Chapter Text
At twenty-eight years old, Damian Wayne was one of the youngest trauma surgeons at Gotham General Hospital.
If anyone absolutely had to find something objectionable about his résumé, it was probably his age. Unfortunately for the critics, that particular complaint tended to die a swift and undignified death the moment they looked at his surgical record. An obscene amount of natural talent, a will of steel, and the kind of pathological self-discipline that had been beaten into him since childhood had combined to produce something of a legend in Gotham General’s trauma department.
If a patient arrived in his ER with even half a breath left, Dr. Damian Wayne could usually drag them back from whichever afterlife had already started filling out the paperwork.
Gotham’s famously intimidating—and, according to several nurses, offensively handsome—surgeon only worked four scheduled clinical days a week, not because of poor health or special treatment from the Wayne family, but because doctor was only one of Damian Wayne’s jobs.
Once the sun went down, he had another.
Vigilante. One of Gotham’s many watchers of the night.
The fifth Robin had grown up a long time ago. Strictly speaking, there was nothing inherently embarrassing about being twenty-eight and still running around rooftops in red, yellow, and green. Richard Grayson was well into his forties and could still answer without hesitation that his favorite uniform of all time had involved those tiny green shorts.
Damian, however, refused to participate in those fashion choices.
Upon reaching adulthood, he had finally graduated from Robin and chosen a name of his own: Cardinal.
There had been no grand ceremony, no dramatic passing of the torch, and certainly no ten-page manifesto about legacy, identity, or what the symbol meant to him. One day Damian had simply decided that cardinals were respectable birds—bright, alert, territorial, and therefore appropriate.
His current suit was far less colorful than anything he had worn in his younger years. Most of it was muted silver-gray and black, with deep red tracing the edges of his armor and cape. Under the right light, the color flashed briefly through the dark like a blood-red wing.
Jason had taken one look at it and said, “Huh. You finally stopped dressing like a Christmas tree.”
Damian elbowed him in the ribs.
Jason reconsidered. “Still a little dramatic, though.”
They fought for fifteen minutes in the Batcave while Richard filmed the entire thing under the pretense of breaking it up. Tim and Stephanie dragged Cassandra over to watch, and Bruce stood at the top of the stairs in silence for a full thirty seconds before apparently deciding that he had not raised any of these people and therefore bore no responsibility for what they were doing.
Adulthood, as it turned out, was mostly a scam. Some things never changed.
Damian’s schedule, however, remained meticulously organized. Monday through Thursday, he worked at the hospital during the day, returned to the Manor or his apartment in the evening for a short rest, then joined patrol later at night. On his remaining three days, he avoided non-emergency surgeries whenever possible, slept, trained, kept up with the latest medical journals, and took longer patrol shifts after dark.
His calendar was planned down to the minute.
Tim had once stared at it in silence for several seconds before the man who, in his youth, had survived on approximately four hours of sleep every three days said with complete sincerity, “Bro. You have problems.”
Damian had scoffed, but he had to admit the routine gave his life a strange sort of balance. During the day, he kept people alive on operating tables; at night, he tried to prevent them from ending up on one.
Eventually, Cardinal acquired a deeply undignified reputation among Gotham’s vigilantes:
The combat medic from hell.
The greatest advantage of partnering with Damian was that your odds of dying dropped dramatically. As long as you still had a pulse, he could usually pry you out of Death’s hands.
Jason had personally tested this theory after being shot during a mission. He had been sprawled across the floor of a safehouse, watching Damian swear at him while keeping pressure on the wound with his bare hands.
Finally, Jason rasped, “Doc, can I opt out of treatment?”
Damian did not look up. “Say one more word and I will kill you myself.”
Jason peacefully shut his mouth.
Even after becoming a doctor, Damian had never properly moved out of Wayne Manor.
