Chapter Text
Damian.
“You don’t stand a chance, little brother.”
The blade in Jason’s hand glinted sickeningly green in the low light, a shade that matched Jason’s eyes. That matched Damian’s eyes.
Damian’s grip tightened around the hilt of his katana. From a careful distance, he observed Jason’s stance, the way he held his own sword, the way he moved, circling Damian slowly, like a predator in the wild.
Damian had seen Jason in action more times than he could count, out in the field. Jason was the result of the same training Damian had received – from Talia, from Bruce, from Dick – but in a different form. The pair of them were two sides of the same coin, and therefore, Damian should have known what to expect from Jason. But he hadn’t expected this.
Perhaps that was exactly why he should have expected it. Jason relied heavily on misdirection. He subverted every expectation anyone held of him. Damian knew this, and Jason knew that he knew it, and so he would subvert this expectation as well. The best course of action for Damian, then, was to take everything Jason did at face value.
Taking Jason at face value, he was going to kill Damian. Damian needed to fight for his life, because he suspected there was only one way this could end. Jason would make sure of it. And Damian would do what he must.
But first, he warned Jason, “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“I know exactly what you’re capable of,” Jason promised darkly. And he very well might have been right.
Jason surged forward. Damian dodged, slashing his blade through the air, metal singing as it connected with Jason’s. Damian didn’t stand a chance against Jason in a contest of strength, so he would have to rely on his speed. Jason was fast, but Damian was faster.
He swung his sword again, using his shorter height to his advantage in an attempt to sweep Jason’s legs; Jason leapt out of the way, and his blade struck where Damian had been standing less than a moment ago, so close it would have cut clean through Damian’s cape, had he been wearing it.
Damian used the adrenaline of this close call to fuel him. The air was silent between him and Jason, save for their quick, heavy breathing, their light footfalls, and the scrape of sword against sword, until Jason nearly struck Damian again, missed, and growled in frustration.
The fire in Jason’s green eyes indicated that he was beyond reason, but Damian had to make an attempt nonetheless. “You don’t have to do this.”
Another swing, dodge, miss. The muscles in Jason’s arms stood in sharp relief. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my family safe.”
“I’m your family,” Damian tried to argue, dodging again, relying on defense in hopes of wearing Jason out. He only needed Jason to make a single mistake.
Jason only needed him to make a single mistake.
“I have to prioritize,” Jason said coldly.
Damian felt sick to his stomach. He ignored the feeling. He ignored the frantic beat of his heart and his father’s voice in his head telling him not to do this, to find another way. There was always another way.
Jason pressed forward, and Damian let him. The green glow illuminating the chamber they were in intensified around them. It tinted Jason’s pale skin; he looked like some creature from beyond the grave. The white streak in his hair stood out as starkly as the whites of his eyes, the whites of his bared teeth.
Damian attempted once more to get through to Jason: “Roy will never forgive you for this.”
Jason didn’t hesitate. “Roy will know I did what I had to.”
Damian felt a thick, unnatural heat in the air around them, like standing in an oven. His skin prickled with sweat and fear. He’d hoped never to end up here again. He should have known better than to think he could escape this part of himself. Jason had known better.
Another near miss sent ice shooting through Damian’s veins. He couldn’t keep this going forever.
Their blades clashed again, and Damian held them there, suspended in time, through gritted teeth asking, “Whatever it takes?”
Jason’s eyes narrowed. “Whatever it takes.”
As Jason was bearing down on him, Damian ducked away; Jason’s blade connected with the ground. It was now or never. It had to be now.
Jason whipped around, prepared to retaliate. Damian didn’t have a moment to hesitate or the luxury to second-guess himself. He silenced every voice within him, stripping away everything but the raw instinct trained into him since birth.
Gripping his sword with both hands, he drove the blade through Jason’s abdomen, just below the ribcage, and with all his strength, dragged it down Jason’s stomach.
Jason hardly made a sound. His eyes were wide and wild, his mouth agape. He stared at Damian and seemed to look right through him. Damian felt his heart pounding in his throat. A spray of hot blood, more green than red in the unrelenting light, coated Jason’s torso, Damian’s arms, Damian’s sword, the ground between them.Damian had the space of a single second – though it seemed to stretch on into infinity – to ask himself, What have I done?
SOME TIME EARLIER.
He woke with a start, blinking away a sea of bright, acid green. His breath came fast; his heart was pounding. A nightmare. One of the usual ones.
