling arms cradle his too-thin body to an armored chest and Dick cries silent tears of fear and relief both into Tim’s hair.

He just sleeps.

***

Damian hates the desert and the stupid villages surrounding the compound and the League and everything else under the sun that seems designed to infuriate and inconvenience him.

His plan of getting hold of good enough technology to look into the League bomber has been foiled at every step. Nothing he has procured from these people – steal is such an ugly word – is capable of getting through the League databases. Either that, or the databases are gone; but that’s impossible and Damian won’t even contemplate it.

With no way to contact his mother and all avenues of finding himself an ally in the bomber gone, or at least out of reach for the moment, Damian uses the available technology instead to book himself a flight and chart a path towards Gotham City, New Jersey, USA.

He knows his father is gone – there is a dull ache in his chest every time he has that thought but that is all; simply the loss of a possibility and an ideal, without any real attachment to someone he has only heard stories of and whose face he doesn’t even know – but the city the Batman chose to protect hasn’t remained defenseless. Subpar as they are, his father’s allies would surely hold their own against his grandfather, especially at a vulnerable time like this. He only knows their names – civilian and vigilante alike – and not much else, but he has to assume that his father wouldn’t have chosen to associate with such riff-raff if they were truly useless. Todd, he remembers vaguely, and what he can recall is far from flattering – a mindless beast with a thirst for blood that Damian would appreciate if it wasn’t so childish and pathetic. Cain, he knows of, as everyone in the League does, and if nothing else he can at least trust in her superior abilities to best others in combat; Damian doubts she could win against his grandfather, but she could certainly hold her own well until her inevitable demise.

The one known as Oracle seems largely useless in a physical fight, but Damian knows the value of good intel and, from what his mother told him, she is the unofficial overseer of the city as far as surveillance goes. Richard Grayson is the first of father’s adopted strays, the one he has to thank for the Robin identity existing, and Damian supposes he can afford the man the respect he is due for aiding his father in his crusade for so long. He doesn’t know how strong of a warrior this Nightwing person is, but he can’t be too terrible if he’s been at his father’s side for so long.

Drake, he knows the least about.

He knows the boy is the current Robin. His mother said that Drake is the best one out of all three strays his father picked up, but he doesn’t know much else about him. Her lessons on the ‘family’ his father built ended abruptly when news of his death reached her and shortly afterwards, she was sent on yet another mission and then another and another. The limited time they had together between missions was spent doing far more valuable things than learning about people his mother had deemed irrelevant now that his father was gone. Damian wishes she’d told him a bit more about these people now, since he is about to embark on a journey that will take him right to them – it would be nice to know how to approach them, should he need to, and how to manipulate them into helping him once his grandfather finally realises that Damian went to the last place he would’ve expected him to go to with his father’s protective shadow gone from the city.

But Damian is nothing if not adaptable. He has survived worse things and he will be damned if he lets this situation get the best of him. He will hold his own and make his mother proud. Anything else would be unacceptable.

***

A hand is brushing his hair away from his face, long, familiar fingers carding through the strands before they fall back into his eyes and the process begins anew. Tim hums low in his throat and pushes his face in the vague direction of that warm palm without thinking. The hand stutters in its movements for a moment and Tim whines his displeasure, but a warm chuckle breaks the hand’s stillness before the petting resumes.

It takes a few seconds for Tim to realise a) that he’s not dead and b) that he knows that chuckle.

His eyes snap open.

Sky-blue eyes are looking down at him from a chair Tim knows very well is terribly uncomfortable – Alfred’s attempt to get them out of the med bay and upstairs for actual rest and food instead of wasting away at someone’s bedside every time they get bed-ridden, though Tim has yet to see it succeed – and the sight hurts as much as it spreads joy and warmth throughout his body. Dick smiles softly, fondly, and he leans down to press a kiss against Tim’s forehead, right above his brow. Tears prickle at the corner of Tim’s eyes at the gesture.

“Hey, kiddo. Glad you’re awake.”

Tim hums, unsure of what to say and afraid that his voice will break before he bursts into uncontrollable sobs. The voice break he can blame on his throat being dry, but the tears are another matter altogether.

Dick seems content to sit in the silence created by Tim’s lack of a verbal response. He keeps carding his fingers through Tim’s hair, humming a wordless song under his breath, and Tim just watches him through eyes so tired he’s surprised he can even keep them open. His brother looks, somehow, older, even though they’ve only been apart for a few months. The bags under his eyes are heavier and the stubble on his cheeks and under his chin is not something he’s used to seeing on Dick – just how much has he been struggling on his own? A pang of guilt shoots through Tim at the thought that he abandoned Dick to be Batman on his own – without a Robin – but then he squashes it vindictively, reminding himself that if Dick had believed him, they could’ve worked together as Batman and Robin while Tim gathered evidence or delegated his tasks to League members or Dick’s friends. At the very least, he wouldn’t have taken so long to do it himself if he’d had some actual support.

“Did Tam give you the hard drive I left with her?” Tim eventually breaks the silence, voice croaky but steady.

Dick jolts as if he forgot Tim was awake at all and blinks blankly at him for a moment before he leans towards a nearby table and grabs a cup with a straw which he offers to Tim after helping him sit up straighter. Tim drinks gratefully, soothing his throat with water just cool enough to quench his thirst without shocking his system too much, then lies back down on the pillows.

“She did,” Dick answers after a while. His voice is quiet and Tim has to strain his ears to hear it.

“Should I say it now or do you want to wait for the fireworks?”

Dick snorts but it’s not an amused reaction. It’s sad and heavy and full of guilt. A savage part of Tim revels in it, wants to rub it in Dick’s face, but the part that loves his brother can’t bring himself to do it. He’s happy he was right and that he succeeded, but Tim can’t truly take joy in the loss of the trust Dick broke. He trusted him to be there and he wasn’t. For months, Tim was alone, too afraid to make contact because what if Dick found him and dragged him back by force, stopping his search too early and leaving his dad stranded for goodness knows how long until Tim could resume the search? He was lucky enough for Superman to be off-world on a months-long mission and for Kon to be more loyal to Tim than intimidated by Dick Grayson to rat him out – he couldn’t risk giving Dick the opening he needed to track him down.

How do they move forward now?

Tim doesn’t know.

“You were right, Tim,” Dick says it for him, and he truly sounds so sad and defeated it makes Tim ache. “I doubted you and I shouldn’t have. I can’t… can’t take that back. I regretted it the moment you left and I wanted to turn back time when I couldn’t find you, but I know how useless that is. Every time I think I’ve learned how to be a brother, I fuck something else up. I thought… I thought this was Jason dying all over again. I was so worried, baby bird. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t do anything but patrol the city and worry myself sick wondering if you were safe, if you had something to eat or somewhere to sleep. And that's on me, because I drove you away. I’m so sorry, Tim.”

Dick is crying towards the end, silent rivers carving paths down his cheeks and darkening his blue eyes into a tempest of grief, and Tim reaches a hand towards him and clumsily grabs Dick’s nape so he can pull him forward. His older brother lets himself be pulled, pressing his forehead and wet face into Tim’s chest, while Tim holds him there tightly and cries his own quiet tears.

“I don’t forgive you,” Tim says, his voice wet and wobbly. “Not yet.”

“That’s okay,” Dick replies dejectedly, his own voice muffled by Tim’s blanket.

“But I’m sorry for worrying you. So much was happening and I was so scared you’d come after me to stop me that I didn’t stop to think about how worried you must have been. I should’ve found a way to let you know I was alive. That’s on me.”

Dick shakes his head and the movement jostles Tim just enough to let him feel a dull pain in his ribs. He doesn’t remember breaking or bruising them, but maybe Ra’s had more power in that kick than Tim expected.

“It was my duty to make you feel safe enough to come to me. I fucked that up.”

Tim doesn’t have anything to say to that aside from, ‘You did,’ so he keeps his mouth shut. He closes his eyes, eyelashes feeling uncomfortably damp, and simply breathes with his brother’s head on his chest, enjoying the familiar scent of lavender and disinfectant that he associates with the med bay.

“How did you know I would catch you, though?” Dick can’t help but ask as he lifts his head up, eyes red-rimmed and wet.

Tim looks with pity at his brother and decides to be honest. “I didn’t.” He wasn’t even sure how he was still alive until Dick gave him the answer just now.

The way Dick’s face crumples with devastation is heartbreaking, but Tim needs Dick to know exactly what his actions caused so that he won’t make the same mistakes again. Maybe it’s cruel of him, but Tim has been drowning in grief and loneliness for months because of Dick’s lack of faith in him and the attempt to control him – he can’t bring himself to go easy on his brother now.

Dick excuses himself from the room then, disappearing out the door and into the depths of the Cave, and Tim sighs sadly into his pillow as his eyes drift shut and exhaustion takes over once more. Everything is wrong. He hates it. But he has to hold on just a little bit longer, just until Bruce gets back. Then everything will be alright again. His dad will make it so. He lets himself drift and doesn’t have a single dream the entire time.

***

Gotham City is a dump. Damian despises its filthy streets with every fiber of his being and he can’t possibly imagine why on Earth his father decided to dedicate his life to protecting them.

The people are rude and prickly – Damian can’t fault them, if this is what they have to look forward to every day of their lives – and the crime rate in this city is so beyond normal that it becomes ridiculous. Surely there should be fewer people committing crime or dressing up in those ridiculous costumes after so many years of the Bat instilling fear into the heart of the city.

The city’s poverty and shabby darkness is helpful, however, in keeping Damian concealed. Disguised in worn, second hand clothes stolen off racks when shop attendants weren’t looking, with streaks of dirt strategically applied to visible areas such as his face or hands, Damian has successfully infiltrated, at least in appearance, the homeless children population of the city. This disguise makes it easy to blend in with the crowds and lose himself in the shadows, and it ensures that most people don’t pay him any mind when he passes by – if anything, they seem to be actively avoiding looking at or acknowledging him, which suits Damian just fine. It makes it so much easier to liberate them of their wallets when he needs to procure food and other essentials.

After settling in – in some measure – and finding safe, reliable shelter, Damian visits the library. He dons his cleaner clothes, the ones that make him look like a regular American child out for a visit to procure knowledge, and makes use of the public computers to do further research on his father’s so called family. Of course, he can’t gather much reliable information, but anything is better than nothing. At least he can know a bit more about the strays’ public personas.

What he finds is surprising. Apparently, his father is still alive, as far as the public is aware, though Damian isn’t fooled – if his mother told him father is dead, then he is. She wouldn’t lie to him or be fooled by false information herself. At any rate, it seems like his ‘father’ has suffered from a mental breakdown which led to Drake not only emancipating himself but also disappearing for a few months from the public eye only to come back and assume control of Wayne Enterprises in his ‘father’s’ stead – on paper, at least, since the official release statement makes sure to emphasize that a 17-year-old high-school dropout cannot be expected to run a company and so will hold the title of owner only, while Lucius Fox will continue to oversee the running of the company as usual.

He can’t find much more than that on Drake. The others are either usually not known for appearing too much in public – or are still officially dead, like Todd – or haven’t been seen in some time either. Cain seems to have left Gotham altogether, though the press doesn’t know where she went off to or why; the tabloids speculate that Bruce Wayne’s breakdown led to his only daughter leaving home on top of his youngest’s emancipation and departure.