There were plenty of practical reasons: the distance to the hospital, the Cave’s medical facilities, easier access to missions, and the fact that Titus, Alfred the Cat, and the rest of his animals were accustomed to the grounds and should not be subjected to unnecessary environmental changes.
Then there was the other reason. Bruce living there alone was unbearably depressing. Damian would rather eat his own cape than admit that one aloud.
Whenever Richard asked, “So you’re definitely not staying because you’re worried about Bruce rattling around this place by himself?”
Damian would look him directly in the eye. “No.”
“Really?”
“Go away, Richard.”
The answer was obvious.
Wayne Manor was simply too large.
When they were children, with people constantly running from room to room, it had somehow seemed as though there were never enough bedrooms. Only after everyone grew up did Damian realize how long the hallways actually were, how quiet the dining room could become, and how strangely hollow footsteps sounded on the stairs when nobody else was home.
The laughter of their younger years had not disappeared.
Growing up had simply meant leaving.
Richard spent most of his time in Blüdhaven. It was not far from Gotham, but it was his city now, his life, his nest as Nightwing. He had gone through several serious long-term relationships over the years, yet had never married or had children. Somehow, without Damian quite noticing when it happened, Richard had crossed into his forties and still showed no sign of settling down.
Damian was not particularly surprised because some birds were simply meant to stay in the air.
Richard would probably remain Nightwing until the day someone physically removed him from a rooftop.
Jason was much the same in his own way. Middle age had mellowed him considerably. The sharpness that had once made it seem as though he might explode in any given room had never vanished completely, but time had worn down some of the edges. He was still Red Hood, still had his territory, his rules, and the lines he refused to let anyone cross.
He simply no longer needed anger to prove that he was alive.
Over the years, Jason had mentored younger heroes, occasionally helped the Titans deal with one disaster or another, and continued riding his motorcycle through Gotham’s worst neighborhoods at night. Sometimes he stopped crimes, sometimes he helped old friends with a mission, and sometimes he shot a problem in the kneecap before finding a hole-in-the-wall diner nearby with a burger good enough to make the evening worthwhile.
And Timothy Drake? If a Gotham vigilante disappeared for six months without warning, there was no immediate reason to panic. He probably was not dead.
He was probably just somewhere outside Earth’s orbit.
Tim had spent years taking missions with Kon, Cassie, and the rest of his old team, traveling farther than any of them. The boy who had always seemed determined to take the world apart, reduce it to data, and understand every single piece had eventually gotten his wish.
He had seen a very large universe.
Strangely enough, once Tim reached his thirties, he began to slow down. Maybe that was simply what happened when you were young: the world seemed enormous, staying in one place felt like a waste, and every horizon demanded to be crossed. Then you traveled far enough for long enough and eventually realized that some things had been waiting for you exactly where you left them.
Tim had several serious relationships over the years. Some were gentle, some sharp-edged, some lasted a long time.
Eventually, all of them became past tense. He stopped rushing toward the next one. He never married and never had children, and somewhere along the way he seemed to finally accept a fact he had spent years trying to negotiate around: Timothy Drake was probably never going to stop being a hero.
He was proud of being a vigilante. Proud of what he did. Even when something approaching a peaceful life had once been within reach, Tim had ultimately turned away from it and chosen the ridiculous, dangerous existence he had always loved.
These days, though, he spent most of his time in Gotham again. By day, he was one of the most dangerous people operating behind the scenes of the Drake-Wayne financial empire, overseeing companies, foundations, and more investment projects than any sane person should voluntarily take responsibility for. By night, he put the suit back on and protected Gotham in his own way.
Kon came by sometimes. Cassie did too. Bart had a habit of appearing in the Manor kitchen without warning and consuming an entire tray of pastries in under three minutes, although usually the old team gathered at Tim’s downtown penthouse instead.
They were no longer teenagers. Their collective IQ still seemed to drop by twenty percent every time they were in the same room.
