Chapter Text
Duke moved in with Bruce in mid-march as Bruce began officially fostering him. He went to school like normal and still spent his afternoons after school at the Gotham Youth Center before returning home to the manor around dinner time. After dinner, Bruce as Batman would train him for a several hours before he went out on patrol.
The Bat-lessons were a mixture of combat training, other physical skills, and more conceptual or intellectual lessons. They always started with an hour of the conceptual lessons. These lessons included ethics and morality, forensic investigation, observational skills and situational awareness, inductive and deductive reasoning, people-reading and psychology, and like, social skills for interacting with civilian victims. Sometimes Tim, aka Robin, helped with these lessons. Bruce also gave Duke study guides to read through on his own time, to solidify his overall knowledge of various sciences.
Then there were lessons regarding other physical skills: Escapology, gymnastics & aerials, and parkour or roof-running. Dick, aka Nightwing and the original Robin, stopped by to help teach these things a few nights a week when he was in town (when he wasn’t traveling for competitions), sometimes staying for longer on the weekends to help with training. A lot of it was the foundational skills for being able to grapple around Gotham and try roof running, but he wasn’t trying the actual thing yet. A lot of emphasis was put on escapology, since being captured was a common risk.
Duke already had a foundation in gymnastics from his lessons at the GYC, but the more trapeze-style lessons that were helpful for developing skills for grappling were useful. They typically did about 30 – 45 minutes of this style of lessons during nightly bat-training, though Duke was also taking additional advanced gymnastics classes at the GYC now, so Dick was teaching him there as well.
Then typically they had a short break before doing combat training for another 30-45 minutes. Sometimes Tim or Dick would help train him with this when they were around, since Bruce preferred verbally instructing him to sparring with him until his skills were more developed. Duke already had a strong foundation of various mixed martial arts styles, but these lessons taught him how to merge the styles more into a seamless Bat-specialized fighting form. At first, they focused on him being able to escape holds, more defensive fighting, before teaching him more skills that would be useful for taking people down.
They were focusing mostly on hand-to-hand fighting first, but they would teach him various weapon fighting later on. Tim and Dick were trying to sway him towards learning to fight with a bo-staff and escrima sticks respectively; Duke was leaning towards Nightwing’s fighting style more. They would also be teaching him knife throwing and batarang throwing and a bunch of other weapons, but that would come later.
After Bruce and the others left for patrol, normally around 9pm-10pm, Damian was typically staying in the cave to “help with comms”, since he wasn’t allowed to go on patrol during school nights since he was supposed to be in bed by midnight. Anyways, Bruce had assigned Damian and Alfred to take lead on teaching Duke lessons about first aid, which was another very important, essential bat-lesson course. Duke already had a basic CPR certification, but these bat-lessons were more advanced and were more geared towards treating injuries, stopping someone from bleeding out in the field or splinting a broken bone for transport. Duke was vaguely aware there were various other bat protocols lessons, for things like gas attacks which were fortunately less common now, or things like how to do search and rescue or how to disable a bomb; but it sounded like those lessons would come later as he got closer to going into the field.
Anyways, while Damian mostly gave him first aid lessons, sometimes they would, with permission and supervision from Alfred, spar with the dull, blunted rapiers while wearing proper fencing gear for protection. Damian was very good at fighting like this and Duke did his best to learn. While Damian was skilled at this, it was clear he did not have much experience at actually teaching it, since sometimes Alfred would chime in with pointers.
Duke could tell that Damian wasn’t entirely happy about Bruce taking him in and training him to be a vigilante; he wasn’t hostile, more stiffly polite, but Duke was good enough at reading people to tell that the whole thing made Damian insecure, especially since Duke was older and being prepared to be a full-fledged vigilante sooner. Apparently, while they were considering letting Damian patrol properly once he was 13 or 14, he would only be allowed to patrol with supervision until he was 16.
Duke tried to be friendly and complimentary to Damian, complimenting his expertise on various subjects that he was teaching him. Over time, he could tell that Damian was warming up to him some. After a discussion where Duke expressed he was more interested in making his own vigilante role rather than becoming Robin, Damian seemed much more amicable towards him. Which, Tim didn’t seem quite ready to relinquish Robin anyways, but he was an adult now and probably wasn’t far off from making the transition.
The last week of March, Bruce wanted to talk to Duke in private about something.
“So, I would like your permission to run a comprehensive DNA test on you, to see if your powers are due to something other than the standard meta gene mutation. Also, I’d just generally like to have your DNA on file, all of us do, it can come in handy ,” Bruce said.
“Oh, okay, I guess that would be fine? I trust your computer is secure and stuff. I’m kinda surprised you haven’t already tested my DNA, to be honest,” Duke replied.
Batman made a considering hum before speaking. “I’ll admit, I did previously test just for the standard meta gene and it was negative, so I suspect something more complicated is involved in your powers, which is why I want to run a comprehensive DNA test. However, my kids have….cautioned me about respecting people’s privacy, at least within the family, so I did not want to test you like that without permission,” Batman admitted.