Unfortunately, that is about the only information Damian can get his hands on. The public library’s network is too unprotected to attempt any sort of hacking and he won’t risk being tracked down or raising some sort of flag on Oracle’s vast network by searching things best left alone, at least not yet. He isn’t quite that desperate. The only thing he allows himself is a brief search of ‘Batman and Robin’, after some nonsensical searches about fashion, popular culture movies Americans are obsessed with, and a brief rabbit hole about dinosaurs that Damian will never admit was entirely genuine, just to throw people off if anyone will later check his browsing history. He is surprised to see that Batman has been active the entire time Damian’s father has been dead – and he narrows his eyes at that, wondering which imbecile had the audacity to don his father’s cowl and assume his identity – while Robin, in contrast, hasn’t been spotted in months. He didn’t think Drake had actually been gone from the city this entire time, merely believing it a ruse to solidify the impossibility of Tim Drake and Robin being one and the same, something his mother has told him his father did in his civilian persona all the time. But looking at things now, it seems like the boy really was gone for months without a single sighting of him. Just what was he doing this entire time?

This is something Damian would love to investigate more thoroughly but unfortunately, this public computer will not be the tool with which to achieve this.

Luckily for him, he thinks he knows where to go – or, more clearly, who to track down – to find out more. Jason Todd may not remember his mother very well – or very fondly – but he still owes her for restoring his mind and giving him the tools needed to get his revenge. Like it or not, Todd has to help Damian, and Damian is not above threatening bodily harm or even maiming the fool as incentive.

It doesn’t take a genius to follow the trail of bodies to Red Hood’s base of operations. Damian isn’t sure if there has ever even been an attempt at concealing it to begin with, but if so, he has lost whatever faith he had in Todd’s abilities for good. Even so, he is thankful for it. It takes some finesse to figure out where Todd is staying in this wretched city but Damian isn’t the Son of the Bat for nothing – he finds Todd’s place of residence, if it can be called that, and spies on him quite easily for a few hours as he tries to make up his mind – confront him now or in costume? The chances of the fool shooting first and hearing Damian out later or not at all are certainly higher if he accosts Todd on patrol, but doing so in his home, a place he feels safe in, might register as too much of a threat for the man to act rationally when Damian comes at him. Truly, a conundrum for the ages.

While he waits and contemplates this issue, Todd’s phone starts ringing. Damian doesn’t pay it much attention at first, not really interested in whatever asinine conversations the older man has, but the sound of Drake’s name catches his attention and makes him listen closely.

“So lil Tim-Tam is finally home, huh? Looks like that favour went out the window, then.”

“Could you show some compassion for one second, Jason, or will it kill you?” Another voice joins Todd’s grating one, a voice Damian doesn’t recognise, but which sounds highly exasperated though not hostile.

“I haven’t tested it but just to be on the safe side, I’ll stay away from it. Don’t wanna go through that again, am I right?” Todd’s voice is clearly meant to irritate and get under the other speaker’s skin, but his face is at odds with the tone he’s using. He looks… sad, in a way. Bereft. Damian can’t understand the other man or why he would antagonise his interlocutor if the action clearly causes him no joy, but he shrugs and puts the matter out of his mind. He is not here to psychoanalyze Jason Todd.

“Ugh, why do I even try? Do you wanna hear my news or should I just fuck off? I have better things to do than hear you be an asshole, you know?”

“Jesus, Grayson, what crawled in your cereal and died? Spit it out, I don’t care.”

Hmm, so this is Richard Grayson then. He would’ve expected his voice to be… deeper. More commanding. Just another instance that proves these ‘brothers’ of his are inferior.

“Well, first of all, thanks a lot for nothing. Some contacts you have. Tim was with the League the entire time and your people didn’t even catch a whiff of him. Whether they’re incompetent or they lied to you, I suggest getting new informants,” Grayson mocks.

Todd sits up straight at that and grabs the phone he discarded earlier on the coffee table to hold close to his mouth.

“The League?” he parrots. “Which one are we talking about?”

“The Justice League, of course. Wonder Woman was keeping him hidden under her tiara, she just didn’t feel like telling me. Obviously I mean the League of Assassins!”

“Sheesh, cool your jets,” Todd complains, pulling away from the phone with a wince at Grayson’s screeching.

For his part, Damian is frozen. Drake? With the League? Did mother know about this? Is that why she’s been more tight-lipped lately, seemed more stressed? But why would Drake be with the League? What business would he have with them?

“Don’t tell me to cool anything! My brother has been working with Ra’s al Ghul for the past God knows how many months and I didn’t know about any of it until the bastard kicked him out of a window!”

Damian gasps. Drake was with his grandfather? Drake angered his grandfather enough to engage in battle with him and is still alive? But how? Why? What has happened–

Oh. The explosion. Grandfather’s distraction in the past few months. The threat of the Council of Spiders and the reason why he sent Damian away under the dubious protection of guards instead of keeping him by his side at all times.

He doesn’t know how Drake fits into all this, but one thing is clear – Damian has found his mysterious bomber. He is sure of it.

Todd, thankfully, lets out a loud whistle at the same time as Damian’s gasp, so he is none the wiser about his presence on the fire escape.

“Damn, the little cuckoo’s got balls, huh?” he asks, voice sounding slightly impressed but bored, yet his brows are drawn in worry and his mouth is twisted with displeasure.

“Yeah,” Grayson answers the rhetorical question with a sniffle, “and don’t call him that.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. So did you only call me for this? This meeting could have been an email, full offense.”

“No, I also called to tell you that Tim was right.”

Silence.

Todd goes rigid, eyes frozen in the far distance and grip tight on the phone in his hand. Damian watches the reaction with intrigue – what is Grayson talking about and why is Todd reacting so oddly?

“Bruce is alive, Jay,” Grayson continues in a soft, careful voice, as if he knows the effect his words are having on the man, and now it’s Damian’s turn to freeze and for his breathing to nearly stop in his chest. What?

“What?” Todd unknowingly echoes Damian, voice strangled.

“Bruce didn’t die. Tim was right. He found the evidence with al Ghul’s help and managed to confirm that Bruce is only stuck in time – hopping from era to era wildly, with no apparent rhyme or reason. Tim has some theories and guesses about where we might be able to find and catch him to bring him back, but he’s letting the Justice League handle it for now. It’ll take time but… Bruce is coming home, Jay. He’s not dead.”

Damian can’t listen to any more of this. He quietly slips away, hopping over the edge of the fire escape and landing silently on his feet two stories below, barely feeling the twinge in his knees. He doesn’t remember the journey back to his base of operations, an abandoned three-storey building in a neighbourhood called Coventry, but he eventually finds himself nestled in between his liberated blankets – not stolen – and staring at the ceiling blankly.

His father is not dead. Just lost. Damian doesn’t know how to feel about it. What is the appropriate emotion to feel in this situation? Joy? Relief? Excitement? All Damian can feel is an unpleasant squirming in his gut and the need to hide.

He knows he should be glad the man is alive and on his way home – however long that will take – because it means Damian will be safe from his grandfather. With his father here, Damian will be untouchable; his mother said so.

But Damian is afraid, instead. How will his father react when Damian reveals himself? Will he be pleased with what he has accomplished so far, with his training and his fighting prowess? Or will he be disappointed? Batman doesn’t kill, that much he knows. But Damian has killed. Many times. And he will do so again, if the situation calls for it – he will not allow himself to perish if the only way to survive is through taking another life. That is just not in his nature.

Damian is expected to take over the cowl when his father is gone and Damian has matured enough, according to his mother. But Damian barely knows anything about Batman and his crusade. Only the bare bones his mother has told him about and whatever he glimpsed on that library computer earlier. How can he be Robin – because, naturally, the mantle will be given to him once he can officially take his place at father’s side as his actual son – and eventually the Bat if he doesn’t know how to be either of those, when he gets turned around in this strange city and finds it hard to understand people’s accents and references sometimes?

He doesn’t even look like his father! Damian has always known that he resembles his mother a great deal, but he also always assumed that maybe his parents just happened to share certain traits and he might’ve inherited his looks from either of them. But now he can see that while Damian is somewhat white-passing, his skin is darker than Bruce Wayne’s. His hair is lighter in colour, more dark brown than midnight black, and his eyes are green just like his mother’s, not blue. All of his ‘brothers’ look more like Bruce Wayne’s sons than Damian does, and even Cain shares enough traits to be easily passed off as his biological daughter, brown eyes aside.

What use does his father have for Damian? He already has children who look like him and will pass on his name eventually. He has a Robin – the best there has ever been, apparently – as well as an heir for the company. Clearly, his father doesn’t care about blood or his children disgracing his name and legacy: just look at Todd.

And Drake… the boy has surpassed any expectations Damian might have had about him. He already knew he must be an impressive warrior and detective for his mother to call him the best Robin, but working with his grandfather for so long? Finding evidence that father is alive and bringing it home even after, from the looks of things, nobody believed him? Surviving the Demon’s Head’s inevitable retaliation and clearly impressing the man enough for him not to repeat the attempt on his life immediately after the first one failed?

Just who is Timothy Drake?

Damian doesn’t know. He is woefully unprepared to navigate this city and his father’s world. He knows mother hadn’t meant for him to still end up here after she got news of father’s passing, but he can’t help but resent her a bit – just a little, for his heart cannot take being upset with her too much – for not arming him with more knowledge. He needs to prepare himself for his father’s arrival, needs to prove himself worthy and a useful tool in his crusade. And he cannot do it on his own, as much as he loathes to admit it.

But there is one person who has proven himself worthy. Who has enjoyed Damian’s mother’s praise, his grandfather’s respect and ire, his father’s trust.

Damian needs to track Timothy Drake down and get him to mentor Damian. Only he can teach Damian how to be a Robin and an eventual Batman.

(And, privately, Damian admits to himself that in his father’s absence, it seems like Timothy is the only one capable of going up against Ra’s al Ghul and winning, or at least surviving. It seems only prudent to ally himself with the older boy and secure his protection aid. It’s simply more practical this way. Obviously.)

Well, it looks like Damian’s homeless ways are coming to an end faster than he expected. He can’t say that he’s mourning the prospect of sleeping on dubious mattresses in abandoned buildings and pick-pocketing the city’s elite, but there’s something to be said about being in charge of himself and his freedom. More than that, the certainty of his current situation is preferable over whatever unknown he’s about to embark on where Timothy is concerned. Who knows what the older boy’s expectations will be, how rigid his rules, how harsh his punishments? But Damian didn’t get to where he is today by being a coward. He can adapt and do whatever it takes to succeed – he needs Timothy’s help if he has any hope of convincing his father to take him in and protect him, as well as let him take his rightful place as his heir eventually. He will make it his mission to obey the boy no matter how painful it may be.

***

The grass is soft and plush under Tim’s hands as he leans back on them, tilting his head back and letting the sun warm his face. The Manor grounds are well-kept and immaculate as ever – apparently, Dick moved out with Alfred while Tim was gone, holing up in the penthouse instead, but now that Tim is back and Bruce is on his way home, they’ve moved back in.