Barbara had long since grown beyond being the woman behind a screen coordinating everyone else’s lives and had become a force in Gotham in her own right. Cassandra was still quiet, but she had built a career and life of her own. Stephanie remained so relentlessly Stephanie that age appeared to have taken one look at her and given up; she had even taken over part of the training program for younger vigilantes. Duke no longer needed anyone looking over his shoulder.
Batman had protégés everywhere and children coming out of the walls.
Yet the only one who still lived with Bruce long-term was Damian.
It was ridiculous and, somehow, completely predictable. After all, the youngest Wayne had spent half his childhood informing anyone within hearing range that he was Father’s only legitimate heir.
Decades passed. Everyone else flew away.
And Damian did, in fact, inherit the sacred privilege of drinking morning coffee with their elderly father.
Life was strange. They still came home for holidays whenever they could, and when they did, the long dining table filled up again. Someone stole someone else’s alcohol, someone fought over the last slice of pie, and someone wrapped a gift in a way that made the entire family briefly suspect it contained an explosive device.
Sometimes their patrol routes crossed by accident, and a group of fully grown adults who should have known better would pour into the Batcave at three in the morning, dropping equipment everywhere exactly as they had twenty years ago.
Somehow, life kept going.
And it was not bad.
As it turned out, if you lived long enough, even Gotham became a little gentler.
The old generation of rogues were, unfortunately for them, still human, and humans got old. By this point, roughly eighty percent of Gotham’s classic villains had either reformed, retired, or been defeated by some combination of health-insurance paperwork, arthritis, and high blood pressure.
Several had apparently established a regular card night. Rumor had it Penguin and Riddler had nearly come to blows over the rules of bridge on three separate occasions.
Mr. Freeze had turned his considerable scientific talent toward domestic refrigeration. Poison Ivy occasionally accepted contracts from the city for environmental restoration projects. Harley had opened a counseling practice alongside her wife.
Even Joker had eventually been forced to acknowledge the existence of aging. He had gone from a minor incident every other week and a city-wide catastrophe at least once a year to properly resurfacing perhaps once every three years.
By Gotham standards, this qualified as a civic miracle worthy of a parade.
The new generation of criminals was somehow even funnier. People raised in the age of the internet appeared considerably less interested in putting on skintight costumes, choosing absurd aliases, and dedicating their entire lives to conquering Gotham.
After working an eight-hour shift, most of them would apparently rather go home, lie in bed, and scroll through their phones than blow up City Hall.
Crime had gone down. The cost of living had not. Gotham was still Gotham, just slightly less insane.
Time, however, remained cruelly efficient, and Damian understood that better than most—especially in the mornings when he sat across from his father at the breakfast table.
Bruce had a great deal of gray in his hair now. It had started at the temples and slowly spread until silver-gray became the dominant color whenever he could not be bothered to dye it. He was still in excellent shape, still trained and still patrolled, but a doctor’s eyes were difficult to fool.
Old injuries, joint damage, a slight decline in reaction time, the occasional almost-imperceptible pause when Bruce wrapped his hand around a mug, the lines on his face becoming deeper with every passing year—taken together, they all pointed toward the same unavoidable conclusion.
Bruce Wayne was no longer young.
Damian knew aging was not an illness. In some ways, it was a privilege. He had spent enough time in hospitals to know how many people never received the opportunity to grow old.
Gray hair was proof of survival. Wrinkles meant someone had lived long enough to earn them, and complaining about your back because you were getting older meant you had been lucky enough to reach an age where your back had something to complain about.
Damian did not resent time for moving forward. He simply treasured it more now.
Bruce’s parents had died young, Alfred had been gone for years, and the stubborn man who had spent his entire life bleeding for Gotham had finally reached the evening of his own life.
Damian wanted to stay beside him a little longer.
That was all.
Companionship did not always require grand gestures. Sometimes it was simply breakfast at seven-thirty in the morning, coffee filling the kitchen with its smell while two eggs cooked in a pan beside greens, cherry tomatoes, and sliced garlic seasoned with salt, black pepper, and a little olive oil.