Batman did the swabs for saliva and also took a blood sample, saying he should have full results to go over with him tomorrow. And that he would especially encrypt it so the other bats couldn’t go prying into it.
The next day, Bruce again spoke to Duke privately down in the Batcave. Duke felt nervous. Based on a lack of particular resemblance to his father, Doug Thomas, combined with the time frame between his parents’ marriage and his birth, he suspected that Doug might not be his biological father. So, he was aware that this might lead to some complicated revelations about his parentage.
“So, what did you find out?” Duke asked.
Batman spoke carefully, “So, your matrilineal DNA is completely standard human and is a confirmed match for Elaine Thomas as your mother. Your patrilineal DNA is….more complicated. It appears to be non-human DNA and it is not a match for any of the alien species we have on file, so it’s not the same as any Justice League members or other known heroes. There’s some other databases I can try to cross reference it with, the Green Lanterns have more info about various alien species, but I’m not sure if we’ll get a match. About a quarter of the DNA appears to be hard to pin down, so it’s possible that your biological father is himself descended from two different species. I have some theories, but nothing concrete yet.”
“What are your theories?” Duke asked, curious to know more while trying to stay calm at the revelation. It was hard to know how exactly to react when he still didn’t know what he was.
“Well….the DNA being in flux like that, well, Wonder Woman is a demigod daughter of Zeus, and half of her DNA behaves similarly since gods don’t have concrete DNA, though hers has a distinctly Greek signature to it and other properties which yours lack. So, it could be indicative that you have a grandparent who is some sort of alien god or who is otherwise more a being of energy without a standard physical form. There’s some other DNA oddities as well,” Batman explained.
“What are the other oddities?” Duke asked, wanting to know as much about himself as possible.
“Well, you have self-repairing telomeres on your DNA, which is indicative that you will be longer-lived than a baseline human. Normally, DNA on telomeres erodes as you age, though some earth species like lobsters have an enzyme telomerase which repairs them; yours appears to be a different mechanism for the same result. It’s possible that once you are fully grown, that your aging will slow or stop. You also have an extra organelle which appears similar to mitochondria but different, I suspect it has different energy conversion properties which facilitate your light-based powers working,” Batman explained.
“Okay, this is….a lot to take in. When I started developing powers, I assumed I was a standard metahuman, and, well, this sounds a lot more complex than I anticipated,” Duke replied.
“Are you okay? How are you feeling about all of this?” Bruce asked.
“I think part of me already expected that my dad wasn’t my dad, that I had a different bio father. I’d considered alien as a possibility, considering my powers, but possibly being a quarter some sort of god sounds weird and confusing. Maybe I’ll feel more about it once I know more specifics,” Duke responded.
“Did your mother ever mention anything that could be a hint?” Batman asked.
“I overheard her and dad talking once about, like, her trying to keep a low profile? At the time, the impression I got was that she had an abusive ex from before they met and she was worried about him trying to track her down. Which, if my bio-father is some sort of alien, that becomes more concerning. When cleaning out the apartment, I found a diary or journal she’d written. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it yet, but I flipped through a bit and the time frame of it appeared to cover the time before I was born, so maybe she mentioned something,” Duke explained.
“Do you….want me to help go through it?” Bruce asked.
“No, I can do it, I want to….if anything, having a specific reason like needing information about my bio father may help me finally actually read it. But I’ll tell you about it if I find anything significant,” Duke answered.
“Okay, just let me know how I can help, kiddo,” Bruce replied.
“So….I know all the bat training is really useful, but are we going to work more on training my powers soon?” Duke asked.
“Yes, I was thinking to start more on that soon. I was speaking to Dick about it; there is a newer program for helping teenage metas learn to control their powers, Titan’s Academy. It’s a mix of a boarding school and a summer camp. I was thinking you could attend for a week during your upcoming spring break, which would give you an opportunity to train with your powers? Starfire has energy-based powers and is willing to work with you some for training. I wanted to contact a Lantern since they have light-based abilities, but they’ve been off-planet recently, so that’ll have to wait a bit. Anyways, Titan’s Academy is also a good opportunity to socialize with other teenagers who are developing meta powers,” Batman suggested.
“That sounds interesting, I guess I’ll talk to Dick about it more. Um, but I’m not actually a meta, am I?” Duke asked.
“We use the term meta or metahuman to refer to two different things. One is people who are 100% Homo Sapiens but who have an activated meta gene. The other is any sapient individual with powers, which includes aliens like Kryptonians. Now, it would probably be best if you left it implied to other students and such that you simply have a meta-gene, though it would be helpful to tell Starfire as one of your hero mentors, who is herself an alien, more of the truth, though it is up to you,” Batman replied.
“Okay, yeah, that makes sense,” Duke agreed.
Duke talked to Dick some later and got more info on what to expect from Titan’s Academy and Duke decided it would be beneficial to go. Apparently, they had a specialized training room that would contain any mishaps with powers. He also talked to Dick about what they’d learned about his alien DNA. Dick ended up offering to speak to Kory on his behalf to inform her and Duke agreed to that.