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Damian's first impression of his father is that he could've been taller.
In all the photos and videos Mother had shown him, Batman appeared larger than life, soaring above the streets and swooping in to deliver swift justice; the clash with reality leaves him a bit disoriented. The man standing in front of him is just that - a man. A rather young one, too, now that Damian is thinking about that.
He knows he's been aged up to receive the optimal training fitting the heir of the Demon, but it's still striking to see the result. If his math is correct, Mother managed to steal about six years; he doesn't recall much from his very early youth, memories blurring together in an endless flurry of training and pain.
Must be weird indeed to have a dalliance with someone four years ago and then have them show up with your nine-year-old son in tow, but Father takes the news in stride. He waits patiently as Mother instructs Damian to be obedient before she leaves, and then takes him into his ancestral manor. After all the tests are run - Father is not so foolish as to trust Mother on her word alone - he is introduced to Pennyworth, who is a servant but is to be treated with the same respect as Father, and is shown to his quarters.
Sneaking out is a child's play, and so is locating Father on the night streets - Damian had much harder tests when he was an infant. Father, however, is not pleased with his success, cutting the patrol short and returning him back under Pennyworth's supervision, where he receives a lengthy lecture about safety and acclimating and being a child. As if he was concerned with either of those things.
He does it again.
After the fourth time Father brings him back to the Cave, he turns off the engine but doesn't move. Damian waits patiently until he sighs and says, “I don't suppose I can talk you out of it?”
Damian scoffs, “Absolutely not. I have come to aid your mission and become a worthy heir to you. I would hardly achieve that sitting around in the manor while you are risking your life out there.”
Father seems to consider that. Time slowly ticks by, and Damian forces himself not to fidget with long-practiced ease.
“Batman and Batlad,” Father sighs and says at last. “What do you think, chum?”
Damian can't help but wrinkle his nose at that.
“Batlad? Batlad? Are we just adding bat to everything?” He points around himself at the sleek interior of the car. “Are we in a Batmobile?”
Father's mouth twitches in a suppressed smile, and to Damian's extreme chagrin the name, both of them, stuck.
Father abstains from patrol for a few nights in order to go over the rules he expects Damian to follow. It's both similar and different from the League: he is expected to obey Father, but his main focus must be keeping himself safe, not Father. He is allowed to keep his sword and use it to protect himself or others, but without excessive or lethal force.
When they finally leave on a patrol together, he is given his own suit. It closely resembles his father's, heavily armored and ridden with more trackers than an alley cat with fleas, ranging from glaringly obvious ones, meant to be located by his possible captors, to the tiny hidden ones, carefully tucked away into seams and folds.
In another reality, in his place there is a Robin, a bright light of hope to Batman's darkness. In this one, the Batlad is a silent witness, a shadow of a shadow, watchful and unseen until much too late. Instead of pulling Batman out of darkness, he is already there, forbidding Batman from taking a single step back. After all, there's nothing more condemning than your son watching your every move and rebuilding his moral system off of it.
Father doesn't seem to know how to talk to him, at first; his silence suits Damian just fine, and he would've gladly spent the entire patrol just by being close to his father. Then, it seems, his mere presence forces Father into initiating a conversation, stilted and awkward, as if he's not used to speaking to people when he's not performing for the public. What starts as short conversations during patrol transforms into long talks about everything and anything; Pennyworth often joins them, either over the comms or when he takes a break from his duties when they are in the manor during daytime. Damian is surprised to learn the man has a wealth of warfare experience, but in hindsight he should've expected that - who else could've raised his father to the man he is now. Coincidentally, Damian notices parenting books when he passes Father's study on his way to the Cave; the amount steadily grows as he gets older.
Over the years, following the rules becomes easier. He's already extensively trained for violence, so Father focuses on defence and teamwork. Working in a team is different from the solitary assassin style, and he is expected to watch his father's back, as well as assist civilians while Father apprehends the threat.