Whole-wheat toast popped from the toaster with a cheerful ding.
The newspaper waited beside Bruce’s seat, with his medication arranged neatly beside it. In the end, life came down to ordinary things: food, sleep, home.
Even for vigilantes.
Even for heroes.
Even for Damian al Ghul Wayne.
It had taken him twenty-eight years to reach this point. He had gone from a child of the League of Assassins who understood victory and death better than affection, to Robin, to Cardinal, to a trauma surgeon standing in the kitchen cooking eggs for his father.
He had seen enough and done enough that, somewhere on the edge of thirty, Damian finally found a place in the world that felt like his.
He had long since outgrown the need to prove himself to everyone around him. The furious, arrogant child he had once been now existed mostly in humiliating family stories.
These days, Damian saved lives. He argued with his siblings. He had dinner with his father whenever he could.
That was enough.
Morning light spilled through the kitchen windows and stretched across the counter as the toaster chimed again.
Ding.
Breakfast was ready.
Standing there in the quiet warmth of Wayne Manor, Damian suddenly realized that he was happy.
Ten years ago, the thought alone would have made him scowl. Now he could admit it without shame.
This quiet, uneventful, almost boring life was the kind of small happiness some people spent their entire lives trying to reach.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
It was Sunday.
Damian had no hospital shift, and nothing had been scheduled for patrol that evening, so when Jon Kent flew over from Metropolis that afternoon and knocked on one of the Manor windows, Damian—for once—did not ask why the idiot had apparently forgotten that doors existed.
The two of them settled on the balcony with steaming tea between them and a fresh tray of cookies in the middle of the table.
Jon took one bite and immediately stopped, his eyes widened. “Oh my God.”
He stared at the cookie, took another bite as if verifying the data, then gave Damian a solemn thumbs-up. “This ratio is perfect.”
Damian leaned back in his chair. “You have said that three times.”
“Because they’re really good. Can I have another one?”
Damian pushed the entire plate toward him. “Those are your share. No one is fighting you for them.”
Jon immediately took a second cookie, delighted.
Decades had passed, but the completely unguarded happiness on Jon’s face whenever he ate something sweet remained almost identical to what it had been when they were children.
Damian felt the corner of his mouth soften.
“Oh,” Jon said around another bite, “what happened with that patient who caused trouble at the hospital last time?”
Damian lifted his coffee. “Unfortunately.”
Jon straightened. “Was it serious?”
“No. Although he will be staying in the hospital for another month. There was an issue with his foot.”
Jon stopped chewing. Two seconds passed before his eyes widened. “Wait. Did you beat up a patient?”
“No.” Damian managed to look almost innocent, which, to anyone who knew him well, was usually a terrible sign. “Jason happened to stop by the hospital that day.”
Jon stared at him. A mental image clearly formed behind his eyes: Jason Todd, pushing two meters tall, built like a brick wall, well into middle age, and somehow no less intimidating than he had been twenty years earlier. “So…”
Damian finished for him. “The man became excessively agitated and unfortunately fell.”
Jon did not believe this for a second. “He fell.”
“Yes.”
“Just… fell.”
“Yes.”
Jon nearly choked trying not to laugh. “I’m so glad you two get along now,” he managed after coughing himself upright. “I remember when you couldn’t have a three-sentence conversation without fighting.”
Damian corrected him. “We still fight.”
Adulthood had done strange things to all of their relationships.
Jon had grown much closer to Kon over the years, which naturally meant he also saw more of Cassie and the others. At the mention of them, Jon brightened. “Kon drinks coffee now.”
Damian lifted an eyebrow. “Finally. He has fallen.”
“Cassie too. They keep lecturing me about it.” Jon cleared his throat and dropped his voice into a deeply unimpressive imitation of Kon. “‘Once society has beaten you down enough, you’ll understand caffeine addiction too.’”
