Chapter Text
In the League, there is no room for failure.
If you’re gravely wounded, the next time you close your eyes will be the last. If you let a target get away, the tables turn as the predator becomes the prey. And if you’re bested more than five times during a skill evaluation, then a round of conditioning will surely straighten you out. The League strives for nothing but perfection, and as the sole Heir to the Demon’s Head, Damian must be the pinnacle of their strength. The stakes are steeper for him, the demands tougher.
So he grows under conditions akin to asking a flower to bloom in a desert, where every mistake is noted and punished, leaving him with scars carved into his skin that spell out every lesson he’s had to learn and relearn. He learns to throw knives with needlepoint accuracy, to wield a sword that’s twice his weight when he’s only just learned to stand, and how to center his mind in the face of torture.
It’s harsh and cruel.
It’s normal.
Mother doesn’t share the same sentiment, coddling him the best she can in the privacy of their room and providing him a playmate in times of loneliness. The first time he meets his brother, he’s confused and curious about the new person in their life, and a little bit excited to have a companion.
When he asks her why the gift, she tucks him in close.
“This is no life for a child,” she tells him under hushed breaths.
Damian doesn’t understand why she says things like this—this is the only life he knows. And when it’s suddenly ripped out from under him in a blaze of crumbling rock and pools of blood to be replaced by skyscrapers and a foreign man who claims to be his father, Damian realizes he is unprepared for the world.
In Gotham, there is room for failure.
What the specific criteria and punishments are for such failures is lost to him as they seem to change depending on the mistake, the context, and the emotions in the moment, and it leaves him reeling, grasping for anything familiar in a world of unfamiliarity.
He doesn’t understand why he’s given a lecture when he attacks Tim Drake or turns his blade on Dick Grayson when the latter attempts to interfere. He doesn’t understand why Father looks at him with such disappointment, such guilt and…shame when he tells them to not be concerned about his age since he already has blood on his hands and is more than capable of spilling more in the name of justice. Isn’t that what Father would want? A strong and skilled soldier to add to his army?
And yet, Father’s disappointment remains.
It seems no matter how much Damian tries to prove himself, Bruce is unsatisfied.
In Damian’s parentage. In who he is.
He doesn’t expect it to hurt. He doesn’t expect to care.
But he does.
He feels it every time Grayson approaches him like an alien entity, uncertain whether he’ll be met with words or blades, and in the way the eldest takes Drake’s side in every argument. They’re not arguments Damian intends to start and he certainly doesn’t want to be having them. Despite his upbringing, he doesn’t want to fight. Not amongst family.
Never amongst family.
“Enough! What’s going on here?” Grayson demands, standing in the entryway of the family room to take in the sight of his two brothers—caught in a Mexican standoff—the broken vase on the side table, and the throwing knife embedded in the wall behind it. His eyes settle on Damian, who’s clutching the TV remote tight in his hands.
Naively, Damian opens his mouth to explain.
“Damian’s being selfish, that’s what’s going on here,” Drake cuts in.
Indignant to be blamed, he snarls. “I am not selfish.”
“Then share the TV.”
“It’s the middle of the show.”
“Damian,” Grayson chides, shooting him a reproachful look and something sharp and ugly twists in his gut and it's not the pain of biting his lip. Not for the first time, he wonders how he could be so stupid to think this would turn out any differently than the last 103 arguments.
“He’s been hogging the TV for the past two hours and Kon and Bart are coming over soon for a movie night, and he won’t give it up. I wasn’t even kicking him off of it yet, I was just giving him a warning and he went all looney-tunes on me,” Drake continues, twisting the situation to better suit him like he always does and painting Damian to be the villain they already see him as—so easy to fly off the handles, always threatening violence, and downright conceited. He embodies everything they hate about the League and he can’t do anything but let them. Not when they speak over him just as his trainers used to do.
“That’s not true!” Damian protests anyway. “You tried to grab the remote from me!”
Drake tears at his own hair. “Because you weren’t listening to me!”
“And that makes it alright?”
“If it gets your attention it does.” And grab his attention, it did.
“You should’ve just asked.”
“Oh my god, for fucks sake, I did!”
Drake doesn’t get it.
Bruce frowns as he enters the room, drawn by the commotion. “Language, Tim.”
“Sorry, Bruce.”
Grayson holds up his hands, padding towards Damian in sock-covered feet to play the usual neutral party.