Being home is weird. Everything is the same, but Tim feels different. He’s not the same boy who left, the one who yelled at Dick and stormed out without a backwards glance. He’s not really sure who he is now.

Things with Dick are… fine. Awkward. Dick doesn’t know how to act around Tim much because of his guilt and all that worry he was wearing like a funeral shroud the entire time Tim was gone. Meanwhile, Tim feels more reluctant to share things with Dick because there’s this niggling thought at the back of his head that keeps telling him that he can’t trust him; what if he freaks out again? Tries to control Tim again? Abandons him again?

They’re trying though. They both are. Tim knows they’re going to be fine, eventually. It’ll just take time. And some space, he thinks.

Which is why he’s been debating moving out of the Manor soon.

He wants to be here when Bruce returns, doesn’t want to miss out on time spent with his dad when he’s finally back with them, and he knows that living elsewhere is not really conducive to that. But it’ll be some time before he gets Bruce back – the people he spoke to in the League said that, while Tim’s research and theories are excellent, it’ll still take weeks, if not months of trying to accurately track Bruce down, and who knows how long he’ll need to be put in quarantine for or sequestered to a bed in the Watchtower to recover from his jaunt through time. Bottom line is – Bruce isn’t coming home any time soon, no matter how much Tim wishes he would, and in the meantime, Tim needs to not be here. He can’t walk the same hallways he more or less grew up in from age 13 upwards knowing that Bruce is somewhere out there, all alone, waiting for rescue that might very well come too late (not a thought Tim likes to entertain often, or at all, but it is one he is aware of, because he isn’t in the habit of lying to himself, just ignoring truths he doesn’t feel up to handling at the moment). Besides, Dick is being very smothering while trying not to appear like he is and it’s driving Tim up the wall. After growing up the way he did and then being more or less on his own for months now, it feels suffocating to have someone hovering over his shoulder every day, requiring regular check-ins every time Tim leaves the house, calling him when curfew rolls around and Tim isn’t back.

He needs space and he needs it soon. Before he blows up like a balloon that’s been filled with too much air.

“Brooding never looked good on you, you know?”

Kon touches down on the grass next to Tim with a soft thump. His hair is wind-ruffled, the mess of curls looking disheveled and so incredibly soft, and Tim wants to run his hands through it. He looks up at Kon through squinty eyes and smiles.

“I’m told I look very mysterious, actually.”

Kon snorts. “Mysterious, right. Constipated, more like.” He plops himself down next to Tim and throws an arm around his shoulders, reeling him in without hesitation. Tim leans his head down on Kon’s chest and breathes deeply.

“Did you come over just to bully me?”

“Nah, I can do that over the phone just fine,” Kon replies while he brings up a hand to ruffle Tim’s hair. It’s been getting kind of long – not many opportunities to stop at a barber shop for a haircut while working for the League of Assassins and searching for clues of your missing dad – but Tim isn’t too mad about it, not when Kon switches from messing it up to carding gentle fingers through it and twirling the ends of his long strands around his index finger curiously. “Haven’t seen you since the al Ghul thing and I missed you.”

“We talked yesterday,” Tim points out.

“Yeah, but it’s different. I can’t do this over the phone,” Kon explains and then demonstrates his point by turning Tim’s head towards him, tilting his chin up, and planting a soft, close-mouthed kiss on Tim’s lips. Tim shuts his eyes on reflex and sighs into the kiss. It feels like coming home. God, he’s missed Kon. He’s missed his best friend.

“I love you,” he blurts out without meaning to, but he can’t bring himself to regret it or try to take it back, not when he’s been regretting not telling Kon this more often when he was alive, not when Kon looks so soft and vulnerable in the early summer morning, with unnatural cerulean eyes clouded over by a sheen of unspilled tears. Tim lifts up a hand and cups his cheek, thumb caressing gently right under one of those eyes, and he smiles. “I know you know, but I realised that some things need to be said, not just known. So. I love you, Kon-El.”

Kon swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, and he turns his face so he can lay a kiss on Tim’s open palm.

“I love you, too, Robbie. So much.”

A tear finally slips, hot and searing when it meets Tim’s thumb, but he just wipes it away and kisses Kon’s face to replace its heat with the heat of Tim’s lips instead. They don’t say much after that, too busy wrapped up in each other and assuring themselves that the other really is there, but that’s okay. There’s plenty of time to speak later, now that they have each other again.

Later that night, while Tim is adjusting his gloves and checking his wrist computer, getting ready for patrol, Tim brings it up with Dick, who’s suited up and ready to go out as Batman except for the cowl that’s still pushed back and bunched up at his nape.

“I wanna move out,” he says without looking at his brother, still fiddling with the computer. He knows there’s nothing wrong with it, but he can’t meet Dick’s eyes right now. He has the feeling that he’ll chicken out and relent if he does.

“What?” Dick’s voice sounds faint and… yup. Tim knows he’ll cave the second he meets Dick’s sky-blue eyes.

“I need my own space, Dick. I can’t… I don’t wanna be here.”

“Is this b–”

“No, it’s not because of you. Not fully. I just… I think it’s time, you know? I’m almost eighteen anyway, and I’ve been taking care of myself just fine.”

“Tim, you don’t have a spleen,” Dick points out in a deadpan.

Tim’s head jerks up so he can glare at Dick and all fears of giving in to his brother are gone. “Yeah, I know. Last time I checked, I lost it, not you.”

“You can’t live on your own! What if you get sick? Do you even know how to cook, do your own laundry, pay the bills? Tim, you don’t have a job, you haven’t even finished high school.”

Tim straightens his back and rolls back his shoulders, looking at Dick head on and refusing to budge.

“I can figure it out. I’ll get my GED online, maybe I’ll sign myself up for some college courses I find interesting, I don’t know. And I don’t need a job, I have two trust funds, remember?”

Dick scowls, arms crossed over his chest in a sign of displeasure so similar to Bruce that it almost knocks Tim on his ass.

“Why do you have to leave, Tim? I just got you back, baby bird. You can stay here, I won’t even get in your way if that’s the issue. I can move my bedroom to the other wing, stay out of sight.”

The beseeching tone and Dick’s clear desperation are enough to soften Tim and make him slump his shoulders and run a gloved hand through his hair, messing up the hairstyle he barely managed to get into some semblance of order.

“It’s not that, Dick. I can’t… I don’t… I need to not be here.”

He wants to explain, to voice all the weird, squirmy feelings he’s been dealing with since he came back home, but the words refuse to form and make it past his throat. He turns pleading eyes on his brother and wills him to understand, or at least stop pushing. He doesn’t want to hurt him, but he’s afraid of what he might say if Dick doesn’t back down.

“I…” Dick sighs and hangs his head, taking his own turn to run his hands through his hair. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. If this is what you want, I can’t stop you.”

“Obviously,” Tim teases on purpose, trying to lighten the mood with a smirk, and it kind of works, if Dick’s half smile is any indication.

“But you’re staying in the penthouse until Bruce comes back and helps you pick a place of your own. Trust me, no teenager should be allowed to choose apartments on their own.”

Considering the state of Dick’s apartment when Tim showed up at his doorstep when Dick was 22, he shudders to think what his first choice must have looked like at 18.

“Yeah, okay. That works.”

“Great.”

They smile at each other, small and unsure but entirely genuine, and Tim breathes easier now that this conversation is out of the way.

“Oh and by the way, Kon and I are dating, forgot to tell you.”

“Wait, what?!”

But Tim has already turned and is making his way towards the Batmobile while he adjusts his domino over his eyes, whistling obnoxiously under his breath.

“Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne, get back here and explain! What do you mean you’re dating? Since when?!”

Since before Kon died, but Tim refuses to open his mouth and answer his brother’s questions as he opens the passenger seat in the Batmobile and climbs in. Being a nuisance is more fun. Let Dick stew for a bit. It’s not like he hasn’t had it coming.

***

Damian looks up at the looming building in front of him and wills himself not to be afraid. It’s taken him a bit to really gather up the courage the intel needed on Timothy, but he’s finally packed up his meagre belongings and torn down his temporary shelter in the abandoned building he’s been calling home since he arrived in Gotham. He knows he wasted valuable time he could have been spending learning things about the city and his father and everything in between, but he is kind of glad he did now, since it gave Timothy the time to move out of Wayne Manor and into the city instead. Bad enough that Damian has to humble himself in front of his predecessor – for all intents and purposes – and admit to his own insecurities, he doesn’t know if he could have taken it if he’d had to do it in front of Grayson as well.

Timothy hasn’t been living in the top-most apartment of the building for long, but that should only make it easier for the older boy to find a place for Damian to occupy, if he hasn’t had the time to really make himself at home yet.

Hopefully.

Usually, Damian wouldn’t be so quick to humble himself in front of anyone, let alone someone who is, more or less, a rival. He’d just march in there and demand to be taken in, given the best room in the house, and taught all he needs to know so he can replace the boy who’s been just another placeholder in a long line of them in his father’s life. Except… that’s not really the truth, is it? All the research Damian has done has shown that his father loves all the children he took in, all the orphans he bestowed his last name upon and gave a home to. For every disparaging article about taking in circus trash, street trash, homosexual trash, there are at least two scathing comments from Bruce Wayne about the state of today’s press, most of them containing some kind of threat about leaving his children alone or else. These… strays that his father took in are more than just placeholders for Damian. After all, his father never even knew about Damian’s existence. They’re not an attempt at filling his true son’s absence with subpar replacements… they’re just children. His father’s children. Damian’s… siblings, he supposes.

Therefore, Damian can’t just waltz in there and demand things of Timothy. He knows he wouldn’t be too receptive if someone had the audacity to do the same. No, he needs to be respectful, to acknowledge Timothy’s superior knowledge and Robin-specific abilities – at least for now, until Damian can catch up and surpass him – and hope that the boy won’t throw him back on the streets with a dismissive huff.

(He doesn’t want to think about that possibility. He doesn’t really have a plan for how to find his mother, if he even should considering that he’s never been truly safe when by her side, no matter how much it pains him to acknowledge, and what to do in the absence of Timothy’s guidance and protection.)

Damian takes a deep breath in, trying to steel himself for what awaits him, then walks inside the building and makes his way to the reception desk.

A bored-looking young woman is busy typing on her computer, not paying any attention to Damian. He clears his throat in a bid to get her notice, but when that fails, he sends her an annoyed glare and says, “Excuse me.”

That finally does the job. She looks up, startled, and her face morphs into the perfect picture of confusion when she can’t see anyone. Damian flushes, annoyed with his short stature, and raps his knuckles against the reception desk to indicate his position. She sits up straighter in her chair so she can see over the edge of the desk and offers him a bewildered but still polite smile.

“Yes? Can I help you, kid?”

He’s not a kid, Damian wants to snap, but antagonising the person with the power to deny him entrance is the last thing he should do.

“I’m looking for Timothy Drake, ma’am. Is he home?”

Her brows furrow while her mouth twists.

“Sorry, but I can’t tell you that. Are you on the approved visitor list? Mr. Drake didn’t mention a younger cousin coming in, but perhaps he forgot. Can you tell me your name?”