Damian showed no mercy. “You are almost thirty, Kent. You are only now being beaten down by society?”
“Hey!”
They talked for a long time about construction projects in Metropolis, Gotham General’s new medical systems, and Kon’s latest off-world mission. Eventually the conversation drifted toward the Wayne family’s yacht trip the month before, a rare and almost alarmingly successful attempt at a family vacation.
It had been one of their best family outings in years, assuming one ignored the fact that Jason and Damian had both wanted the last Batman plushie in a souvenir shop and somehow escalated the disagreement into a water-gun duel.
Tim had originally been sitting safely off to the side, enjoying the spectacle.
Then Damian missed Jason, the stream of water hit Tim’s phone dead center, and there, that newest iPhone on the market died instantly. Tim went completely silent for five full seconds and then he grabbed a water AK47 and joined the war.
By the time Damian finished telling the story, Jon was practically face-down on the table laughing. “So who got the plushie?”
“I did.”
“You won?”
“No.”
Jon blinked twice while Damian took another sip of coffee. “It's mine. That is all that matters.”
The Kents had recently returned from a family trip of their own. They had gone to a remote valley far from any city, and because nearly everyone in the family could fly, the primary purpose of bringing a vehicle had apparently been to hold luggage.
They picked apples, made cider, and then spent an entire week eating Lois’s homemade apple pie, apple crumble, apple bread, and apple jam.
“By day three, Kon was begging her to cook something that wasn’t apples,” Jon said, already laughing again. “So the next day Mom made baked apples.”
Damian stared at him. “…I am beginning to understand his suffering.”
Good afternoons never lasted long enough.
By the time either of them noticed, the sunlight outside had shifted from bright gold into warm orange-red. Jon had plans in Metropolis that evening, so he stood to leave, naturally packing every remaining cookie into a box on his way out.
Damian watched him do it and made no attempt to stop him.
They were Alfred’s recipe.
The first few times Damian had tried recreating them years ago, he had once confused the sugar with the salt. Now he could get them almost right.
That was what people did after someone was gone, Damian had learned. They found ways to keep pieces of them—a recipe, a particular smell, a familiar phrase, even the exact order in which silverware was arranged on a table.
Maybe that was the gentlest thing about memory.
People left, but the Alfred inside Damian’s memories would never grow older. He would always be standing in a warm kitchen with his sleeves neatly rolled, looking exactly as Damian remembered him.
Jon stood outside the entrance with the cookie box tucked under one arm and waved.
“See you next time, Damian!”
“Until next time, Jon.”
That should have been the end of it. Instead, Jon stopped and turned around. “Oh, hey. Are any of your brothers home today?”
Damian frowned. “Only Father and me. Why?”
Jon blinked, suddenly uncertain. “That’s weird. I thought I heard three heartbeats earlier.”
Damian’s attention sharpened immediately. “One was yours, one should’ve been Bruce.” Jon tapped the side of his head. “There was another one. The rhythm sounded kind of familiar, actually.”
He hesitated. “But maybe I'm wrong.”
Damian said nothing. Within ten seconds of Jon leaving, he had retrieved a staff from the training room.
Kryptonian hearing did not generally produce hallucinations, certainly not hallucinations involving spare human heartbeats inside Wayne Manor. If someone had managed to enter the house without being detected, Damian would be delighted to personally educate them on the consequences of choosing the wrong home to burglarize.
He checked the second floor first: guest rooms, old bedrooms, the study, the hallways. Empty. He searched rooms that had not been used in months and found nothing.
Finally, Damian descended into the Batcave. The main console was empty. So were the medical bay and training area.
And yet someone was here.
Damian stopped, and within seconds even the sound of his footsteps disappeared. Years of peace had not erased League training from his body. He slowed his breathing, shifted his weight, and moved silently toward the corridor leading into the deepest part of the Cave—the research and development wing.