This nightmare always started with him drowning. No air in his lungs, his veins on fire, the kind of pain he hadn’t experienced since his grandfather had trained him to resist torture. A loud, relentless droning in his ears, accompanied by a fierce pounding in his skull.
The pain would give way to searing heat, a burning itch under the surface of his skin, and finally, a rush of adrenaline so intense he couldn’t help but open his mouth and scream, at which point hot-cold liquid would flood into his mouth, down his throat, choking him; now he was really drowning.
He needed to swim to the surface, but he didn’t know which way was up. Just as blackness started to encroach on his vision, a hand would wrap itself around one of his wrists and pull sharply, yanking him up out of the liquid, bright green, bubbling and steaming like it was boiling. He coughed up some of it, gasping for air, and blinked to clear his vision so he could see who had pulled him out.
Sometimes it was his mother. Sometimes it was his father. Sometimes it was Dick; occasionally it was one of his other siblings.
Sometimes it was his grandfather, and a fresh rush of fear would surge through him, and he would wake as he just did, screaming.
He hated when this happened. He knew it was normal to have nightmares; he knew everyone in his family did, especially Jason. But they made Damian feel weak. If he couldn’t face his fears in the dream world, where nothing was real and therefore nothing mattered, how could he expect himself to face them in the waking world? How would he ever live up to the legacies set before him if, by night, he was a cowering child, flinching from imaginary demons, and not the fearless soldier his parents and older siblings had trained him to be?
“You’re not a soldier.” Dick and Jason had both told him this explicitly, many times. But Damian didn’t know what else to be.
“Be a kid.” That was what the two of them would say. Damian didn’t know how to do that. He didn’t think he was very good at it.
He tried. He went to school and put in his best effort, which kept him easily at the top of his class. He spent time with his siblings and their partners. He had hobbies and interests outside of training and fighting crime. And he’d made his first friend: Jon Kent.
The two had met at Jason and Roy’s wedding. Their acquaintanceship might have ended there, but Damian must have made enough of an impression on Jon that Jon asked his father if he and Damian could start tagging along on some of Batman and Superman’s team-ups. The boys’ fathers had obliged, and Jon and Damian encountered each other several times after that.
Damian had been meaning to expand his social circle at his siblings’ urging. Jon was close to Damian in age and they had things in common—namely, they were both vigilantes-in-training. Still, Jon wasn’t the type of person Damian would have foreseen himself befriending. They were so different: Jon was extroverted, sociable, loud, reckless, emotional, impulsive, easily distracted, and always smiling. Damian was the opposite. Their personalities often clashed. They struggled to collaborate on missions with their fathers.
Damian brought these complaints to his father, who told him it was good for him to learn how to get along and work with someone who had such a different personality and approach. He explained that he and Clark hadn’t gotten along at first either, but once they’d overcome their initial misgivings, they’d found that they made an effective team because of their differences, not despite them. They complemented each other.
So Damian persevered in befriending Jon. This was a gradual process. While Jon was immediately willing – eager, even – to open up to Damian, sharing the most personal details of his life without reservation, Damian was not willing to reciprocate.
He talked to Jon about school. He talked about his hobbies and interests. He talked about the missions they both went on, separately and together. He talked about his relationships with his siblings and their partners, his parents, and Alfred, but only on a superficial level. He was up front about being autistic.
He never mentioned his grandfather, and he only mentioned his childhood before coming to Gotham in the vaguest detail.
Jon, however, didn’t seem to notice Damian’s secrecy. In fact, he seemed more than happy to fill any awkward silences Damian produced. When a subject fell flat, Jon would move right along to another one.
All in all, Damian thought he’d made decent progress toward “being a kid,” but it didn’t come naturally to him. His therapist told him this was a common struggle for autistic children. Tim, who was also autistic, agreed with this assessment. Jason added that it was likely also a result of trauma. Damian supposed Jason would know.
It occurred to Damian that Jason might also know how Damian felt if Damian talked to him about his nightmares. It wasn’t a subject that Damian had brought to him before, which was an oversight. Damian decided he would try talking to him later that day, if he could.
He was visiting Jason and Roy (and Lian) that evening for their housewarming party. The Harpers had, just weeks ago, moved to Gotham. Roy had a new job working at Wayne Enterprises on a project Tim was spearheading, developing advanced prosthetics like the one Roy had made for himself after losing his arm. He and Jason were almost one year married, and in the fall, Lian would start fourth grade in Gotham and Jason would start college online at Gotham City Community College.