Drat. He had hoped to charm her (or manipulate her, more like) into giving him access to the penthouse by using his youthful and ‘cute’ appearance against her but it looks like that option is out of the question. Even if he claims to be related to Timothy, as long as his name is not on that list, any deception will be useless.

“No, miss, I’m not. Can you call him for me, though? And tell him Damian al Ghul wants to see him? I don’t have a phone,” he says instead and hopes that the little kid image will be enough to get her to do what he wants. He’d have used his father’s last name to really get Timothy’s attention but he knows it’ll create too much of a commotion and draw too much attention if rumors start floating around about Bruce Wayne having another child, a biological one this time around. That will surely alert his grandfather as to his whereabouts and Damian is not ready to face the man yet – or ever – especially not before he’s even secured
Timothy’s aid.

The al Ghul name should peak his curiosity enough, though, Damian is sure of it. Even if he doesn’t know who Damian is, he will still want to look into the matter if someone claiming the Demon’s Head’s name is here to see him.

The receptionist looks unsure, probably debating if she’ll get in trouble for not immediately turning him away and for bothering Bruce Wayne’s youngest over an unregistered visitor, but Damian makes sure to utilise the full power of his big, green eyes and pouty lips – his mother taught him to use everything in his arsenal when needed, and while he hates being perceived as a child, he knows the power a pitiful-looking child can have on people – so it’s not even a surprise when the woman folds like a wet paper towel and heaves out a sigh as she picks up the phone and starts dialing.

“Mr. Drake? I’m Alicia, from Reception. Sorry to bother you, but there is someone here to see you. No, he’s not on the list. Yes, I am aware. He said his name is Damian al… Ghul? Did I say that right, kiddo?”

Damian nods, willing himself not to scowl at the horrible American pronunciation of his name. Why these people seem incapable of imitating sounds as soon as a foreign language is involved he’ll never understand.

She shoots him a small smile, but her brow furrows in concentration as she refocuses on her conversation with Timothy.

“Yes, sir. Yes, a child. About six or seven, I’d say.”

“I’m eight,” Damian grumbles, unable to hold his tongue and his irritation this time around.

“Oh! Eight, he says. Mhm… Alright, I’ll send him up. Of course. No, thank you, Mr. Drake. I apologise for this, I really do. Okay, have a nice day.” She sets the phone back in its cradle and then aims a sunny smile down at Damian that seems only a bit strained at the edges. “Well, kid, looks like you’re in luck. Mr. Drake is home and is ready to see you. Just take that elevator back there and it’ll let you out on Mr. Drake’s floor.” She points over Damian’s shoulder towards one of the five elevators available, its doors already open and waiting for Damian’s entrance.

“Thank you, ma’am. Your help is very much appreciated,” Damian says, bowing his head in a grateful nod, and then he tightens his hold on his small bag full with his only belongings as he turns around and enters the elevator. The doors close behind him as soon as he’s fully inside and the car begins its ascent, the only button on the operating panel that’s lit up being the sole one without a number but instead a proud, bold “PH”.

Damian wills his beating heart to slow down and is nearly successful when the car finally comes to a stop with a cheerful ding and the doors open.

Damian has barely taken a step outside of the elevator when he is dragged harshly forward and slammed into a wall, a hard and unyielding bo staff pressed to his throat.

“Who are you and what are you doing here? What game is Ra’s playing this time?”

Damian looks up at the furious teenager looming over him, lips pulled back into a snarl, and he gulps. Here goes nothing.

***

“My mother is Talia al Ghul. My father is Bruce Thomas Wayne. I escaped the League of Assassins the day you blew up my grandfather’s bases and I am here to ask for sanctuary and training. I am unarmed and I mean you no harm.”

Tim blinks down at the kid he’s got pinned against the wall next to his elevator and doesn’t know what to do. His grip on his staff is sure and won’t budge no matter how distracted he is, but Tim himself feels like he’s just been dumped on a planet made of cotton candy and told to fart rainbows as a method of transportation if he doesn’t want to fall through the fluffy spun sugar otherwise.

The kid doesn’t look like much of a threat, he’ll give him that. He’s short and very cute-looking, with big, green eyes and fluffy hair, dressed in some slacks and a soft sweater frayed at the hem and sleeves. He has a backpack clutched in his right hand, bulging from its contents, but his clothes are loose enough that he could be concealing some kind of weapon on his person – because Tim knows better than to assume that just because they’re a kid, someone raised with the League of assassins could ever be harmless – but for some reason, Tim wants to believe him.

He’s not sure how true the first two sentences are, but he’s certain the last one is. Although, the longer Tim looks at the kid, the more certain he is of the first statements, too. He’s met Talia a handful of times and he can see so much of her in the little boy pinned to the wall – the green eyes and the hair are a dead giveaway, as well as the slightly darker skin tone (though it’s still lighter than Talia’s or Ra’s’), but he can also see her in the shape of Damian’s nose, his chin, and, oddly, his ears. So no doubts on that front. But there are hints of Bruce everywhere, too, if you know where to look and you’re familiar with the man’s face (which Tim is): the shape of Damian’s eyes is all Bruce (and, consequently, all Martha Wayne, someone whose portraits in the Manor Tim has been studying for years) and the Batbrows are so obvious he’d believe the kid only for that alone. But when the kid – Damian, was it? – furrows his brows, glaring at Tim’s continued silence and lack of reaction, Tim’s heart just about drops to his feet at the achingly familiar expression – the grumpiness is all Bruce, right down to the way the kid’s mouth twists with his displeasure.

It’s uncanny how much the boy resembles Tim’s dad.

“I… Okay,” Tim says breathlessly and pulls the bo staff back, snapping it closed and shoving it in the back pocket of his jeans. He takes a step back as well, not wanting to crowd the boy after being all up in his space right off the bat, and lets himself take a few deep breaths as he tries to get his bearings.

***

Damian inhales subtly, not wanting to let Timothy know how tense he’d been the entire time the boy contemplated Damian’s fate, and brings up his free hand to rub at his throat. He doubts the boy left any marks – the staff wasn’t pressed with nearly enough force for that – but the sensation of being caged, the threat of his airway being blocked, still has Damian’s heart rabbitting in his chest and he feels the need to rub feeling back into the skin.

“So you believe me?” he dares to ask when the teenager in front of him still hasn’t said anything else.

Timothy huffs a breath of what might be laughter, though Damian doesn’t see what could possibly be amusing in this situation. “Yeah, I guess. I’ll have to run a paternity test, sorry, but I doubt it will say anything different.”

Huh. Damian anticipated needing to do more than this to convince Timothy of his parentage – after all, he barely looks like his father – but he won’t look a gift horse in the mouth if Timothy feels magnanimous enough to take Damian’s word at face value.

“And you will.. aid me? And train me?”

At that, Timothy startles and he looks at Damian in confusion.

“What do you need help with? Or training? I’m not an assassin, you know.”

Yes, Damian knows. That’s the whole reason he’s here.

“I’m on the run from my grandfather and his agents,” he decides to start with. “I don’t think they know where I am yet, but it won’t take long for them to find out. I… it pains me to say it, but I am not yet strong enough to withstand the Demon’s Head’s forces. You have fought him before, though, and you are still here and in one piece. You can keep me safe until father returns.”

“How do you know about Bruce?” Timothy asks suspiciously.

“I thought he was dead – Mother has her sources,” Damian explains, interrupting himself at Timothy’s raised brow. “But I heard about your feat while partnering up with grandfather when I was spying on Todd and overheard him talking to Grayson on the phone.”

“Oh, that asshat will be so mad when he finds out he got spied on by a pre-schooler and he didn’t even know,” Timothy says under his breath with enough vindictiveness to make Damian’s respect grow for him even if he doesn’t quite understand what the teenager is talking about. Louder this time, Timothy asks, “So, you want me to, what? Be your bodyguard till Bruce is back? Sure, I can do that. Though I think Dick would be a better choice, being Batman and all.”

Damian bristles in indignation at the declaration. Grayson? Wearing his father’s cowl? How dare he? What gives him the right to prance around the city sullying his father’s legacy?

“Grayson didn’t fight grandfather and live. You did,” is what he says instead of all the insults he wants to spit about the impostor’s audacity. Clearly, if anyone was worthy enough to take up the cowl in Damian’s absence, it should have been Timothy. At least it’s not Todd, Damian thinks with an internal shiver down his spine. “I don’t want you to guard me. Rather… aid me should grandfather attack and try to take me back. We can be allies.”

“Uh-huh. Okay, sure,” Timothy agrees, though Damian can’t understand the reason behind the other’s quirked lips and dancing eyes. Damian didn’t say anything amusing. Whatever. “What about training, then? What’s that about?”

At that, Damian stands up straight and lifts his chin. Now is the time to really sell his worth to Timothy. Someone as capable and noble as him wouldn’t have turned Damian away, not after accepting his claim as Bruce Wayne’s son (probably), but agreeing to teach him his ways and Gotham’s ways is another matter altogether. After all, who wants to train their own replacement?

***

Tim watches with amusement (and a small bit of concern, because why is this boy so serious and high-strung, oh my God, Tim wants to bundle him up and force feed him marshmallows till he bursts) as Damian straightens himself up and looks Tim in the eye without flinching, face rearranging itself in something that carefully walks the line between serious and earnest. Jesus, is that what Tim looked like when he stood up to Batman and told him to train him as Robin or else? No wonder Bruce folded like a house of cards after a minute of this.

“As father’s now youngest son, I expect to wear the mantle of Robin at some point and take over his legacy as Batman once I reach adulthood. However, mother didn’t prepare me for this possibility, thinking father dead and any future here impossible, so I find myself uncertain how to navigate the city and the expectations of being a vigilante here. As the current Robin and the one who bested my grandfather, I think you are the best person suited to teaching me all I need to know so I can show my father how seriously I take my duties as his heir once he returns to Gotham.”

And oh. That just isn’t right. Why does it hurt so much?

Damian’s eyes don’t waver from how they’re staring Tim down, all serious and determined, but Tim can spy the glimmer of uncertainty there, of nervousness. The kid’s speech is dripping with barely hidden insecurities and Tim doesn’t know how to soothe them or make them go away. He wishes Dick were here, he’d know what to say.

Still, Tim can’t just stand there like a gaping idiot, so he brings up his hands in front of the kid, hovering around him, unsure if a hug or shoulder touch would be welcome, and ends up leaving them in the air for a moment before he lets them fall back to his sides.

“Kid… Damian,” Tim begins, unsure, “listen. There’s no… expectations here, okay? You don’t need to prove yourself to Bruce for him to take you in and love you. Just being his son is enough. Hell, the rest of us aren’t even related to him and he already does that, you know?” He huffs out an amused, fond breath of laughter. “But if you want to learn more about Batman and Robin and our mission, it’ll be my pleasure to teach you.”

“Thank you,” Damian says as he bows his head in a respectful nod Tim’s seen in the League before. He doesn’t seem to believe Tim too much about the first half of his response, but that’s alright; Tim will teach him by the time Bruce comes home. He’ll see.