The farther he went, the stronger the smell became: hot metal, solder, insulation.
Something had been running for a while. Then Damian saw a back so familiar that his eye twitched. He lowered the staff.
“Timothy Drake.”
No reaction.
The man had his back to him, bent over an enormous mechanical structure.
Thirty-something Tim no longer possessed the narrow, almost underfed frame of his teenage years. A very belated second growth spurt in college had finally taken pity on him, leaving him tall, long-limbed, and lean enough to look Damian directly in the eye without needing to tilt his head.
At the moment, however, he also looked like someone who had personally declared war on the basic biological requirements of the human body. His hair appeared to have recently survived a hurricane, dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes, his collar was wrinkled beyond salvation, and protective goggles sat crooked across his nose.
He had the unmistakable look of a man who had continued working long past the point where ordinary people began seeing sounds. The machine in front of him was no ordinary laboratory equipment either. Copper wires crossed silver rails in a dense web, while dozens of mechanical gears fitted into a semicircular frame. At the center hung three metal rings, each rotating in the opposite direction from the one beside it, their surfaces covered in delicate markings.
Some were recognizable equations and physical constants. Others were very obviously magical script.
Suspended at the exact center was a clock face without hands, marked with twelve divisions but no numbers. Every time the gears moved, pale blue-white light flickered behind the glass like time itself was trying to run backward.
Damian stepped closer. “Drake.”
Tim finally reacted, though he did not turn around. “Damian? Sorry. Kind of busy.” The soldering tool descended again. “Give me a minute. Almost done.”
Damian had spent years developing emotional maturity. He was a respected surgeon, a grown man, and a trained professional.
Even so, he experienced a sudden and vivid desire to kick Timothy Drake directly off his chair.
The man had entered the Batcave without telling anyone, apparently had not showered in at least three days, quite possibly had not slept in three days either, and now had the nerve to tell Damian to give him a minute.
Damian walked over without another word and brought the staff down across the machine, precisely blocking the section Tim had been about to adjust.
“No. You are going to tell me what this is first.”
They stared at each other.
After several seconds, Tim released a long and deeply put-upon sigh before pushing the goggles onto his forehead. Exhaustion made his Klein-blue eyes seem colder than usual.
“I am in the middle of inventing something that will redefine the century because I have a very complicated mission,” he said with perfect sincerity. “So, please, get out of the way.”
Damian narrowed his eyes. “You are conducting a high-risk mission without informing anyone else.”
Tim’s expression flattened slightly.
“Otherwise,” Damian continued, “you would not be hiding alone in the deepest part of the Batcave.”
Two seconds of silence passed before Tim shifted seamlessly into negotiation mode.
“My favorite little brother,” he said with a smile, “what do I have to give you in exchange for your silence?”
Damian did not answer immediately. He was less concerned with exposing Tim than with the state Tim was in.
Tim had not spiraled into a project like this in years, not since reaching his thirties. This was the old pattern: working for thirty, forty, fifty hours straight and forgetting that sleep was a biological requirement rather than an optional hobby.
But something about this was different.
There was something in Tim’s eyes Damian could not identify—not excitement, not even ordinary obsession, but something almost nostalgic, something determined in a way that bordered on grief.
Especially when Tim looked at him.
It left Damian with an unpleasant sensation he could not explain, as though those blue eyes were not actually looking at the man standing in front of them. It felt as though Tim were looking through Damian and seeing somebody else.
Someone who was not there.
Damian disliked the feeling immediately.
He was twenty-eight now, no longer the child who interpreted two additional seconds of eye contact from Drake as a personal challenge and answered by reaching for a sword. He forced the irritation down.
“Would the others consider what you are doing dangerous?”
Tim nodded once. “Yes. Which is why the fewer people who know, the better.”
“What exactly are you trying to solve?”
For once, Tim did not evade.