Caring for others is not forbidden - in fact, Father actively encourages it both during and outside patrol - so Damian is finally able to indulge in the urge the League tried hard to train him out of. Father also doesn't forbid pets, which was an impossible dream back then; for the first time he can hold something small and fragile and not be expected to kill it, even when he fails. His punishments are never physical - Father seems horrified when Damian brings it up - and usually rather sensible, for which Damian is grateful.
His least favorite part is maintaining their civilian covers as the son of Brucie Wayne; he hates galas and crowds and pretending to be an inept child for others to underestimate. As always, he endures, and continues to be the dutiful son he was raised to be, fully aware of the legacy he is expected to carry.
When he is almost twelve, Father confides in him, during a long uneventful stakeout, that his arrival had shaken him out of his obsessive focus on the past. Suddenly, there was a reason to look forward to the future; he was not the last Wayne anymore.
The League is quiet, so Damian assumes his mother's coup has gone well. A few ninjas sometimes appear in his field of vision, but they never interact with him. Had they been his grandfather's, he would've already been kidnapped; Damian likes to think Mother is keeping an eye on him from across half the world.
“You need a haircut,” his Father murmurs, running his fingers through Damian's hair one evening before they go on a patrol. Damian is about fifteen, tall and gangly, not yet bulky enough for his frame; after six years by his father's side they fit together like well-made parts of a single mechanism, knowing each other's movements as well as their own.
Damian tucks a strand behind his ear, his hair finally long enough to be able to do so. “I'd like to grow it longer, if you don't mind.”
Father presses his lips together. “It's a risk in the field if you can be grabbed.”
“And your cape is not grabbable?” Damian raises his eyebrow at him in his best imitation of Alfred. “When you're good, it's not a risk.”
So he keeps his hair long, and then even longer, until he can braid it. Partially because he knows it displeases Father, and it is a harmless act of rebellion he can allow himself. Mostly, though, because with his hair long, his face reminds him of his mother's. After all those years away from her he still misses her fiercely, and with his hair smoothing his jawline he can glimpse the resemblance to her if he squints.
He does add metal spikes to his braid, in case someone lucky gets close enough.
A year later, when his braid reaches between his shoulder blades, Father comes home with the news that their neighbors’ plane has crashed, and their only son has no living relatives. Given they had just taken down a trafficking ring behind one of the orphanages, Damian is not surprised Father volunteers for fostering.
When the child is released from custody and arrives at the Manor, Damian conducts himself with civility. He's seen Timothy Drake during galas before, though they've never talked, and knows him to be a shy and quiet child; he has no reason whatsoever to be aggressive to a freshly orphaned kid.
He can tell his father is both pleased and pleasantly surprised by his behavior. Deep inside, however, Damian can feel the insecurity welling up, threatened by the new inhabitant - this is someone his father chose to accept into his home, whereas he was thrust upon him as a result of a youthful mistake. Father, understandably, directs a lot of his attention to his new ward, and despite being independent long before Damian himself arrived to his care it still stings. He's been spoiled by the years he was Father's and Alfred's sole focus.
The longer he looks at the Drake kid, though, the clearer it becomes that something is seriously wrong with the boy. Father trained his observation and detective skills even more heavily than the League did; once he notices he can't stop looking, and he doesn't like what he sees.
Timothy shares a disturbing amount of similarity to the abused cats Damian's treated in the shelter. A child of their social status should not be this thin, nor so obviously starved for attention. Damian spent his childhood among the assassins, and even he wasn't that bad off when he was delivered to his father. The kid manages to mistake his cool politeness for affection, and follows him around like a little duckling. Or a kitten.
Damian might or might not have warmed up to him rather fast after he makes that connotation.
The fifth night Damian comes to tuck him in, Timothy takes a deep breath and blurts out, “I know you're Batlad.”
Years of training keep Damian's face impassable, but inside he's loudly saying what the fuck.
“What do you mean?” He asks evenly.
Timothy reaches under his pillow and takes out a photograph.
Damian immediately recognizes the rooftop of the theater, and then remembers the context. A year ago, he’d taken a faceful of Ivy's pollen and Father had helped him wash it out, and the water had dislodged his mask a bit. Not enough to fully show his face, but just enough to see when you know who you're looking at.