“Mentoring my successor doesn’t sound so bad. But fair warning, I don’t plan on giving Robin up just yet so it’ll be a while before you can run around in the green boots,” Tim cautions, not wanting the kid to get the wrong idea and be disappointed later. Tim may be nearly eighteen, almost the age Dick was when he left and began working on Nightwing’s suit and persona, but Tim doesn’t feel ready to give it up just yet. There are still things he feels he can do as Robin and the thought of running around solo for good, like he was doing abroad as Red Robin, sits heavily in his gut.

“That is acceptable. It will give me time to train thoroughly and be ready for the role,” Damian acquiesces and while Tim might not know the kid all that well yet, he thinks that what he really means is that he’ll have more time to make sure he doesn’t let anyone down when his time as Robin comes around. Which isn’t a sentiment Tim is unfamiliar with, but it still hurts to hear it echoed from someone so young, a boy who, if his claim really is true (and Tim doesn’t doubt it is), is going to be Tim’s younger brother from now on. And that just won’t do. No brother of Tim’s is allowed to feel like that. He’ll just have to show Damian that there are no expectations he can fail when it comes to Robin, as long as he doesn’t, like, level half the city or start killing innocents.

“Sure, buddy,” Tim says instead of all the reassurances he wants to voice, knowing that now is not the time for them to be received with anything but skepticism. “How about you come in, now? I should call Dick and let him know about you, then we can figure out this arrangement better, what do you say?”

Damian looks so painfully young and small when he looks up at Tim with a pout he doesn’t seem aware of.

“Yes, that sounds… that sounds perfect.”

Tim smiles gently down at the kid and places a tentative palm over his upper back as he starts guiding him inside the penthouse and around the boxes he has yet to start unpacking.

To say that Dick reacts well to the news about Damian would be a lie.

Tim presses a can of ice-cold Zesti to Damian’s hands after guiding him to the sofa and telling him to get comfortable, then dashes to his bedroom and unplugs his phone so he can dial his older brother’s number. He’s glad for the privacy when Dick starts losing his mind, nearly hyperventilating at the news that he’ll have another brother to look after until Bruce comes home. Tim tries to be supportive and assures him that he can take care of Damian no problem (after all, he looked after himself just fine these past few months, missing spleen notwithstanding) but that statement doesn’t seem to do much in reassuring Dick.

Naturally, Dick wants both of them back at the Manor ASAP, but Tim refuses to budge. He hasn’t even unpacked his stuff yet, he’s not moving back in already. And as for Damian, the kid didn’t seem too thrilled with the idea of Dick in general and, on top of that, seems like a pretty traumatised kid with trust issues – the last thing they need is to force him to live with someone he doesn’t trust after Tim already kind of implied he’d look after the kid. He doesn’t know how far Damian’s trust in Tim runs, but he clearly respects his ability to protect him against Ra’s and his evil ninjas and trusts him to keep him safe and guide him in all things vigilante – Tim doesn’t want to jeopardise that simply because Dick is a mother hen and can’t accept that Tim isn’t the disaster he thinks he is.

“Look, until Bruce comes back, we can’t acknowledge Damian publicly anyway, so as far as legalities are concerned, you’re not the boy’s guardian any more than I am. If anything, Ra’s al Ghul has more of a claim on him than we do, so technically we’re kidnapping him, I’m pretty sure. So it really doesn’t matter who he lives with. Besides, I’ve been basically parenting Bart since we met, so I can clearly do a decent job there! I can do this, it’ll be fine.”

“Tim–”

“Oop, gotta go, I've got baby Bruces to raise, blood tests to run, you know how it is. I’ll text you later, bye!” And then Tim hangs up before tossing the phone somewhere across the bed.

The paternity test confirms Damian’s claim without a shadow of a doubt, which Tim expected, so all that’s left after that is picking a room for the kid to call his own and let him get settled in. Damian picks the one across the hall from Tim’s – and no, he doesn’t feel some type of way at the blatant show of trust, shut up – then disappears inside after closing the door with a soft click. Tim lets him unpack his stuff and make himself at home, figuring the kid might need a moment or two to himself after the days and weeks he must have had (it’s been almost a month since Tim blew up those bases, how has the kid been managing on his own this entire time?) and instead redirects his focus towards unpacking some of his own stuff and getting started on dinner.

He’s only in the process of peeling some onions for the tacos he wants to make – Cassie has been blowing up his phone with recipes he should try now that he’s living on his own and he promised to try the tacos so he can recreate them for their next sleepover if they don’t suck too terribly – when Damian emerges from his room in different clothes and slightly damp hair. Tim is glad to see that the kid was comfortable enough to take a shower without asking permission or something stupid like that.

“What are you doing?” he asks and he seems much more confident in his skin now that his worry about Tim not believing him or turning him away or something has been laid to rest. As if Tim would have done that regardless of his parentage.

“Making dinner. Tacos okay with you? Shit, I should’ve asked if you have allergies or something before starting.”

But thankfully, Damian shakes his head. “I don’t have allergies, no. Although…”

At the uncertainty in the boy’s voice, Tim once again lifts his head from his half-peeled onion and refocuses his attention on him. “Yes?” he prompts.

“Would you mind… not putting meat in mine? If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Of course, kiddo! No worries, glad you told me. Anything else you won’t eat? Eggs, dairy?”

“No, just meat and seafood.”

“Alright, no problem.”

Tim smiles at the boy, heart melting at the shy flush that appears on the kid’s cheeks, and makes a detour to the fridge to pull out some more veggies so Damian can have a wider selection of fillings for his tacos.

He works in silence for a long moment during which Damian wanders around the open space kitchen/living room, curiously examining his surroundings, before the boy completes his circuit and winds up back at the kitchen island, observing Tim with a furrow between his brows. Tim pushes back the comparison to Bruce because it hurts too much and he’ll kill himself with grief and longing if he draws parallels every time the kid mirrors his dad unknowingly.

“Do you not have servants?” Damian eventually asks, sounding so puzzled it makes Tim laugh involuntarily. He doesn’t want the kid to think he’s laughing at him so he smothers it quickly and apologises before Damian can feel offended.

“Sorry, sorry, it’s not you, I promise.”

Damian scowls at him in confusion. “You do that a lot. Seem amused about the things I say that aren’t funny. Why?”

“Well,” Tim begins, clearing his throat as he recovers from his unexpected laughter, “sometimes you say things that seem normal to you but funny to me. But I’m not making fun of you, I promise. I just find it funny.”

“And what was funny about my question?”

“People don’t really have servants anymore, kiddo,” Tim explains and it’s clear that the concept is entirely foreign to Damian. “Rich people have them, sure, but even then it’s just a cook or a maid or something, hired help that pops in once a day or week to do their job before they leave.”

Tim, of course, knows very well that that is not something Damian is used to. In the League, there is a whole group of members whose sole jobs are… well, being servants. Tim’s seen them, even interacted with a few of them when he was at Ra’s’ base instead of out in the field. The Demon’s Head is still stuck in the past when it comes to some things, and having servants following him around and fetching him things, refilling his wine glass, and announcing visitors is one of them. Tim has no doubt that, as Talia’s son, Damian grew up being waited on hand and foot by those people, barely having to lift a finger for most things. He would bet his missing spleen that the kid doesn’t know how to turn the stove on.

Sure, Tim grew up rich too, but his parents weren’t the obnoxious, I’m better than you because I inherited generational wealth kind of rich – his mother built Drake Industries from the small company it was while under his father’s family’s ownership and made it into what it was before her death; she didn’t grow up rich, though she came from a middle class family that wasn’t in danger of going into poverty if they missed one paycheck, while his father was a bit less aware of the realities of the world until Janet came along and knocked some sense into him. So while Tim grew up in a nice neighbourhood with hired help coming in and out of the house once a week or so when he was home from boarding school, he was taught to be self-sufficient and aware of his privilege, as much as an upper class, white cis boy can be.

Damian doesn’t seem like a bad kid, but Tim doubts Talia or Ra’s bothered to teach him much of that.

“Oh,” Damian utters, utterly bewildered. “But surely, father doesn’t… cook and clean for himself in Wayne Manor?” The way those words are pronounced, it makes it seem like Bruce would be committing a crime if he were to be in charge of himself. It almost makes Tim laugh again, but he reins it in this time around.

“No, he has Alfred for that. Alfred Pennyworth, the Wayne family butler. He’s been with the family since our grandparents’ time, but he’s more of a third grandpa than an employee at this point,” Tim explains. Once again, the concept of hired help being considered family doesn’t seem to compute, but Tim has faith in Damian that he’ll get there, once he’s had a little time to process things and especially once he meets Alfred in person. “But when Alfred is sick or on leave, Bruce does chores all the time. I wouldn’t recommend eating anything but his carbonara, though.”

He can still remember the soup incident with nothing short of disgust and fear. Nothing meant to be ingested should ever have that consistency or smell so acrid. To this day, they haven’t figured out what exactly went wrong there.

“I… see. And since this Pennyworth is in charge of the Manor, you are on your own here? Why haven’t you hired someone?”

Fair question, Tim can’t deny. He shrugs.

“I can take care of myself. Cooking isn’t that hard if you just follow a recipe, and I’ve always been great at following instructions when I feel like it,” Tim explains while he hauls a plastic container of mushrooms closer and starts wiping them clean. “And it wouldn’t really help me sell the whole ‘independent teenager’ shtick to Dick if I went and hired a cook or maid for myself, now would it?”

“And that is something you want… why?”

Tim shoots Damian a grin. “It’s best you learn early that Dick is the mother hen to end all mother hens and doesn’t like it when he’s not in control of things he sees as his responsibility. That will include you as it already includes me. In order to avoid being drugged and kidnapped back to the Manor, I need to prove to him that I am perfectly capable of living on my own. And that means doing my own laundry, making my own food, and not showing up everywhere looking like a racoon surviving off trash and pity.”

“This family is strange,” Damian concludes, sounding utterly lost, and Tim laughs in agreement as he gently bumps shoulders with the kid hovering at his elbow curiously. Damian startles but doesn’t go into attack mode, which Tim counts as a win.

“You don’t know the half of it, Damian.”

***

Living with Timothy is… strange, to say the least. Here, Damian is no longer the most important person in the room, ready to be obeyed and serviced as he needs; he’s just a boy, living with a teenager trying to convince everyone he’s an adult, and he has to do things that he’s never had to do himself before.

Timothy doesn’t expect Damian to cook, but he’s shown him how to use the microwave to heat up food from the fridge if he’s ever hungry when Timothy isn’t around or is still sleeping. He’s even allowed to use the stove without supervision if he wants to make tea – Damian tried microwaving the water exactly once and couldn’t spit the pitiful excuse for tea into the sink fast enough. And while Timothy is in charge of doing laundry and operating the dryer – something Damian is sure he saw by accident around the Cradle once or twice but never quite knew how to operate – it’s Damian’s responsibility to gather all his dirty laundry and place it in the hamper located in the bathroom attached to Damian’s room.