He reached over and activated the nearby terminal, and a blue holographic display unfolded between them, dense enough with data to give almost anyone a headache. Spatial folding, magical fluctuations, timeline displacement, quantum anomalies—several regions were highlighted in red and labeled as unobservable.
Tim pointed to one of them.
“There’s a variable in the temporal structure. A weird one. It isn’t a standard fracture, and it doesn’t match any known overlap with a parallel universe. The Flash can’t locate the point of origin. Booster Gold’s tracking equipment can narrow it down to a general range, but that’s it. Even the Green Lantern Corps can’t get a complete waveform.”
He paused.
“Worse, there seems to be an observer constraint. If the origin point doesn’t recognize you, you can’t meaningfully interfere with it.”
Damian scanned the information. “So?”
“So.” Tim spread his hands. “Congratulations to me. Competence continues to be its own punishment.”
He gestured toward the machine. “I’m currently the person closest to a viable solution, so I’m building something that can take me directly to the source of the anomaly.”
Damian’s eyes landed on the timeline, and it took him only seconds to identify the real problem.
“The origin point is not in the present.”
Tim pulled his goggles back down. “Nope.”
“It is several decades in the past.”
“Yep.”
Tim picked up his tool again. “So if you could pretend you saw absolutely nothing and let your poor, suffering older brother get back to work, that would be fantastic.”
He paused.
“Oh, and bring me food later?”
Damian stared at him.
“I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning.”
At twenty-eight years old, Damian Wayne was an accomplished trauma surgeon, an experienced vigilante, and a grown man who had spent years developing healthy emotional regulation.
It had been a very long time since he had felt his blood pressure rise this quickly.
Somehow, after all these years, Timothy Drake was still exactly like this: convinced every problem in existence had somehow become his responsibility, willing to believe that if he calculated the risks thoroughly enough he could quietly remove himself from the equation, and apparently still operating under the assumption that his own life would always be the cheapest variable available.
Damian stared at him for several seconds.
Then he turned around without a word and slammed the door behind him.
BANG.
The metal door shook in its frame.
Tim paused, looked at it for several seconds, then returned to work.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Twenty minutes later, the door was kicked open. “Put that down and come eat before I kill you.”
Damian walked in carrying a tray with a murderous expression on his face and not a single drop of soup spilled. In the center sat a fresh plate of pasta with meat sauce, finely diced beef browned with onion and simmered in tomato, black pepper, and herbs. Beside it was a bowl of light vegetable soup.
Tim’s stomach, which had apparently submitted its resignation several hours earlier, abruptly returned to duty at the smell. He stared at the food and swallowed.
Damian set the tray down with more force than strictly necessary. “Eat. All of it.”
Tim immediately removed his goggles. “Thanks, my favorite little brother.”
“Tt.” Damian sat across from him. “I am your only little brother.”
“Which guarantees you’ll always be my favorite.” Tim said this with absolutely no shame and immediately wound an enormous forkful of pasta around his fork.
The sauce had just enough acidity under the sweetness, the beef was tender without falling apart, and the onion had almost melted into the tomato, leaving only a faint sweetness beneath the herbs. Tim took several bites in rapid succession before looking genuinely impressed. “You know, your cooking is getting closer to Alfred’s.”
Damian’s fingers paused. “Not even close.”
Tim drank half the soup in one go. Warmth settled through his stomach and even the dull headache at his temples seemed to ease. “Bruce is a lucky bastard.” He twirled more pasta onto his fork. “Have you ever considered quitting your job and becoming my personal chef?”
Damian gave him a cold smile. “Dream on, Drake. When you finish eating, go upstairs and sleep. Father is still readjusting after his trip. He will not come down tonight.”
Tim stopped chewing for half a second. Their eyes met and the meaning written inside was obvious.
Damian was not telling Bruce.
Not yet. If he exposed the entire project immediately, there was a very real possibility Tim would pack the machine into one of his safehouses and disappear, which would remove the idiot from Damian’s direct supervision.