“Where did you get that,” Damian asks, barely hearing his voice with the surge of adrenaline. His mind is listing through the contingencies Father prepared for an identity breach; not a single one of them predicted a literal child figuring them out.
“I took it!” Timothy beams at him, blithely unaware of three different crises he just put Damian through, looking more animated than he was the entire week. “I have a few albums filled, do you want to see?”
Damian is not sure he wants to, but they definitely will. “Tomorrow, it's a school night. We'll talk about it in the morning, alright?”
He tucks him in, as intended, and takes the photo with him. Father is in his study, finishing the daily report before they go on a patrol. He doesn't startle when Damian slams the photo in front of him, but his face does go stony when he really looks at it.
“Timothy took it,” Damian says, voice carefully controlled. “He's known our identities for over a year, if not longer.”
Father spends a solid minute processing that, before closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “He did seem unusually eager to come with me when I showed up to take him home,” he says.
“A prepubescent child has been following us for over a year at the least, and we both missed it?” Damian can't keep the indignant shock out of his voice. “Are we sure he's not a meta?”
Father shakes his head.
“I tested him already,” he raises his hand a little when he hears Damian inhaling. “Before you ask, no, he's not mine either.”
Damian huffs out and doesn't bother hiding his disappointment. Someone this brilliant should be of their bloodline.
With their secrets out, Timothy boldly shoulders his way into their night life. He flutters around the Cave in fascination, thrilled to see the Batmobile and their costumes up close, and falls deeply in love with their computer system. The doe-eyed slip of a boy hides a wickedly sharp mind and a lack of self-preservation instincts worthy of a seasoned adrenaline junkie. The albums he’d mentioned are full of pictures, and the stories of his nightly escapades that come with them are enough to make Damian's hair go gray; Father looks alarmingly close to a heart attack.
He's exceptional with technology, and soon joins Agent A in manning the comms. In his mind, Damian promotes him from a kitten to a black-footed cat; tiny, but scarily efficient.
The kid is a little weirdo and Damian loves him like he's never loved anyone before.
Timothy, for some reason, has been deeply fascinated by Damian's hair since they first met, and spends a lot of time braiding and unbraiding it; Damian is well aware of the benefits of social grooming in packs, so he doesn't mind letting the kid play with it. Most of the time he leaves his hair down or in a bun, and sooner or later Timothy will appear as if summoned to put his fingers in it.
About a year after joining them, Timothy's caught the cold coursing in his school, and therefore is benched to comm lines along with Agent A instead of training. Damian is suited up, hair in a bun for Timothy to braid. He sits on the floor in front of the Cave computers, and Tim whirls around in his chair to get to work.
Damian's eyes lull closed at the feeling, the only sounds he hears are the bats fluttering above and the metallic scrape when Timothy picks up another spike to weave in the strands.
They're halfway done when he hears a sneeze above him.
“Hope that wasn't at my head,” Damian says, not opening his eyes. “You sneeze like a bitten, Timothy.”
Timothy's fingers stop in his hair. “A what now?”
“A bitten. A baby bat is usually called a puppy but bitten is also an option.”
“Oh.” Timothy resumes his work. “I think I preferred it when you called me a blue-ringed octopus. Sounds more menacing.”
Damian hums. “Don't write them off, bats can carry rabies. Suits you perfectly, actually.”
Timothy pulls at the hair strand he is holding in retaliation, and then slips off the chair when Damian tries to catch him in a headlock. The braid, still untied, comes apart, and Timothy redoes it after a brief but intense bout of roughhousing.
Now that Tim is undergoing active training, he's getting better at hand to hand fighting; he wasn't bad to begin with, but he mostly relied on his speed and a small taser he carried with him during his batwatching sessions. Damian still wants to cry a little when he thinks about those.
Despite Damian's best efforts, Tim doesn't like swordfighting, but he's shown aptitude with a bo staff, and drills the moves with laser-focused intensity. Soon, he'll be ready to join them on patrols, and not for the first time Damian thinks that perhaps Batlad is not what he is anymore.