Timothy’s rules for cohabitation are also rather… lax. Damian has a bedtime, which isn’t unexpected, but being allowed to stay up until ten in the evening seems outright scandalous. How is he supposed to be up at five in the morning every day with only seven hours of rest? But that’s the thing – as long as he is up before ten in the morning, Damian is allowed to sleep as much as he wants. And he even implied through a series of suggestive winks and elbow nudges that he wouldn’t mind too terribly if Damian was to stay up later reading under the covers or watching TV, as long as he’s not being too obvious about it and doing it too often.

The first day of his stay with the teenager, he was up for hours before Timothy finally emerged from his bedroom, looking sleep rumpled and nearly incoherent. It wasn’t until his second cup of coffee that his eyes opened enough to fully regard Damian, and he seemed very confused about why Damian was up so early (it was already half past nine).

As for the other rules, there aren’t that many. He’s not allowed to go wandering the city on his own, Timothy claiming that Damian could get lost or worse since he doesn’t know the city well, which Damian can’t even argue with much, since he isn’t wrong (though he did well looking after himself for nearly a month so how bad could it be if he went out alone, really?). Even more importantly, he’s not allowed to follow Robin on patrol when he goes out with the pretender-Batman (but how is Damian expected to learn if he can’t observe his predecessor in action?) and any and all night-life related topics will only be explored in the Batcave once Timothy deems Damian ready for physical training. So far, they’ve only talked about what being Batman and Robin entails, with Timothy explaining what Robin means to him and how he sees the role, as well as telling him some stories about his tenure and training.

(Damian didn’t think Timothy Drake-Wayne could get more interesting and impressive and yet the older boy proved him wrong once again. He couldn’t quite mask his gobsmacked expression when Timothy mentioned offhandedly that he learned how to use the bo from Lady Shiva herself, and that he even managed to best her in combat. Using non-lethal methods! If Damian was unsure if he made the right choice in teachers when he came to Gotham, then there is no doubt left in his body now. Truly, Timothy is the best teacher he could have chosen.)

Otherwise, Timothy is very permissive and laid back. He doesn’t even mind when Damian challenges him verbally and questions him or his orders. If anything, the boy seems delighted whenever Damian pushes back with his own thoughts and views, something only his mother ever allowed in the League and only when in private. It’s… nice. Damian could get used to this.

A week after Damian showed up at Timothy’s doorstep, the two of them get dressed and go out into the city to buy things for Damian. While he is used to a certain level of luxury, Damian also knows how to make do with what he has when the situation calls for it and he wasn’t expecting Timothy to take up the responsibility of providing for him – feeding him and allowing him to have his own space is far more than Damian ever expected from the teenager, honestly.

But Timothy insists. Says that it’s his duty as an older brother. Which… yes, Damian supposes that is what they are. Damian is the biological son of Bruce Wayne while Timothy is that same man’s adopted son, so that makes them brothers, technically. Legally. But Timothy has no obligation to see Damian as such; after all, he is a stranger who just showed up at his door one day and asked for sanctuary. He has no obligation to Damian, not really.

“Of course I do,” Timothy protests when Damian voices those exact thoughts on their way to the Mall. Damian has never been to one of these shopping centers, only seen them on TV, and he finds the experience fascinating even if he could do without the loud crowds of teenagers and families running around the place like it’s their first day on Earth and they’ve never heard of personal space and situational awareness before. “I’ve always wanted a little brother to dote on and you’re my victim now, sorry. Just be glad I’m not as bad as Dick.”

In spite of himself, something warm and tender pulses inside Damian at Timothy’s words. Aside from his mother, he’s never been claimed so readily and lovingly by someone else. His grandfather has only ever seen Damian as a tool and something to own, command, and wield as he saw fit, falling short of his expectations all too often. And his mother… well, she had to love him, didn’t she? She birthed him, after all. But Timothy? They have no blood relation. Their last names don’t even match, not until father comes back and publicly acknowledges him – if he even will, a small voice murmurs quietly in his head – so really, there is no reason for Timothy to claim Damian as anything of his. Yet, here he is, doing exactly that.

“Why do you call Grayson that?” Damian asks instead of acknowledging the familial ownership. “I know siblings in pop culture are known for lovingly insulting one another, but the vulgar term seems excessive.”

And, as has become a regular occurrence since living with Timothy, the older boy throws his head back and laughs at what Damian said. He can’t possibly imagine what he said that was so amusing this time, but he lets Timothy laugh it up before he explains, knowing by now that it truly never is a malicious reaction.

“Oh, fuck, this is hilarious,” Timothy swears, wiping at the corner of his eyes dramatically – Damian can see there are no actual tears in his eyes. “I forget sometimes that you didn’t grow up in the US, my bad. Uhm, okay, so. I’m not insulting him when I call him Dick. His legal name is Richard, but almost nobody calls him that, at least no one I know. There are a lot of ways you can shorten someone’s name and one of them for Richard is Dick. Don’t ask me why cause I have no idea, we can Google it when we get home if you’re curious. I’ll admit it’s a bit old-fashioned, but that’s what his parents called him so no one says anything about it.”

Oh. That makes more sense then. Still, Damian cannot possibly call Grayson that word, even with this explanation in mind. It feels… weird. He’ll just stick to Grayson for now, it’s not like he calls Todd by his first name either.

“Everything I learn about English-speaking culture weirds me out more and more,” Damian murmurs.

“Yeah, I guess it can be pretty weird if you’re new to it,” Timothy agrees with a thoughtful hum. “I never really thought about it like that. Like, why would you shorten Richard to Dick? It is pretty odd when you think about it. Or, take the name William for example. How do you get Bill from that? Or go from Edward to Ned? Where did the “N” even come from?”

“Exactly!” Damian exclaims, glad to see he isn’t the only one going insane trying to figure out how this language and its customs work.

“Well,” Timothy says with a grin, winding an arm across Damian’s shoulders as they navigate the crowds towards a store that seems to be on the higher end of things, “if you have other questions like that, I’m always here to answer them. Or Google them for you, depending.”

“Thank you, Timothy,” Damian answers sincerely, ducking his head to hide the flush in his cheeks at the older boy’s kind and undivided attention.

“Anytime, buddy.”

They spend hours at the Mall, procuring all manner of clothes, shoes, and necessities for Damian. He never thought shopping could be fun, but with Timothy there, always ready with a funny quip and a crazy combination of clothes that leaves them both in stitches when they take in Damian’s appearance, Damian can honestly say that it’s the most fun experience he can remember having in a while.

Timothy doesn’t stop at this, though. He takes Damian all around the Mall, letting him try on makeup, jewellery, temporary tattoos, letting him explore the shops available to not only have fun but also find out if he’s interested in anything in particular. (Timothy thinks he is being sneaky when he flags down a shop attendant at one of the high end jewellery stores they visit and buys the bracelet Damian’s eyes lingered on for a bit before putting it back in its case, but Damian sees it and doesn’t know how to prevent the tears forming in his eyes from falling so he excuses himself and hides in the bathroom for a minute or two.) ((It reminded him of one of his mother’s beloved bracelets that he’s never seen her without.))

When he hears about Damian’s passion for art – a confession he had to build up the courage to make for an hour before spilling the words like a full glass of water knocked over the edge of a table – Timothy immediately steers them towards an art supply store and lets Damian browse the isles to his heart’s content and converse with the attendants about the differences between materials and what would best suit his style and preferred drawing subjects. They leave with two bags full of art supplies that Damian cannot wait to make full use of.

And when they’re on their way to a restaurant so they can finally have lunch – McDonald’s, something Damian is aware of from movies and the like, but which he’s never visited – Timothy points out a particular store they happen to be passing and mentions how he used to do photography when he was younger and he once spent weeks running around the city looking for a specific lens for his camera that he only found in that very store on their right when he almost lost hope of ever getting a hold of it.

“And you no longer take pictures?” Damian questions with a furrowed brow. “Why?”

Timothy seems caught off guard by the question but he only shrugs helplessly.

“I don’t know. I guess it just… fell through the cracks, between my mom dying, my father being in a coma, and all the crazy stuff that happened on the bird front,” Timothy answers thoughtfully. There is sadness in his eyes when he mentions his birth parents and Damian feels for the older boy, even if he can’t relate. He couldn’t imagine losing his mother like that, so permanently and irrevocably. He doesn’t know how to comfort Timothy, so he just walks a bit closer to the other boy, letting their hands brush against each other, and hopes that it’s enough.

“You should begin again,” he declares instead. “I wish to see your vision and, besides, I don’t want to be the only one with an appreciation for art in this family.”

Timothy smiles, small and soft, and shrugs again, though this time it’s more of a thoughtful gesture. Considering.

“Maybe. I don’t even know where my camera is, I might have to get another one.”

Damian raises an eyebrow. “I’m sure funds won’t be an issue there.”

They laugh together at that as they lug around multiple bags containing items worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

“Yeah, you’re right. Hey, I’ll show you some of my photos when we get home, if you want. So you don’t have to wait until I get another camera. I have a lot of them saved on my computer and I’m pretty sure Alfred has a bunch of them printed and stashed in his room where I can’t get to them.”

Damian smiles, pleased to have put that smile on Timothy’s face and the excited glint in his blue eyes, and agrees readily.

***

Tim is able to hold Dick off only for so long before he has to give in and visit the Manor with Damian in tow. Realistically, he’s surprised his older brother even managed to go a week and a half without seeing Tim outside the Robin suit and without meeting Damian at all.

In Tim’s defense, he’s been kind of busy getting to know Damian and getting him things – like the responsible adult he is – to make time to visit the Manor all the way in Bristol. Moreover, he didn’t want to overwhelm the kid by having him meet two extra strangers before he even knew Tim properly. Damian is mature for an eight-year-old, but he is still a kid, alone in a strange city, living with a complete stranger whom he depends on for food, shelter, and protection. And Tim meant it when he said he wants to take care of Damian and be his older brother; he takes his promises seriously.

But there’s only so many excuses he can give Dick before the man starts emitting steam from his ears. So, on Friday the week after Damian showed up, he bundles them both up and makes the drive to Bristol, telling the kid that they don’t have to stay long if he feels too uncomfortable and that he should speak up if he doesn’t like how he’s treated by either Dick or Alfred. He doesn’t think either of them would do something insensitive or inappropriate, but it’s better to make it clear from the get go to Damian that his comfort is of paramount importance to Tim and that he is allowed to remove himself from situations that upset or discomfit him.

He really should’ve known better, though.

As soon as they walk through the front door of the Manor, Dick is all over Tim, hugging him tightly and petting his hair, commenting on how long it’s gotten and asking him if he’s decided on a specific style yet or if he’s letting it grow some more before he does. Tim doesn’t even have time to take a breath and answer before there is a small body between Tim and Dick, standing protectively in front of Tim and leaning threateningly towards Dick.

“Back away, pretender! You won’t assault Timothy on my watch!”

Tim stands there, gobsmacked, before he starts laughing so hard he thinks he’ll pass out. Dick, meanwhile, looks confused and oddly hurt.

“I’d never hurt Tim, what the hell,” he says in dismay.

“Language, Master Dick. Do I need to reinstate the Swear Jar?” Alfred interjects smoothly, appearing at their side like a shadow, and Tim offers him a smile as the man offers to take the bag from his hands – he made some pie the other day, a recipe Kon had to wheedle out of Ma Kent before passing it over, and while he trusts Damian to tell him if his food sucks, he’d rather get a second opinion from Alfred before baking a second tray for Kon.