Damian preferred keeping him where he could see him.
The Batcave had always served two purposes for their family. It was their base, but when necessary, it was also where they returned when they needed somewhere safe to fall apart. Tim owned private laboratories and safehouses all over the city, yet he had chosen to build this machine here.
That alone was suspicious.
There were only two logical explanations. He needed Wayne Manor’s highest-level security and containment systems, and he needed somebody willing to cover for him.
Among the family, Richard was catastrophically overprotective, Jason would make the situation everyone else’s problem in under thirty seconds, and most of the others were currently outside Gotham. Which left the person most likely to listen before immediately sounding the alarm—and who conveniently lived at the Manor.
Damian’s eyes narrowed. Across from him, Tim continued eating with studied innocence.
That bastard. He had planned on dragging Damian into this from the beginning.
Tim eventually noticed the stare. “What?”
“Nothing.” Damian took out his phone.
Tim immediately narrowed his eyes. A faint sense of danger entered his expression. “Wait.”
Too late, the message was already sent, less than a minute later, Bruce replied.
[Of course. Tim can stay as long as he wants. 🙂]
Damian stared at the smiley face for half a second before tuning the screen around, “There. Everyone now believes you will be staying at the Manor for the next few days. Father will not find it suspicious, and you have no excuse to leave.”
Tim slowly lowered his fork. “When did you get this manipulative?”
“Since always.” Damian stood and picked up the training staff leaning against the wall. “Finish eating. Shower. Sleep. Or I will smash your time machine with this.”
Tim immediately raised both hands. “I surrender.”
After a brief pause, he tried, “I’ll take a nap. Wake me in three hours?”
Damian nodded. “Fine.”
Tim visibly relaxed. “I will wake you in eight.”
“Damian.”
“Ten is also acceptable.”
“Eight is great.”
“Deal.”
Tim drained the last of his latte.
Damian looked him up and down with open disgust. “Shower first. You smell worse than Titus after he rolled through the mud.”
Tim laughed. “Okay, okay.”
Half an hour later, water was running in the upstairs bathroom. Another half hour after that, Wayne Manor finally went quiet.
Damian confirmed that Tim was actually asleep, increased the room temperature by two degrees, and confiscated the phone that was still vibrating on the bedside table.
He could make rice porridge in the morning. Bruce was still recovering from jet lag after a long-distance mission, and Tim’s stomach should not be subjected to anything too rich after several days of abuse. Eggs, whole-wheat toast, some fruit—enough carbohydrates and protein. Damian arranged breakfast in his head with the same efficiency he used when planning surgery.
Then he switched off the main light and left the room.
The hallway was quiet, night spilling through the tall windows and wrapping Wayne Manor in soft blue shadows. Damian walked all the way to the end of the corridor before stopping.
A portrait hung there.
An elderly man in an immaculate suit stood with his back straight and his expression gentle, the faintest suggestion of a smile touching the corner of his mouth.
A small plaque beneath the frame read:
ALFRED PENNYWORTH
Damian had painted it himself.
It was one of the reasons he had never been able to make himself leave Wayne Manor completely. Every time he passed this hallway, all he had to do was look up. Sometimes, for the briefest moment, it felt as though Alfred might step out of the kitchen again, sleeves perfectly rolled, and offer some calm observation about the absurdity of Damian’s schedule.
Or Damian might return at some obscene hour bleeding through his uniform, and Alfred would stitch him together while saying, with the driest possible disapproval:“I am pleased to see you still remember the way home.”
Damian stood in front of the portrait for a long time.
Eventually, he lifted one hand and brushed his fingertips over the edge of the canvas before lowering his head and resting his forehead against it. The painting was thin, but memory stretched much farther. If Damian closed his eyes, he could still remember exactly what Alfred had smelled like......White tea leaves and the faintest trace of butter.
Damian closed his eyes, the corner of his mouth lifted, barely.
“Good night, Pennyworth.”