“It's going to be pure black?” Timothy asks a few months later, plastering himself against Damian's back as he's spending his time in the library, and leans over his shoulder. He's warm and a little damp after his shower, and his sharp chin digs into the muscle above Damian's collarbone.
Damian hums in agreement. He hasn't really thought of the color scheme yet, mostly focusing on functionality, trying to improve the armor-flexibility balance; he had to dismantle his Batlad suit quite a lot to allow the range of movement he needs. Father wasn't happy about that but eventually conceded that he can't keep Damian armored like a tortoise forever.
The suit being black makes most sense; same as his assassin clothes, he needs it to blend in with the night. They both look at the sketch Damian’s made as he cross-hatches it tightly to indicate dark color.
“Your eyes are really pretty,” Tim says, a wistful note in his tone. “Maybe include that as a color accent?”
Damian doesn't say his eyes are, most likely, the result of the Pit water Mother had him drink in small drops. His healing is still faster than normal people, and his night vision is superior to his father's, and that's not even touching his dubious origins. He's walking a very fine line between a human and metahuman, if he's honest with himself.
He still picks up a green pencil and adds tiny specks at the edges of his armor plates, going from the neck down, and when he's finished, it looks rather like-
“A starling,” Timothy says with excitement, a bit too loud and right in Damian's ear. Damian nods and writes it down under the sketch, calligraphy lessons showing in his handwriting.
Later, in the Cave, he gives it to Father. He's already decided, but Father's approval would mean a lot to him. Father takes the drawing with care and spends a long few minutes inspecting it. Damian forces himself to stay still.
“Gotham hasn't seen stars in a long time,” Father finally says, and places the sketch on the workbench where spare parts of their armor are organized by size. On the side, there is an almost finished suit, smaller than Damian's; a handful of trackers lie next to it, ready to be sewn in. “No one better suited for her to look up to.”
“It's for the bird, Father,” Damian says, and hides his smile in his shoulder when Father pulls him into a side hug. “Don't mix your metaphors.”
“Then I'll be happy to fly alongside you,” Father presses a kiss to his temple and returns his attention to the trackers, picking up a needle. “My lawyer called, the adoption papers finally went through.”
A week later, after they return from the City Hall and have a celebratory dinner, they lead Timothy to the Cave. His baby brother expects to operate the comms as usual; instead, he is presented with a brand new Batlad suit, tailored to his size and even more armored than Damian's earliest design.
Timothy gasps when he sees it, looking at them with stars in his eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Of course, Timmy,” Damian says, and smiles when Timothy slams into his chest for a hug. “You are going to be great.”
That night, Batman watches over the city with a new Batlad and a new vigilante by his side. Father says Starling with the same intonation as darling, and it fills Damian with pride every time he hears it.
A few days after his debut, Damian comes to a letter on his pillow. He immediately recognizes his mother's handwriting.
Congratulations on your new position, dear.
Your grandfather and his core allies have gone to ground, stay vigilant until I contact you again.
The ninjas had indeed been there for his protection, Damian thinks with a lot of warmth in his chest. Mother needn't worry, though. He is strong enough to protect himself and others around him, now.
He's allowed a year to believe that.
The worst thing about Timothy's death is how mundane it is. The absolute worst part is that it's not even about him - as always, it is about Father.
Timothy leaves for a solo patrol, as he's started doing recently, spreading his wings; a quiet early night, no Arkham breakouts, both Damian and Father busy with civilian obligations. A night like a hundred others before it, nothing to indicate something might go wrong.
Damian is the first one to respond to the distress signal, and it takes him about seven minutes to reach Tim.
He is seven minutes late.
What greets him is a slit throat and a broken bo, the dark puddle beneath Timothy glistening in the dim rooftop lights. If the cheeks split in a bloody smile aren't enough of a clue, the smiley face drawn on the floor with his blood definitely is.
Damian doesn't remember the rest of the night fully.
Memories come in patches; sharp pain in his throat, his shaking hands as he comms Father, flashes of streetlights as he flies, cold drops against his skin as it begins to rain. Rollercoasters of the Amusement Mile. Blood on his gloves. Both Superman and Batman holding him down as he tries to get up and fight.