Damian had been to the Harpers’ new house once already, helping them move in. It was a modestly sized townhouse in a part of town where a lot of young families lived. It was tiny compared to Wayne Manor, and less luxurious than Tim and Kon’s new townhouse, but larger than the Harpers’ former home in New York, with an extra bedroom they would use as a guest room-slash-office, “for now,” Jason said. And it would probably look much better when Damian visited that evening, now that it was (presumably) furnished and decorated.
Alfred drove Bruce and Damian and they arrived at the party early. Damian was right: The interior looked better with all of the Harpers’ things in it. It looked comfortable. Cozy. Normal. Damian knew normality was important to Jason and Roy, whose lives had never been normal.
Jason greeted them brightly from the kitchen, which smelled amazing; Jason was an excellent chef, second only to Alfred. Roy, who was wearing his prosthetic that day – sometimes he didn’t – offered them all something to drink: water, sparkling water, soda, or tea. The Harpers had acceptable taste in tea. Alfred’s taste was better.
“What do you think?” Jason asked, indicating the space around them.
“It looks lovely,” Alfred remarked. “Just as tastefully decorated as your previous home. Roomier, though; I’m sure the three of you appreciate that.”
“We do,” Roy confirmed. “Lian definitely does. Right, Lian?”
Lian looked up from where she was carefully slicing a freshly baked baguette under Jason’s supervision. “Huh?” She hadn’t been paying attention.
“Don’t you like that our new house is bigger than our old one?” Roy repeated.
“Oh, yeah!” Lian exclaimed. “My room is way bigger!”
“She got a bigger bed too,” Jason chimed in. “New curtains, a new rug…”
“Not brand-new-from-a-store,” Lian clarified. “Right, Jay? New from other people. It’s better for the environment.”
“That’s right, we bought almost everything secondhand. Everything but the mattresses. Lian went to lots of estate sales with me.”
The adults got to talking about furniture, and Damian watched Lian redirect her focus back to helping Jason. Jason liked to call Lian his sous chef. She had her own apron, printed with the phrase “Professional Taste Tester.” Jason was wearing one of his aprons, which read “CAUTION: EXTREMELY HOT.” It had taken Damian a few visits to realize that this was a pun referencing Jason’s attractiveness.
Cass and Steph were the next to arrive. After greeting everyone, Steph gravitated straight to Lian. She and Lian got along very well. But instead of following her girlfriend, as Damian might have expected, Cass paused next to him. She tilted her head slightly, and Damian’s stomach dropped. He didn’t need his lessons from Tim in how to read people to know what that meant.
Yes, Tim was skilled at reading people, but he relied on many different sources of information to draw his conclusions: not just what people said and their accompanying nonverbal cues, but also the vast amount of evidence he was constantly collecting on people.
Cass, on the other hand, could read people accurately just from their body language. In fact, she was better at reading body language than she was at interpreting verbal language. And while others sometimes struggled to read Damian because his body language was different compared to people who weren’t autistic, Cass could read him just as well as she could read anyone else.
This left Damian to wonder what his body was saying about him.
After another moment’s pause, Cass turned and followed Steph. Damian breathed a little easier.
More people started to arrive. Dick brought his soulmates, Wally and Linda West, and their children, Jai and Irey. Wally was actually Dick’s soulmate, but Dick was in a relationship with both Wally and his wife Linda, and the three referred to each other as soulmates.
Ever since they went public with their relationship, not long after Jason and Roy’s wedding, the Wests had started coming to Wayne family functions. Damian hadn’t known what to make of this. Not Dick’s relationship; he knew what to make of that very quickly, because upon learning of it, he immediately did a deep dive on polyamory and soaked up everything he could on the subject.
He didn’t know what to make of the Wests joining their family, and Dick joining theirs. When Damian had first moved to Wayne Manor, Roy and Jason had already been together and Steph had been a close friend of the family, so their inclusion in family functions felt normal. And Damian and Tim hadn’t liked each other much when Tim had started dating Kon, so Damian hadn’t really cared when Kon started showing up more often.
Damian had met Wally before he and Dick started dating, because Wally was one of Dick’s oldest friends, but he hadn’t known him well, and he’d known Linda, Jai, and Irey even less. Wally and his kids were a lot like Jon, extremely extroverted and outgoing. Linda was sociable but less energetic, more like Roy. They were all nice people, and they treated Damian and the rest of Dick’s family well, but spending so much time around them was an adjustment.