“No, Alfie,” Dick grumbles.

“You’ve already shown you have no moral issues with taking what isn’t yours when you started masquerading as my father’s alter ego, so excuse me if I don’t trust you around Timothy,” Damian declares with an imperious little sniffle, arms crossed. Tim winces at his words, though.

The subject of Batman is a sore one for Dick; the man wasn’t really enthusiastic about wearing the cowl and it’s clear every night they go out together that he can’t wait for Bruce to be back and in a condition to resume his night-life identity. And Tim can see it – how it’s wearing on him and how heavy that cape seems to be on his shoulders. Damian doesn’t know better and Tim can even see where he’s coming from, but it’s still a cruel thing to say and Tim sees how Dick’s eyes shutter and his smile turns strained and a bit fake at the edges. Okay, time for damage control.

“Hey, no calling Dick names, don’t think I didn’t catch that ‘pretender’ you threw in there. I’ll give you a pass this one time but if I catch you using that again I’ll take your painting supplies for a day.”

“An entire day?” Damian asks, sounding horrified, as he turns to face Tim. Tim nods gravely. “Okay, I won’t do it again.”

Tim doesn’t know how much he can trust that, but they’ll cross that bridge when they get to it.

“Also, Dick is a wonderful Batman and Bruce will be very thankful when he comes back and hears about what a good job Dick has been doing in his absence,” he adds, maybe laying it on a bit thick with the pointed glances he sends Dick, but it’s all worth it when the ice in the man’s eyes thaws a bit and he offers Tim a grateful smile. “And lastly, Dick would sooner cut his own hand off than hurt me, so you can rest easy knowing that I am perfectly safe in his presence. Besides, I can hold my own just fine, don’t you trust my abilities to defend myself?”

The last one is really the final nail in the coffin, as it’s become abundantly clear that Damian thinks Tim invented coolness or something, and suggesting that Tim can’t defend himself against Dick would be akin to sacrilege. As predicted, his little brother shakes his head, looking affronted at the mere idea of Dick besting Tim in a fight (nevermind that he’s done so before, plenty of times, and will probably continue to do so again, even if Tim wins about half the fights they have on the sparring mats these days).

“Of course I do, Timothy. My apologies, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”

“Good, glad that’s settled. But I think you owe Dick an apology much more than me, don’t you think?”

Here, Damian looks like he swallowed a lemon, but he turns around to face Dick once more and he bites out through gritted teeth, “I apologise, Grayson,” without actually saying what he’s sorry for. Again, Tim lets it slide, for now at least, and counts it as a win. It’s a first offense, anyway, so he can cut the kid some slack, he thinks.

“Now that apologies are out of the way, how about we move this gathering to the kitchen?” Alfred suggests. “Master Damian, would you like to assist me in compiling a menu for today’s brunch? I’ve heard from Master Tim that you are a vegetarian.”

Damian throws a questioning look towards Tim before answering to which Tim offers an encouraging nod, so the boy squares his shoulders and says, “Yes, that sounds acceptable, Pennyworth.”

Surprisingly, Alfred doesn’t correct Damian on using his last name. He must have caught on that you need to do feats of superhuman miracles to gain the honour of having your first name used by Damian.

With one last lingering glance behind him, Damian follows Alfred further into the kitchen, leaving Tim to walk behind the two a little ways away with Dick by his side.

“Thoughts?” Tim asks lightly.

“He’s… something.”

Tim chuckles, shaking his head.

“He’s alright,” he insists. “I don’t know, he’s nicer around me. Doesn’t really argue much, at least not in a hostile way, you know? And he can be really sweet sometimes.”

Dick makes a dubious noise and he’s shrugging when Tim looks at him.

“I’m sure. Maybe it’s because he actually likes you. Though I can’t imagine what I did to earn his ire.”

Tim hums thoughtfully. “He seems to have this larger than life impression of Bruce and Batman,” he begins, trying to explain as easily as he can, from what he’s managed to gather during his time living with Damian. “I don’t know what the fuck Talia told him about his dad but he seems to think Bruce is this great, noble warrior who’s undertaken a sacred mission to protect his birth city and it’s Damian’s legacy to one day take up the mantle and carry on that legacy.”

“What in the medieval knight mentality…?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Tim agrees, torn between laughing and sighing. “He also thinks he needs to train to be Robin to show Bruce he is worthy of being his son or some stupid shit like that.” At Dick’s horrified look, Tim shrugs. “Look, man. I don’t know. I’m doing the best I can to show him how to be a normal kid and make him see that Bruce is more likely to cry if Damian starts spouting that bullshit than be disappointed or whatever. I know I’m ready to bundle him up in bubble wrap sometimes, I’m sure Bruce will be worse. So just, like, keep that in mind. It's nothing personal, not really.”

“Huh. You know, I’m kind of glad I don’t have to deal with that right now, actually,” Dick confesses and Tim grins sharply at his brother, jabbing him in the side just to hear him yelp.

“Told you I can handle it,” Tim sing-songs like an asshole and dances out of the way when Dick tries to tackle him for a noogie. He makes it safely to Alfred’s domain before Dick catches him, which basically means he’s home free since everyone knows you don’t fight in Alfred’s kitchen. “Can you rate my pie, Alfie? I wanna bake some for Kon and I need to know if it sucks or not.”

“I already told you it’s delicious and your paramour should feel honored he gets anything at all,” Damian complains from where he’s hunched over a pen and piece of paper, busy compiling a menu for Alfred. Tim knows the kid is using that ancient word on purpose just to annoy him and so he narrows his eyes at the little shit but doesn't say anything.

Alfred sends the boy a fond smile before turning to Tim and pulling out the pie he brought with him.

“Certainly, my boy. Although I have to agree with the young Master. Mister Kent should count himself lucky to be fed by a wonderful boy like you.”

Tim blushes under the onslaught of sincere compliments, but doesn’t have the chance to stew in the slight embarrassment since Dick pounces when he smells weakness.

“Awww, is Timmy flustered at the mention of his boyfriend?”

“I will shove this fork where the sun doesn’t shine and gauge your eye out with it when it comes back up on the other side,” Tim threatens sweetly as he picks a fork to give to Alfred. His brother sticks his tongue out, like the immature idiot he is, while Damian grumbles his support for that course of action under his breath.

Maybe Damian isn’t so different from the rest of the family after all. Yeah, he’ll fit right in, no problem.

***

Life with Timothy continues to be nothing like anything Damian has been used to. They stick to theoretical education when it comes to vigilante things, which confuses Damian but he supposes that Timothy would know best – perhaps his father would prefer to handle his physical training himself and so just proving his knowledge and readiness will be enough to impress him.

Timothy’s boyfriend visits sometimes, usually only for brief moments, but sometimes he stays for lunch or dinner, depending on when he comes over, and Damian supposes that the man isn’t that horrible. He seems to care about Timothy a great deal – as he should – and always washes the dishes when he eats with them, which might just put him right behind mother and Timothy in favour of his favourite people ever because Damian absolutely hates doing them. Timothy has caught on and he now uses that as punishment whenever Damian is mean to Grayson – or Todd, that one time the imbecile called Timothy and interrupted their movie marathon of Studio Ghibli movies.

Outside of Timothy’s Robin patrols and the daily lessons on what being Robin is like (that, for whatever reason, take the form of stories of Timothy’s adventures in Gotham as well as with the team of teenage superheroes he led for a time, called Young Justice), the two of them just kind of… get to know each other. Timothy seems very invested in hearing about Damian’s interests and encouraging new ones – he’s always excited when Damian finishes another painting or shows him what sketch he’s working on, and is constantly researching activities for them to do together so Damian can find if he has an affinity for anything else aside from drawing. So far, the only things that have caught his attention have been animated movies and anything to do with animals – Damian still remembers with a broken heart the small bird he rescued and nursed back to health when he was six, but which grandfather ordered him to kill before he could release it back into the wild when he caught it in his bedside drawer one day.

As for Timothy, Damian gets to spend an entire afternoon going through his photographs. The progress he made is visible to the naked eye as he goes from pictures a young Timothy took when he was Damian’s age, to ones taken until two or three years ago. Talent and artistic knowledge are clear to see and it angers Damian to think of all that potential left to go to waste, so he bullies Timothy into ordering another camera online right then and there and makes him swear to not give it up again unless he truly loses interest in the craft.

Another time, Timothy comes home after meeting with a friend and former girlfriend – Stephanie something or other, Damian wasn’t too interested to hear about her, if he’s being honest – and suggests going for ice cream together at a parlour he always visited with father at the end of patrols on particularly sweltering summer nights. It’s not the same as being taken there by his father himself, but Damian enjoys the experience a lot and is thankful for Timothy doing it with him. They eat ice cream together and talk about what movie they should watch later that evening, and Damian feels like maybe things won’t be so bad here in Gotham if he has Timothy by his side. If father is terribly disappointed with Damian, maybe Timothy won’t mind letting Damian keep living with him instead.

When Damian mentions offhandedly that he’s never seen a museum exhibit before – not many of those around the Cradle – Timothy looks up available exhibits on Google and drives them directly to the museum, where they spend hours lost in dinosaur facts and realistic depictions of what different types of dinosaurs might have looked like.

At the end of their adventure, Timothy even buys Damian a Spinosaurus plushie that Damian swears he is too old for but which he can’t bring himself to part with even once he gets under the covers that night and goes to sleep.

A month and a half after Damian first arrived here, Damian’s bliss is interrupted when Timothy comes into his room while he’s painting and holds out his phone for Damian to take with a tight expression on his face.

“Your mom wants to talk to you.”

Damian’s heart simultaneously soars and sinks to the bottom of his stomach at the words and, with trembling fingers, he catches the phone and brings it to his ear.

“Damian? Habibi, is that you, my love?”

Damian’s breath hitches and he can feel tears stinging his eyes. He can’t believe he hasn’t tried harder to contact his mother – surely, he could’ve done something if only he’d asked Timothy. He’s been so caught up with his life here in Gotham, enjoying all these newfound luxuries and freedoms, that he’s forgotten all about his mother. He is a terrible son, isn’t he?

“Mama,” Damian breathes, tears rolling down his cheeks. He doesn’t know when Timothy took his leave, but he finds himself alone in his bedroom, the phone clutched to his ear.

“Oh, Damian,” his mother says, sounding so relieved. “I’m so glad to hear your voice. I’m so sorry, my love, things have been chaotic in the League and I just found some wiggle room to track you down and make contact.”

Oh. So she hasn’t been frantically searching for him since he escaped. That… that’s good. It’s good that his mother hasn’t been sick with worry for months. It’s not like Damian has been thinking of nothing but her since he started living with Timothy, either.

“That’s alright.”

Mother breathes deeply on the other end of the line before speaking again, “How are you? Are you safe?”

Even if he knows she cannot see him, Damian nods. “Yes, I am with father’s Robin. Timothy has been taking care of me and teaching me about father’s legacy.”

“Yes, I saw… I trust that you have been carrying yourself in a manner befitting of an al Ghul.”