He finally comes to in the Cave, when Alfred, eyes red rimmed and looking ten years older, ushers him to the showers.
Damian looks at himself, leaning at the sink for support.
He's seen the thousand yard stare on many victims, but it's jarring to meet one in a mirror.
His ears are ringing.
He knows he should unlatch his costume and unbraid his hair, but his body refuses to move, distant and heavy, so he just stands there dissociating. When he finally forces to unclench his fingers from the porcelain, he raises his hand to the clasp at his throat, the movement slow and sluggish.
He brushes against his braid, and the memory of Timothy's fingers braiding it this very morning comes unbidden to his mind. Before he can register it, a dagger is in his hand, and then there's a thud, the metal in his hair tinkling when it hits the ground.
The back of his neck feels naked and cold.
“Oh, my boy,” Alfred sighs when he comes back to the Cave, and sets out to fix whatever mess is on Damian's head.
The next time he looks in the mirror, Father stares back.
Life has left the manor along with Timothy. Most evenings find all three of them sitting together in heavy silence before patrol; all the words have already been said. Father tries to drown himself in work, going from dusk to dawn to avoid the emptiness of the Manor. Damian follows him, as he always does; he can feel the simmering anger under his father's skin, the desperate need to let it out during patrols, hits landing harder and harder. Damian, as always, bears witness; just like when he arrived, his presence is the only solace he can offer him.
His own grief comes in apathy. For the first time since his arrival Damian considers going back to Mother - what's the point of his training, of his father’s rules, of this forsaken cursed city if they can't even keep their kin safe?
In the end, his filial duty wins - he cannot abandon his father in his darkest moment. And, wretched as she is, Timothy was born and raised in Gotham, and he loved his city. Enough to give his life for her, and the least Damian can do is to keep protecting her in his stead.
All that is left of Timothy is his room they leave untouched, and his suit, displayed in a case along with the others. Father wants to put a plaque to it, but Damian forbids it; no words can describe what they've lost.
Just as the hopeless grief peaks at the death anniversary of his grandparents, Father brings a boy to the Cave.
Jason, once he realizes he's safe, is full of life; overflowing with it enough to fill the whole mansion and the three walking corpses in it.
Father takes to the boy immediately; he is a man of action, and Jason provides an outlet where he can pour his desperate need to fix things instead of bashing criminals’ heads in.
Damian is happy Father's managed to find something to keep him afloat, but he himself feels empty inside. To his burning shame, he firmly keeps his distance. He's cordial with the boy, stepping in when his father needs his expertise to train his successor, but he can't love him. He knows he won't survive it again.
Some months later Damian finds Jason in front of Father's study, looking at the wall of pictures.
Another thing they have left of Timothy is his photos. Almost every room and hallway in the manor has a few of his works, either urban or still nature, but what he loved the most was portraits. Most of Damian's childhood photos are taken by Alfred, where he and Father stand side by side solemn and serious, and a few rare photos of their birthdays and Christmases; none of them took many pictures before, despite Alfred's best attempts to fill his albums for memory keeping.
Timothy took hundreds of candids, rarely putting his camera down; if Damian thought there were a lot of their nighttime pictures, he severely underestimated how much Tim enjoyed documenting them in their daily life. He himself preferred to be behind the lenses, not in front of them, so most of the pictures they do have of him were taken when he wasn't aware he's being photographed.
Damian's favorite is the one where they are in the main ballroom; it has a massive mirror wall, and in its reflection stands Father, who is flanked by Damian and Alfred, with Timothy leaning against his chest as he takes the photo. All of them are smiling; it feels like something out of a previous life.
“You don't like me much, do you,” Jason says, not like a question but more as a statement.
Damian gives a Father-esque grunt, not confirming but not denying. He doesn't not like Jason, but there is a Timothy-shaped hole in his heart in which Jason doesn't fit at all.
Jason gives him a side eye at the sound. “Is it because I'm from the Crime Alley?”