At least it meant Dick was more likely to attend family gatherings, but Dick was in Keystone City far more often than the Wests were in Gotham and Damian saw a lot less of Dick than he had before Dick started dating the Wests. Damian knew this was typical when someone entered a romantic relationship. He also knew an even larger factor in Dick’s absence from his life was Bruce’s return. Dick used to live at the Manor with Damian. He used to patrol with Damian every night. They used to be Batman and Robin.
They used to be partners. Now Bruce was Batman again, and Damian was his Robin, not Dick’s. Dick was Nightwing, and he still patrolled with Damian frequently, every other night at first, but now Damian wasn’t on a set patrol schedule; like the rest of the team, he worked with others on an ad hoc basis.
Damian was pleased to have finally reached a point in his vigilante training when Bruce trusted him to operate the same way everyone else did, but he did miss the predictability of a schedule, even though he knew it was important to learn to function without one.
Roy’s family arrived after Cass and Steph; they’d come to Gotham from Star City, presumably via the Justice League Watchtower, to attend the Harpers’ housewarming. They were outgoing too, like the Wests. Damian found himself gravitating toward the edge of the room, where he was less likely to be noticed and roped into a conversation. He was already feeling overwhelmed by all the people.
Damian sensed someone beside him, and he turned to see that it was Cass, also lingering on the outskirts of the crowd. She turned to Damian and smiled. “Too many people,” she said simply – she was a woman of few words – and Damian nodded in agreement.
Cass looked like she was gearing up to say something else, but their interaction got cut short when Damian heard the front door open. Even more people, he thought with no small amount of dread, and then he heard his name.
“Where’s Damian?” It was Kon’s voice. Not the person Damian would expect to be looking for him.
Cass gestured toward Kon with her chin, which Damian recognized as nonverbal permission for him to leave. He did, finding Kon standing with his arm around Tim’s waist; the pair of them were always touching. Damian couldn’t imagine being in that kind of a relationship. It seemed suffocating.
“There you are,” Kon remarked. “I brought you something.”
Before Damian could ask what Kon had brought him, or why he’d brought something for him instead of the hosts of the party, someone appeared next to Kon, seemingly out of nowhere.
Damian blinked in surprise. “Jon?”
Jon was bouncing on the balls of his feet; he was always moving, always fidgeting. “Hi, Damian! Mom and Dad let me come because Kon picked me up!”
Jon wasn’t allowed to fly long distances without supervision. This was a significant barrier to his and Damian’s friendship, since Clark was often busy. This was the first time Kon had brought Jon with him anywhere. The pair of them weren’t close; Kon resented Jon the way Tim had once resented Damian and Jason had once resented Tim. Supposedly Dick had once resented Jason, though this was a very long time ago, before Jason’s death and resurrection.
Damian shot Kon a questioning glance, but Kon had already turned to talk to Jason, acting as though Jon wasn’t even there. Jon didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t even seem to notice.
“Did Jason and Roy invite you?” Damian asked. It was rude to show up to a social gathering uninvited.
“They asked Kon if he’d bring me and Kon said he would,” Jon explained. So he had been invited, then. Good.
Jon looked around. “This is Jason and Roy’s new house? It’s nice. It smells really good.”
“Yes, Jason is an excellent chef,” Damian agreed.
“What’d he make?”
“Hors d’oeuvres.” At Jon’s blank stare, Damian clarified, “It’s a French term for savory bite-sized dishes served before a meal. They’re fancy snacks. Here, I’ll show you.”
The pair of them wove past other guests to Roy and Jason’s kitchen table. Before Damian could begin to tell Jon what all the different dishes were, Jon was trying one of everything, looking delighted by everything he put in his mouth.
Jason was standing nearby, still talking to Kon. Jon raised his voice to tell him, “These are really good, Jason!”
Kon looked annoyed by the interruption, but Jason smiled. “Thanks, Jon,” he replied. To Damian, he added, “All the vegetarian options are on that side, Dames,” indicating the far side of the table.
“Thank you, Jason.”
Jason looked at Damian in a way that Damian couldn’t quite decipher before the look was gone. He said, “You know, Dames, one of the things Roy and I like about this place that we didn’t discover until after we moved in is the view from the roof. You should show Jon. You can climb up the back of the house from the guest room window.”
Damian thought this was an odd thing to bring up. He searched for context and noticed tension in Jason’s spine and shoulders. He thought about how Jason hadn’t strayed out of the kitchen so far that evening, and hadn’t stopped doing things with his hands. He was enjoying himself – his smile was sincere, which was easy to tell because Jason’s fake smile was painfully obvious, and more notably, Roy was all the way in the living room, and Roy wouldn’t have gone that far if he sensed that Jason wasn’t enjoying himself, and Roy always knew how Jason was feeling – but he couldn’t relax.