“Damian, can Tim use the TV? You can use the one in my room to finish your show and I’ll even watch it with you. It’s Animal Planet, right?” Grayson smiles, hand reaching out for the remote. For a moment, the diffusion works. Honestly, Damian doesn’t really care about Tim using the TV. He understands the fundamental concept of sharing and if he gets to finish his show elsewhere then he has no qualms against giving the family room up. That isn't the issue.
Grayson’s hand latches onto the remote, tugging it away from Damian, and his body reacts, ripping it away and out of the former's reach.
His heart pounds in his ears.
The issue is this.
“See?” Drake drawls in irritation and Damian bites his bottom lip harder.
They don't get it.
Grayson sighs, maneuvering around the reach for the remote again. “Come on, Damian.”
Damian leaps over the back of the couch, putting it between them and promptly bumps into Father.
There’s a hand on his shoulder, guiding him to turn—Father’s hand.
“Damian, this isn’t a game,” Father says, sounding as exasperated as he looks.
“But he didn’t ask,” Damian says.
Another hand trying to grab the remote from him and his blood roars.
None of them get it.
He ducks out of Father’s grasp, back hitting the archway, and he just wants them to stop.
“Fine, you want the remote?” He chucks the remote in Drake’s direction with a pathetic amount of coordination, more focused on getting the offending object away from him than to anyone in particular. “Take it!”
The remote shatters against the wall. Grayson’s voice is ear-splitting, simultaneously high-pitched and scolding as though he were some scandalized maiden taking issue with an unruly pet.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” Drake snarls and Damian digs into the reservoir of anger constantly sizzling at the surface.
“At least I’m not an imbecile!” He screams, voice cracking.
“Damian,” Father reprimands, the words “go to your room” on the tip of his tongue but Damian’s already fleeing the scene, slamming his bedroom door shut against the strangers he’s supposed to call family.
Huddled in his room, back against the door as a precaution in case anyone tries to force their way inside, he tries to breathe, remembering what Mother told him before coming to Gotham so he doesn't do something impulsive like try and run away from this godforsaken family. Again.
“Be grateful your Father has agreed to take you in. You’ll be safe with him.”
“But I wish to be home,” he protested, weak and shaky, confused. “I wish to be with you, Mother, and Akhi—” His throat closed up at the thought of the brother she had given him, left behind during their escape from Nanda Parbat.
“Learn to be a kid, will you?” Were Akhi’s last words to him.
You were supposed to teach me.
“I know you do and I wish it too,” she said, lifting his chin. “But it isn’t safe for you, and as much as it pains me to be apart from you, I will spend the rest of my days on the other side of the world if it will keep you safe." She squeezed his shoulders, kneading them down from his ears. He melted. "I love you, Damian...my strong little prince.”
“And I you, Ummi.”
She smiled, pressing a kiss to his forehead.
“Always remember why I must leave you here and the sacrifices that were made to make it possible,” she whispered, folding him into her arms one last time. “Do not resent me, habibi.”
“I don’t resent you,” he whispers now into the unfamiliar walls of his room, and he means it with every breath. It is because of those sacrifices that he is still alive and he must not forget it.
Footsteps pass by his door, pausing to knock. Sometimes it’s Grayson. Sometimes it’s Father. He ignores them all, their queries about wanting signs of life and their pathetic attempts to try and coax him out to spend time with them, and shifts to lie on his side. Curled up on the floor, back pressed to the door, he feels a chill not even the heaviest of blankets can get rid of.
It is lonely in this manor.
He doesn’t know how much time has passed when Pennyworth visits.
“Master Damian?”
Like the others, he’s tempted to ignore the man. It’s purely the respect he holds for the butler that has him answer.
“It is time for patrol. Master Bruce has asked me to fetch you.”
“Tell him I won’t be joining.”
There’s the sound of fabric shifting and Damian cranes his neck enough to spy the shadow under the door getting larger as though someone is kneeling at it, and sure enough, Pennyworth’s voice comes in clearer from under the door.
“Are you sure?”
No, he’s not. He loves patrol. It’s the only time he feels…free.
As if hearing his thoughts, Pennyworth speaks again. “Perhaps the fresh air will do you some good.”
Damian sighs begrudgingly.
The butler is right as always.