“No, of course not,” Damian says, and then stops. Saying ‘it's not you, it's me’, while true, sounds ridiculous, and Jason will rightfully think he's lying.
“I do not... dislike you, Jason. If anything, I'm grateful you've provided support to Father when I couldn't,” he finally says. He's still studying the photo; Father barely had any gray hair back then, and Damian's braid lay over his chest, green ribbon entwined in it. All of their hands rest on Timothy's shoulders. “Why are you only asking about it now?”
Jason watches him. He is perceptive for his age; has to be, in order to survive the streets, where reading a person's intentions correctly could be the difference between life and death.
“Because I think B's gonna start taking me out with him soon, and I need to know if you've got my back,” he says, also glancing at the photo. “I’m not... trying to take his place or anything.”
“I know.” He can't. "I will guard you, but..." Damian gestures to the photograph, where he's smiling, his hand on Timothy's shoulder, and there's light still in his eyes. "Don't expect that. My ability to love people died with Timothy, there's nothing you can do.”
Damian turns around and leaves before he can say anything else, heading to the Cave. With the way things are going, Jason is going to take the Batlad position sooner than later, so he knows it's time.
He offers the Joker the same mundanity that ended Timothy. A quick visit to Arkham, no breath wasted on words, a bullet between the eyes, a second one to the heart, exit, throw the gun away.
He's been complicit long enough, and now no children will die at the Joker's hands.
And yet, the next day the Joker escapes Arkham.
They are nearing the area he was last sighted in, and Damian grips the handle of his sword so hard his knuckles hurt. His heartbeat echoes loudly in his ears, deafening in the tense silence of the batmobile.
How is he not dead. How. How-
“He can't die,” Father suddenly says, grim as they speed down the Kane Bridge.
Damian startles, badly, and curses internally for immediately giving himself away. “How did you-”
“I'm the goddamn Batman, Starling.” Feeling the long suffering stare Damian is drilling into him, Father continues, “One of the easiest points to escape Arkham is through the morgue, and you've been off since the alert.”
As Damian digests that, Father shoots him with, “Also, you didn't check for new trackers in your suit. We'll be having another training session in vigilance soon.”
Motherfu-
“What do you mean he can't die?” Damian bites out in a hopeless attempt to redirect Father's attention. Not that it would work, but he still has to try. He's been rather enjoying not having to go through additional trainings since he'd moved on as a fully fledged vigilante, and he'd like to keep it this way.
“Exactly that. I've seen three different people kill him, and he shows up alive again the next day.”
Cursed fucking city.
“Shouldn't we... do something about that?” Damian says slowly. He knows Father's stance on murder, but this is getting ridiculous at this point.
“What makes you think I haven't?” A long moment of silence passes; Damian’s too surprised by the question to even think to answer it. Father’s gloves creak as he tightens his grip on the steering wheel. With a grim finality, he says, “For now, our best option is to keep him contained.”
They arrive at the Amusement Mile, but the Joker has already disappeared, the trail going cold.
Jason loudly refuses to postpone his initiation despite the Joker being on the loose, and gets a brand new suit. Father managed to fit even more armor in it, the kevlar going all the way up to Jason's chin, and Damian knows he is seriously considering adding a full face helmet to really finish the ensemble.
Jason doesn't have a preferred weapon, unlike his predecessors, and leans more into hand to hand combat, sometimes augmented with the brass knuckles he manages to sneak past Batman. A vestige of his time on the streets, Damian assumes, and doesn't push the matter. He's also surprisingly talented at comforting the victims, able to quickly establish rapport and provide emotional support; something that is not Damian's nor Father's strongest suit.
They get a few weeks of relatively calm patrols, which they spend easing Jason into their patrol routine, keeping him close at all times, when the Penguin is murdered in his own bed.
Harvey, Scarecrow, and Black Mask follow next in short succession, most high ranking officers taken out with them. The kills are swift and impersonal; rumor has it a new player has entered the game, and he is taking out the competition with ruthless efficiency. Some of the rogues, like the Riddler, Ivy, and Freeze, are smart enough to stay cooped in Arkham; the guards, laughable as they are, protect the inside rather than the outside.