Jason didn’t like crowds. He’d shared this with Damian before. It was something they had in common. Which meant Jason knew Damian didn’t like crowds either. He was giving Damian a convenient excuse to get away from everyone else.
Damian gave Jason a slight smile to indicate that he understood Jason’s intentions and was grateful, and Jason winked and shooed him away.
Damian led Jon upstairs, locating Jason and Roy’s guest room and opening the window, scaling the exterior wall with ease. Jon clambered after him, and Damian offered him a hand up when he slipped so he didn’t have to rely on his superpowers, just in case any neighbors were watching.
On the roof, Damian could see all the way across Jason and Roy’s neighborhood, lines of townhouses with small yards, cars parked in driveways or on the street, lawn ornaments, flags hanging from windows – the American flag, Pride flags, the flags of Gotham’s various local sports teams – and Jason and Roy’s motorcycles sitting side-by-side next to the Harpers’ sedan.
Damian couldn’t see beyond the neighborhood, though. Jon declared, “This is an okay view, I guess.”
“Well, of course it wouldn’t be that impressive to someone who can fly,” Damian reasoned.
Jon stood, wobbling a little on the uneven rooftop, and Damian prepared himself to catch him before he fell, but Jon righted himself. “Let’s go back inside.”
Damian didn’t want to do that. “Not yet,” he requested.
“Why not?”
“It’s loud in there. And crowded. I’d like to take a break.” Damian had learned from Tim that he shouldn’t lie about it when he was feeling overstimulated, because otherwise he’d push himself too far and make things worse for himself.
Tim didn’t follow his own advice, though. Jason had explained this for Damian: “Tim doesn’t think he’s allowed to have needs.” Jason was always blunt in his explanations. It was helpful.
And Jon never judged Damian when he was honest. Like now, he said, “Oh, I get it. My dad and I do that sometimes. We go to the Fortress of Solitude or fly up into space because those are the only places that are ever quiet.”
Damian raised his eyebrows. “Nowhere else is quiet?” He knew Jon and other Kryptonians had super senses, but that sounded like hell. Damian couldn’t imagine living like that.
“Not really,” Jon explained. “I mean, there are some places, like deep underground or in the middle of the ocean. And technically, even in the middle of nowhere, we can still hear things. Space is the only place that’s completely quiet.”
“Sound doesn’t travel in space,” Damian recalled.
“Yeah, it’s pretty relaxing.”
Damian frowned. Now he was curious… “What can you hear right now?”
Jon took a moment to take inventory of his surroundings before answering, “I can hear everyone downstairs, not just talking but all the noises they make, even their heartbeats. And all the other people and everything else in the neighborhood, like people’s pets and cars and TVs and dishwashers and washing machines and dryers and microwaves and showers and air conditioning and everything else.”
Damian thought Jon was finished, but he kept going. “If I stretch out a little, I can hear the water and boats and stuff, sirens, more cars, lots of people, the amusement park that way,” he pointed northeast, toward Amusement Mile, “And then a little farther there are the planes in the sky and a football game and more cars and more people and every machine in every house and every building and more water and more boats and then Metropolis…” He paused. “How far do you want me to go?”
“How far can you go?”
“All around the world.”
“That sounds awful.” Damian literally couldn’t imagine. There were times, when he got overstimulated out in public, when he felt like he could hear everything, people talking and laughing and breathing and children screaming and babies crying and music playing and electricity buzzing and every other little thing that made a sound, but Jon could actually hear all those things, and so much more, all the time. Damian couldn’t live like that.
“It was really hard to get used to,” Jon admitted. “My dad had to train me a lot. It’s still hard to focus.”
“That’s why you get distracted a lot,” Damian surmised.
“It makes school harder. My dad said I’ll learn how to focus better and it just takes time.” Jon frowned a little, looking discouraged. That was another thing Damian appreciated about Jon: Most of the time, he was very easy to read. “I’m trying.”
“Have you tried meditating?” Damian asked.
Jon shook his head. “No. Does that help?”
“It could. There are a lot of different meditation techniques designed to help with different things. I know Grayson recently learned some meditation techniques specifically designed to help with attention and focus.” Dick had ADHD, and he’d been trying to develop alternative coping skills outside of just medication, which he still took, but didn’t want to rely on exclusively. “He taught them to me, and I could teach them to you.”