“Of course, mother,” Damian says and finds that he doesn’t even feel all that guilty about technically lying to her. He’s been acting nothing like how he’s been taught to behave, not ever since Timothy sat him down early in his stay here and explained to him how regular children in America are usually expected to behave and speak. But Damian isn’t living with mother now and what she doesn’t know she can’t be upset with.

“Good, good. I’m glad you found your way to Gotham, habibi. Drake told me your father will be home soon and I have all the trust in the world that he will keep you safe. Your grandfather is still under the impression that I took you to a safehouse to be looked after until we stabilise things in the League, so that should give you plenty of time before he catches on.”

“Thank you, mother.”

“Of course, my Sun. I don’t know when I can contact you again but rest assured that I will be in touch soon. Behave and make me proud, love. Stay safe.”

“You too, mama. I love you,” Damian says and he only barely hears the words returned to him in a whisper before the line goes dead and Damian lowers the phone back down to his lap.

He stays frozen in silence for a time, simply letting his whirling thoughts go wild, before he finally scrubs his eyes and gets up to search for Timothy so he can return his phone. He finds the teenager in the kitchen, as he usually does around this time of day, whisking something in a bowl with flour streaked across his forehead.

“All good, Dami?”

Damian shrugs, feeling listless, and places the locked phone on the counter away from the mess Timothy has made of the space.

He stands there without doing or saying anything for a long time while Timothy continues whisking his mystery concoction, then watches as the other boy puts some saran wrap over the bowl and stashes it in the fridge before cleaning up the kitchen.

“Come on, get dressed. We’re going to the skatepark, I’m teaching you how to skateboard.”

Damian looks dubiously at the boy but shrugs, not really feeling like questioning him, and gets dressed in what he hopes is appropriate clothing. Timothy, when he emerges from his own bedroom, is wearing some dark cargo pants and a loose t-shirt with the logo of a band Damian knows he’s fond of, so he assumes he didn’t choose too badly himself. They put on their shoes, Timothy pocketing his wallet with one hand while he holds a scuffed skateboard with the other, and then they ride down to reception in silence and start walking.

They don’t have to go far before they find a park with a ‘bowl’ in the middle, as it is apparently called according to Timothy, and a bunch of similarly dressed teens and young adults riding their skateboards or roller blades around the park and its many amenities.

“Alright, get on the board and let’s see how’s your balance,” Timothy declares once they’ve arrived and he’s scanned their surroundings. Damian shrugs and does as he’s told and doesn’t expect the way he immediately loses his balance, the board flying from under his feet and sending him crashing to the ground on his back. It knocks the breath right out of his lungs.

“You okay, Dames?”

Damian groans but gives his brother a thumbs up.

“I don’t even know what happened.”

Timothy chuckles as a hand appears in Damian’s field of vision and pulls him gently back to his feet.

“Yeah, same thing happened to me the first time. It’s okay, at least now you know what to expect. Alright, let’s try again, more carefully this time. You can hold on to me.”

They spend the next several hours in this manner, with Timothy coaching Damian on how to sit on the board, how to move, how far to bend his knees or lean in a certain direction, and when Damian feels too sore and beaten to keep going, Timothy takes over, doing a few tricks and showing Damian exactly how he’s supposed to look when he does what Timothy is teaching him.

Not for the first time, Damian thinks that he’s really lucky to have someone like him in his life and as a brother. He has yet to find someone half as impressive as Timothy.

When the sun has started setting, Timothy returns to Damian’s side and plops down on the bench next to him to take a huge gulp of water from their shared bottle.

“Feeling better?”

“I… yeah. Thank you.”

Damian can see Timothy’s smile from the corner of his eye.

“No problem, kid.”

No more is said, but not much is needed, not at this point. They walk home together at a leisurely pace, talking about an upcoming movie Kon-El wants all three of them to go and see at the cinema, and Damian feels settled and content.

***

Two months after Damian came to live with him, Bruce finally gets retrieved by the League.

Tim hasn’t been terribly involved with the process and got updated on the situation only sparingly – hey, being a teenage, single dad is hard work, okay? He doesn’t have much spare time these days – so he wasn’t even aware they’d gotten so far into the whole thing until Dick is calling him to say Supes told him they got Bruce out and he’s waiting to be examined by some specialists in the Watchtower before Dick can bring him home.

Tim is beside himself when he hears the news. It’s like the last of the stone that had been sitting on his chest has finally disappeared – they weren’t too late, nothing bad happened to Bruce, everything’s fine.

He did it.

He actually did it.

His dad’s coming home.

He rushes to the living room, where Damian is watching a documentary about penguins while sketching a family of the little guys in his sketchpad, and jumps over the back of the couch, bouncing on the cushions for a moment before he gathers up his baby brother and squeezes him tightly. Damian yelps but hugs hesitantly back.

“Everything alright?”

“Everything is amazing!” Tim crows, wiggling Damian around a bit before finally releasing him and letting him go with one final hair ruffle. “Bruce is coming home today! They finally got him out!”

Damian freezes at the announcement. Tim waits for him to unfreeze and start sharing in his joy, but the younger boy seems stuck like that, limbs stiff and gaze a million miles away. Concerned, Tim leans closer and squeezes his hand gently.

“Dami? Are you okay?”

Damian snaps out of it, whatever that was, but he doesn’t look any more excited.

“Yes, of course.” He musters up a smile but Tim has known the kid for long enough to know that it’s fake. And now that he thinks about it, it shouldn’t take a genius to guess what the problem is.

“Kid… Dami, Dames. Talk to me. What is it?”

“Nothing,” Damian insists but his shoulders are slumped and there’s this anxiety swimming in his eyes that hurts Tim on a visceral level. He needs to get it out of his baby brother’s eyes immediately.

“Are you scared about Bruce coming home?” he asks gently, hoping not to get Damian’s hackles up, knowing already that this is exactly what the boy’s problem is.

“I… yes.”

“What exactly are you scared of?”

Damian shrugs. It’s not something he would’ve done even a month ago and Tim is so proud of his little brother for finally letting loose and being comfortable to just act like a normal kid around Tim.

“What if… What if he doesn’t like me? I know you said he won’t be disappointed in me but… he already has so many children and I’m just… me.”

Tim’s heart breaks. He can’t take the distance between them anymore and simply says fuck it and pulls Damian into his lap, holding the boy tightly and letting him burrow his face into Tim’s shoulder as he rocks them together back and forth and side to side.

“Damian, listen to me,” Tim starts, voice firm but gentle. “You are the most wonderful little boy I’ve had the pleasure to meet. Anyone would be crazy to not like you, you hear me? I love you so much it hurts and I’ve only known you for two months. Bruce will be ready to die for you the second he meets you, I can promise you that.”

“You… love me?”

“Yeah, kid, ‘course I do,” Tim whispers with feeling, cradling Damian’s head to his shoulder and kissing the crown of it sweetly. “Have you met you? You’re awesome.”

Damian’s arms wrap around Tim’s torso and squeeze tightly and he’s pretty sure he can hear the kid’s breath hitching and feel his shirt growing damp from tears, but he doesn’t give a shit about that. He only cares about his little brother knowing how loved he is.

“I love you too, Akhi.”

Tim’s own eyes are itching with tears this time but he sniffles and wills them to stay where they are.

“Bruce will be ecstatic to meet you, Dami. He’ll only be disappointed that he didn’t know about you until now and has missed on spending so much time with you. And, between you and me, if he still loves Jason after all the shit he's pulled, there’s no way he won’t like you. You’re, like, a hundred times more likeable than him.”

The statement has the intended effect and it gets Damian to laugh wetly into his shoulder, body shaking with tiny tremors caused by his chuckles, and Tim smiles with self satisfaction at being such a good brother. This big brother shit is easy. Don’t ever let him hear Dick or Jason complain about him ever again.

***

Timothy drives them to Bristol an hour after Damian has cried himself out. His worries are still present – they probably won’t go away until he actually meets his father – but it’s easier to breathe now and he has the unshakeable belief– no, knowledge, that no matter what happens or how his father reacts, Damian will always have a place to stay with Timothy and an ally that he can count on. Timothy is here to stay and maybe, just maybe, so is Damian.

They arrive at the Manor before Grayson and father do. Pennyworth is jittery with nerves and anticipation, something Damian never thought he’d see, but he lets the man sweep all over the house rearranging things and dusting pristine surfaces since he’s too busy calming his own nerves down.

Timothy assured him that Grayson will take care of breaking the news about Damian to father before they get here, so he at least doesn’t need to worry about taking the man by surprise, but waiting around like this is still nerveracking.

His brother, meanwhile, is texting furiously with Kon-El, probably, while biting at his lower lip and bouncing his leg off the floor in a maddening rhythm. He can’t be too annoyed with him, though, since this is the culmination of more than half a year’s worth of blood, sweat and tears – quite literally – and Timothy will finally be able to reunite with the father he lost an entire organ for.

But finally, when Damian thinks he couldn’t possibly take more of this tension, he hears the door to father’s study opening and voices growing steadily louder as footsteps approach.

Damian looks up and his eyes lock onto a haggard, tired looking man who can only be his father.

Bruce Wayne falls to his knees in front of Damian, tears gathering freely in his eyes, and Damian can do nothing but stay there on the couch, frozen and afraid to say or do anything aside from stare.

“My boy,” father whispers, his voice a weak rasp, and he brings up a hand to cradle Damian’s cheek with.

“Father.”

They remain locked like this for moments that could be seconds or could be hours, before father asks permission to hug Damian, which he grants, and then he’s being held in his father’s arms for the first time in his life. He’s never imagined it before – never had a reason to and then never quite dared. So he has no term of comparison even as far as his imagination goes. But he’s sure that nothing could compare, real, imagined, or otherwise, to the warmth and strength in the hold he finds himself in. Damian sinks into his father’s embrace and feels safe. Wanted. Loved. For no other reason than because he is his father’s son and he is here and alive.

Timothy was right. He never had anything to fear. Everything will be alright now, with father here. Everything is as it should be.

***

Later that evening, after Damian has fallen asleep in Tim’s old bedroom at the Manor – Alfred was too out of it to prepare another room for the kid, but Tim doesn’t mind anyway – and Dick has excused himself for a quick patrol around the city to clear his head, Tim slips inside Bruce’s room and pads quietly across the carpet until he reaches the bed and lifts the covers to slide under them without a sound. A strong arm – but skinnier than it was, too skinny – wraps around Tim and pulls him close until all he can hear is Bruce’s heartbeat and all he can smell is the shampoo Bruce favours. God, he hasn’t smelled that scent since they lost him.

“You did good, sweetheart,” Bruce murmurs and kisses Tim’s forehead.

Tears prickle at Tim’s eyes and he lets them fall.

“I missed you, dad.”

“I missed you too,” Bruce confesses and the arm around him tightens. “But I’m here now. You can rest. You did good.”

Tim sniffles quietly and sags against Bruce’s chest.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, Tim.”

And for the first time since Bruce ‘died’, Tim truly feels like everything is alright with the world again. His dad is home. His little brother is sleeping right across the hall, two doors down. Kon is alive and his relationship with Dick is almost back to normal. He can rest now.

He can breathe.

It’s over.