The power vacuum blows up in massive gang wars, and the GCPD forces drown in them immediately, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of violence. The mass conflicts don't seem to settle naturally since the moment a new leader is established, he is found dead, and the circle begins anew.
For the first time in a long while, both Batman and Starling have essentially zero leads. The new rogue has no known allies nor aliases, and those who are caught working for him remain tight-lipped even during the harshest interrogations, terrified of the man. The rogue, whoever he is, somehow never gets captured on cameras. The only image of him they get is a smudged screenshot from two streets away - a tall, lanky male in a black suit suspiciously resembling Damian's; despite an obviously different build, Damian can't help but be glad he was by his father's side when the sighting had occurred.
In hindsight, that was a giant tell - there aren't many people able to go on par with Batman, and even fewer able to completely evade him.
They get closer when Jason is captured. Normally, they never let the Batlad out of their sight for too long, given what happened to the previous one, but with the turf wars at their peak they are stretched thin.
Damian follows the tracker signal to a warehouse and barges in, heart beating high in his throat; he cannot be late again, Tim's still body flashing before his eyes, and he knows this moment would replay in his nightmares repeatedly. Batman is hot on his heels, almost crashing into his back when Damian stops.
Jason is unharmed, save for a few bruises and scratches. The traffickers lie around him in broken heaps, unmoving and mostly unbreathing. There's surprisingly little blood; most injuries are blunt trauma.
“He was there,” Jason says as soon as they reach him, Batman wrapping his cape around him in a frantic hug. He doesn't need to specify. “Dropped off the ceiling, whacked them with a pipe and disappeared right after.”
“Anything unusual?” Batman asks gruffly, patting him down in search of injuries.
“His eyes glowed,” Jason says, a bit muffled where his face is still pressed into the kevlar. “Not a lot, but visible through the glasses. Green.”
Damian sucks in a breath, and Father goes still.
“Batlad,” he forces out through a closing throat. “How was he holding the pipe?”
When he finds a longer piece of rebar lying around and hands it to Jason, Jason demonstrates a picture perfect bo grip.
They pour over Jason's mask footage, rewatching the brief fight again and again. The new rogue is definitely League trained, deadly efficient in his sparse movements, the metal pipe in his hands flying like a bo staff. He's wearing a face mask and dark glasses, but even through them they both can see the unmistakably green glow of the Pit.
Damian's spiraling.
Grandfather might have lost the Head position to his daughter, but he still has access to the pits and human resources. Mother had never let him close to Grandfather's chosen ninjas when he still lived there, herself or her handpicked bodyguards always present when they had to interact. She had done all she could to shelter him as much as possible, but Damian still had been generously exposed to the League and its ways during his relatively short stay.
Damian knows his Grandfather's tastes, and he knows how his pet projects end up-
If that really is Timothy-
If his baby brother had been there all this time-
If Grandfather had-
Damian throws up, barely making it to the trashcan, body shaking as he cannot escape the horrors his mind keeps conjuring.
Father steps out of the shadows when Damian nears the jet.
“Let me through,” he says, voice hoarse from the bile and suppressed screams.
Father doesn't move.
“If that really is him, we need to be in Gotham," he says, and steps closer. “Ra's can be dealt with later. He will need you here.”
Damian doesn't fight it when Father's arms pull him closer, until he can hide his face in his shoulder and hold him tight as he cries.
It all comes to a fiery end when the Gotham night, already loud with gunshots, is torn apart with explosions, effectively tying up all the city forces in damage control. Damian is on his way to assist Father and Jason when a commotion catches his eye.
First thing he notices is the snipers; Damian had been extensively trained to spot the scopes wherever possible, and the reflected light immediately grabs his attention. Next- are those his ninjas? When he grapples closer, he sees where their focus is directed to.
Below them, on a lower skyscraper, there are two figures. A tall, lanky one stands on the edge with his back to them, and in the center of the rooftop stands the Joker, seemingly in the middle of a monologue. Hatred licks up his veins, and before Damian can join the fray and kill the fucking clown again, their nameless rogue raises his hand and makes a finger pistol, shooting it at the Joker.