“I’ll try it,” Jon agreed. He was usually down to try anything.
“I’ll talk to Grayson,” Damian promised.
Jon sat back down. “How long do you wanna stay up here?”
“Are you bored?” Damian asked, reading between the lines.
“Only a little.” Jon was honest to a fault. Damian liked that about him too.
“You can go back inside if you want,” Damian told him.
“No, that’d be boring too. I’ll wait for you.” Jon kicked his legs out in front of him and tapped his feet together in his shoes.
After several moments of silence, he said, apropos of nothing, “Your brother seems nice. Jason.” Jon had met all of Damian’s siblings in passing, but he really only knew Dick.
“He is. He wasn’t always,” Damian clarified, “But he is now.”
“I heard he used to be a villain.”
“Only for a little while.”
“I heard he kills people.”
“Not very often. Not anymore.” Damian knew Jason still would kill, but he went out of his way not to, and he never killed on joint missions with other Bats, per an agreement he’d made with Bruce when he’d first rejoined the team.
“My dad thinks heroes shouldn’t kill people,” Jon argued. “I thought your dad thought so too.”
“He does,” Damian confirmed. “Jason has a different opinion.” Damian didn’t mention that he’d had a different opinion once too. He hoped Jon would change the subject soon. Usually, if Damian didn’t engage with him very much, he would.
But Jon kept going, “I don’t think I could kill someone. Do you?”
Damian froze. He didn’t want to answer. He didn’t want to talk about this. He tried to say so, but his mouth wouldn’t open. Suddenly his body wasn’t listening to him anymore.
He felt his heart beating in his chest – he knew Jon could hear it racing – followed by a spark of panic. No. He couldn’t freak out about this. Not here. Not in front of Jon.
He felt the same surge of shame he felt after waking up from a nightmare. He shouldn’t be freaking out over a simple question. He used to be able to behead someone with a single stroke of his sword and feel nothing.
He used to feel nothing.
He used to kill people and feel nothing.
His head was spinning. He tasted the memory of blood on his tongue, heard the memory of screams in his ears piercing the quiet night air. Everything felt cold, even though it was the middle of June. The roof didn’t feel solid anymore.
He felt like he was in one of his nightmares.
Jon caught on to the fact that something was wrong. He looked concerned. His voice sounded distant. “Are you okay?”
Damian tried to remember what he was supposed to do; what would Dick tell him to do? What would Tim tell him to do? Or Jason?
The only voice he could conjure, though, was his mother’s, telling him, “You are in control of your emotions.”
But he wasn’t. And he never had been. He’d only known how to pretend.
With impeccable timing, Damian heard the window open, followed by Jason’s voice: “Hey, just checking on you both. You’re safe up there, right?”
“Um, Jason?” Jon called out, sounding deeply unsure of himself. “I think Damian got overstimulated.”
Jason appeared, climbing onto the roof. Damian avoided looking at him, but Jason must have seen through him anyway, because he offered Jon a hand up and told him, “He’ll be okay. Thanks for helping. I just made a fresh batch of everything; go have some.”
Jason helped Jon through the guest room window and came to sit next to Damian. Damian looked down at the roof beneath them. His pulse wasn’t pounding in his ears anymore, and the air felt warm again, but he still couldn’t speak.
Jason didn’t speak either. He didn’t look at Damian. He looked out ahead of them too, up at the sky instead of down. It was overcast; the stars weren’t visible. In Gotham, they rarely were.
Damian remembered being able to see the stars. The Milky Way. He could pick out every constellation, point to every visible planet. He remembered learning them from his mother; she would trace them in the sky and recite all their different names, and Damian would listen carefully and repeat the words back to her out loud so he wouldn’t forget.
He hadn’t forgotten.
His voice came back to him, and he told Jason, “I’m not overstimulated.”
Jason kept staring up at the sky, acknowledging Damian only by saying, “I thought so.”
Then he turned. He looked at Damian in the same way as before, when he’d suggested Damian go up to the roof. He stood and offered Damian a hand up. “Let’s go for a ride.”
Damian took Jason’s hand, even though he could have easily stood on his own. “You can’t leave your party.”
Jason shrugged. “Everyone will just think I couldn’t be around that many people any longer. They’re used to that shit from me. I’ll tell Roy where we end up, and either way, he can track me.”
“He can track you?”
“Yeah, I have a tracking device in my teeth.”
“In your teeth?” Damian made a face. “You let Roy implant a tracking device in your teeth?”
“He’s my husband,” Jason replied, like this was the most obvious course of action he could have possibly taken after getting married. “Come on.”
They scaled the side of the house down to the ground. Jason tossed Damian a helmet and they rode Jason’s motorcycle out of the neighborhood, across one of the bridges into downtown Gotham, navigating through busy streets, cars honking and police sirens wailing and so many people in every direction, eating at outdoor restaurants, standing outside bars, coming home from work or leaving for late shifts.
Jason pulled into an alley. He and Damian climbed up a fire escape to a random rooftop overlooking this busy part of downtown. Damian didn’t fully understand why they were here, why they’d left the party at all, but he trusted the process. Jason’s behavior often seemed nonsensical on the surface, but there was always a reason for it.
“How’s this?” Jason asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Your friend could hear us anywhere in the world if he wanted to, but we should be well outside his passive hearing range this far away, assuming his range is about the same as Kon’s, and he’d have to really focus to hear us over all of this noise. What happened?”
See? There was always a reason.
Damian took a moment, frowning at the too-recent memory of his conversation with Jon, and told Jason, “He asked if I thought I’d be capable of killing someone.”
He couldn’t see Jason’s reaction, because he was looking down at his own hands. Jason had told him the story of his first kill. He’d done it with his bare hands.
“He doesn’t know, huh?”
Damian shook his head. “I haven’t told him.”
“So then what happened?”
“I froze.”
“Did it feel like you might’ve had a flashback?”
“Yes.” Damian’s frown deepened. “They’ve been happening more and more often. I don’t know why.”
“That’s normal, actually.”
At that, Damian looked up at Jason. “That’s normal?”
“It could be a few different things. It could be that you’re in therapy now, so you’ve probably unlocked some shit you were keeping locked up before. But it’s also normal, in cases of long-term, repeated trauma, for symptoms to be delayed. And your trauma was definitely long-term and repeated.”
“It’s embarrassing,” Damian complained.
“What is?” Jason asked.
“Reacting that way in front of other people.”
“That can definitely feel embarrassing,” Jason agreed. “But Jon is your friend. He won’t judge you. And I won’t judge you. And the rest of our family won’t judge you.”
Damian knew that, logically. But still, “Everything about trauma is embarrassing. I still get nightmares.”
“Me too, kid,” Jason said with a sigh.
“How often do you have them?”
Jason thought about it. “It depends. When I’m stressed, it can be every night. On average, though, at least once a week. I don’t have as many really horrifying ones as I used to. Those come around a few times a month, maybe.”
“Do they change much?”
“Yeah, depending on what I’m going through. I hardly dream about the Joker anymore, or being buried alive. Since moving in with Roy, and especially since getting married, I dream a lot about bad things happening to him and Lian, or me… doing bad things to them. Or other people. People I care about.” Jason stumbled over this last admission, looking away. “Those are the worst.”
“What sort of things do you do?” Damian asked.
Jason didn’t answer. Not really. He just said, “You already know.”
Damian nodded. He understood that Jason was referring to the things he’d done in his first few years after coming back from the dead. Things Damian had done before coming to live at Wayne Manor. Phrases from their past conversations passed through Damian’s mind, and more unwanted memories.
Damian tasted blood again. His ears were ringing.
Jason’s next words cut through the fog: “What about you?”
After taking a moment to center himself, Damian reciprocated Jason’s honesty. “I have nightmares that my mother sells me out to my grandfather. Or my grandfather forces me to kill again, or hurt people. Or I’m drowning in a Lazarus Pit.”
Jason nodded, understanding. “I know it doesn’t help make the nightmares go away – the only thing that’s ever worked for me is time and therapy – but you know we’ll never let any of those things happen to you, Dames.”
“You can’t possibly guarantee that,” Damian pointed out.
When Damian glanced up at Jason, he saw that Jason looked thoughtful, like he was trying to decide what he was going to say next. Damian waited. Finally, Jason spoke, “In some ways, your grandfather is a lot like the Joker. He’s relentless. He’s obsessive. The Joker never would have left us alone. I don’t think your grandfather will either.”
The implication behind Jason’s words was clear: This was the justification Jason had used to kill the Joker, a decision both Jason and Roy – who had also participated in the act – still stood by.
Damian would not pass judgment on them. But the thought of Jason applying the same logic to Damian’s grandfather made him feel… conflicted.
“My grandfather would never be so easily defeated. Even if he was, he’d come back.”