At his signal, the snipers - quite a few more than Damian had initially counted, to his dismay - fire at once. The Joker eats at least seven bullets in the first round, and then some, the lead rain not stopping until there's not an untouched part of his body left. Whoever those guys are, they are thorough.
The other person observes his handiwork for a few moments, then turns around to face the city.
Damian's heart clenches.
Gods, that's Timothy. That's Timothy's face, if he'd been allowed to grow up.
Even from the distance between them, he sees Timothy smile - twisted by the scars, but still undeniably real, a smile of a job well done - as he takes in the burning city, the plumes of smoke rising and the sirens blasting.
Then Timothy gently tips over and falls.
The sound that leaves Damian is barely human; he fires his grapple down, to gain more speed, and slams into Timothy barely in time to throw a second line.
They land on a smaller building, hitting the rooftop in a heap; Damian takes the brunt of the fall, curling around Timothy and rolling with the momentum. The next moment Damian is grabbing him, frantic hands passing over his hair and his face. The cheek scars are stiff ridges under his fingers, and his eyes are brilliant green, only a few tones lighter than Damian's.
“Timothy,” he gasps out, winded from the fall and oncoming tears. “Timothy, oh god, Timmy, I'm so sorry-”
“What happened to your hair?” The question breaks through Damian's litany of words and he barks a laugh that sounds like a sob. He thought he'd never hear his brother's voice again outside the few voice messages he's kept on his phone.
“Cut it off,” he says, still clutching Timothy close as if he would disappear if he let him go for even a second. “No one braids it like you, bitten.”
Timothy scoffs, and Damian notices that his own hair reaches past his chin, longer than he'd ever seen on him before. He tugs at a strand gently.
“I killed him,” bubbles out instead of another remark he was going for. He cannot stand the thought his brother might think he went unavenged. “I swear to you, I killed him, he got back somehow-”
“So did I,” Timothy says, rather sanguine. “Got back somehow, I mean, although I also killed him- do you think it will stick this time?”
Damian glances up, as if trying to see the Joker colander lying on the rooftop.
“I don't know,” he admits. “We might ask uncle Clark for help, maybe if we throw him into space-”
He cuts himself off, reminded of the height they just came from, and glares down at his brother, the adrenaline still thick in his veins. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that B's methods are ineffective,” Timothy says with a cold edge Damian's never heard from him before. “I cleaned the city up from the worst killers, and I was about to get rid of the last one.”
Damia shakes him hard enough his teeth clack together.
“Looks like escaping responsibility to me,” he snarls, fingers digging in his shoulders. “That's not what you do, Timothy.”
“That's literally the opposite of what I'm trying to do here,” Timothy throws his hands up as he says that, the same way he did every time they argued about movie plots or which takeout to order, and the gesture tears another sob-laugh out of Damian.
Damian clutches him harder, imagines Timothy's breath ghosting against his throat.
“Why didn't you come home?” he whispers. The Penguin was murdered almost a month ago.
“He wanted me to kill you and Bruce,” Timothy says in his neck, just as quietly. The sirens are still blaring in the background, and Damian has to strain to hear him. “I managed to.. redirect the urge, but I didn't want to risk it.”
“Timmy,” Damian sighs out in his hair. At that moment he hates his grandfather almost as intensely as the Joker. The clown might’ve taken Timothy from them, but Ra's had kept him away, poisoning his mind and body.
“It's okay,” he says. He's not in a habit of offering mindless consolations, but it flows out without his control. “It's going to be okay, you're alive, that's all that matters.”
“It’s not,” Timothy says, a hint of misery breaking through his calm tone. “Bruce-”
“Will be overjoyed to learn you're alive,” Damian says with steel in his voice, the unsaid ‘or else’ hanging between them. He will not let something as arbitrary as Father's rules keep his brother away from them; he knows Alfred would have his back on this, and between the two of them Father stands no chance. “Let's get you home, Timothy.”