“That’s what everyone said about the Joker,” Jason countered. “I’ll tell you how to stop someone unstoppable, Dames. First you get them to underestimate you. Then you come at them when they least expect it, in a way they won’t expect. And most importantly, always bring backup. People like the Joker, like Ra’s, they don’t play well with others. We do. That’s always going to be our greatest advantage. Ra’s isn’t special. He just wants us all to think he is. That makes us scared. The Joker was the same. Men like that want you to be scared of them. It makes them feel powerful.”
Jason paused. He added, in a quieter voice, “My father was like that.”
Damian concealed his surprise. Jason almost never spoke about his biological father. Over the years, the only information Damian had gleaned about Willis Todd was that he was a convicted criminal who died in prison and abused Jason and Jason’s stepmother, Catherine. Jason never called him by his name, and he’d taken Roy’s last name when they got married, abandoning the last thing he had left of Willis.
Damian didn’t expect Jason to expand on the comment he’d just made, but he did. “I still have nightmares about him too.”
Bolstered by Jason’s honesty, Damian ventured, “What was he like?”
Jason looked taken aback by the question, and hesitant to answer it. Damian thought it might be helpful if he narrowed the scope of his question, so he did. “Was he like my grandfather in other ways?”
Damian’s instincts must have been correct, because Jason only hesitated another moment before explaining, “I think some of his motivations might have been the same. I think he wanted to feel in control. But he never was. He couldn’t control my bio mom; she left, and left him with me. He couldn’t control his own emotions, especially his anger. I don’t think he even tried. He wasn’t in control of his own life, either. He was a criminal, but he wasn’t very good at it. We never had enough money. Your grandfather is better at maintaining control – he even has control over life and death – but he can’t control the things he wants to control the most. Like your mother. And you.”
“He’ll never accept that,” Damian observed.
“No. They never do. They blame everyone but themselves. They take their anger and frustration out on us in whatever way they think will make them feel better or make up for the injustice they think we’ve done to them. Like being a person with your own thoughts and feelings and wants and needs and morals. Living your life on your own terms.”
Jason was referring to Damian with these statements, but Damian wondered, “What injustice could you possibly have done to your father?” Damian understood that Jason had been very young when his father went to prison.
“I inconvenienced him with my existence,” Jason told him in a flat voice.
“He wanted you dead?”
“He wished I was never born. Or at the very least that my mom took me with her when she left him.”
That didn’t seem fair at all. It wasn’t Jason’s fault he existed, or that his biological mother left him. “Do you hate him?”
“Yes,” Jason answered firmly.
“Do you hate your mother for leaving you with him?”
“I hate her more for betraying me to the Joker.”
Damian had more questions, but none of them were remotely appropriate to ask, and they lapsed into silence again, staring up at the starless sky.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Damian said. It felt woefully inadequate, but what else was there to say?
“Back at you,” Jason echoed.
Another stretch of silence. Finally, Damian decided, “Let’s go back.”
“Do you feel ready?”
No. “Yes.”
They rode Jason’s motorcycle out of downtown Gotham, across the bridge, and back into Jason’s neighborhood. They re-entered the Harpers’ house through the back door, so they wouldn’t interrupt the party. Jason went straight back to the kitchen, and Damian searched for Jon, finding him in conversation with Dick.
Dick spotted Damian first, shooting him a look that asked, “Are you okay?” Damian answered with a look of his own that he knew Dick would interpret correctly: He was mostly okay.
Dick would ask him for more details later, and Damian would tell him. Dick had trauma too. He would understand. Though Dick was less forthcoming about his trauma than Jason, and Damian knew better than to pry.
Jon must have noticed Dick looking somewhere past him, because he turned and spotted Damian too. “Damian! You’re back!”
Damian shot Dick another look, and Dick correctly interpreted this one too, dismissing himself by holding up the empty cup in his hand and saying, “I’m gonna get myself a refill.”
With Dick gone, Damian looked down at his shoes and said, “I’m sorry.” Jon would hopefully know what he was apologizing for.
“You just got overstimulated,” Jon assumed, incorrectly, but Damian wasn’t going to tell him otherwise. “It’s not your fault. You don’t do it on purpose. So what are you apologizing for?”
Damian tentatively smiled. Jon was a good person and a good friend. Probably better than Damian deserved. Damian knew he should just tell Jon the truth – Jon would find out eventually; too many people knew about Damian’s past for it to stay a secret – but… He didn’t want Jon to think differently of him.
Feeling guilty, Damian looked away. His eyes caught on something across the room.
Cass. She was staring at him again, with her head tilted to the side.