Drake doesn’t say anything when he spots Damian passing by the family room where he and his friends are watching some action packed film with far too many colors to be anything but a headache, and Grayson smiles all too gently when he appears in the cave. It’s only Damian, Grayson, and Father on patrol tonight, given the gathering upstairs, and neither of the men think to pull Drake away from a bit of rare relaxation.
“You ready for patrol?” Grayson asks and Damian nods once.
“I’ll wait for you in the batmobile,” he says in lieu of any greetings.
He doesn’t miss the glance the two adults share over his head.
For the most part, nothing out of the ordinary occurs during patrol. There’s a few robberies that are quickly taken care of while Damian watches from the sidelines, per usual, and no sign of any rogues cooking anything up for once. Which means he has more time just to fly through the city, shooting his grapple from anchor point to anchor point, roof to roof. Occasionally he strays too far from Father and he’s called back with a grunt of Robin, quickly falling back to Batman’s side.
It’s near the end of their patrol that things change.
A bird calls somewhere to Damian’s left and he ignores it, having heard hundreds of birds just this morning. He wakes to them screaming at the top of their little lungs outside his window, forcing him to engage with the day lest he decide his love for animals stops at feathered vertebrates.
The whip of his grapple shooting and catching drowns out the second call.
But he doesn’t miss the third.
Damian’s grapple squeaks to a halt, leaving him suspended along a building with his feet braced against it.
He waits, heart pounding in his chest because it can’t be.
By now, Batman’s noticed his failure to appear on the roof with him, and Damian spares a glance up at the cowl peering down at him. His father’s speaking but he hears none of it, occupied with something far more important than questions about why he’s ceased his movements.
He listens to the air around him, searching.
The call comes again, louder and his heart jumps, hope dancing across his face.
…could it be?
There’s a flash of red from the corner of his eye, deliberate.
Another call with a taunting lilt at the end.
And he just knows.
Batman shouts above him as his grapple hook releases the roof, throwing him into a free fall. It’s a dangerous maneuver, one Grayson has lectured him on repeatedly, but what Father and Grayson don’t know is that Damian is far from an amateur grappler. The roof across the street is empty when he arrives and his hope wavers.
Please…
He hears Batman’s grapple fire after him.
Please be real.
He needs it to be, desperately.
A figure steps out of the shadows across the way, drawing his eyes to red robes trimmed with al Ghul gold and a visor-mask combo that he’s watched being cleaned day in and day out. His breath hitches, eyes wide in disbelief and overflowing excitement. The assassin waves, a jaunty little thing, and Damian’s already taking off after them before they’ve shifted their weight.
Nothing about this chase is familiar, it’s all looming highrises instead of stone and trees, and yet everything about it is. The adrenaline rush of a hunt, every whip and snap of the grapple rattling his bones, and the red assassin darting in and out of the shadows. It’s clear they know the foreign environment better than he did–-had grown up in it–-and they use it to their advantage. He finds himself falling behind, unable to keep up with the path they’re taking, and the time between each glimpse of red gets farther and farther.
A younger version of himself would’ve demanded the game to stop, beyond frustrated.
“You are too fast!” He’d scream, throwing his grappling gun to the dirt all while monkeys and birds laughed at him.
Weak, they chanted.
“You are small for your age,” his trainer stated, doing little to comfort him. The abandoned grappling gun pressed to his chest, the force of it effectively knocking him out of his pouting as his hands flew up to catch it. When the assassin spoke again, their voice was soft, understanding. “But so was I.”
Damian was told that it didn’t mean he was weaker. In fact, it made him stronger.
“That’s a lie,” he said to the shake of the assassin’s head. He got a poke to the sternum for his troubles and a lesson. His small stature and stride made him unthreatening, easy to underestimate. This alone was a weapon, and if he learned to use it, whether it was by being able to read any environment or move fast and hit low, he’d be able to take on any opponent bigger than him.
“Even you?” Damian quipped, spirits lifted at the sound of the assassin’s laugh.
“Even me.”
Damian’s boots beat against cement as he lands, launching himself from rooftop to rooftop.
Use the environment.
“–mean he just took off?!” Grayson shrieks through the comms.
“I really don’t see how I can be any more clear,” Father says, voice distorted by the rush of wind.
Damian’s sent skidding when the assassin feigns left and goes right, suddenly doubling back to throw him off their trail. Instead of following them, he goes the opposite way, choosing a path of least resistance.
“Did you see what he was chasing?”
“No.”
“So you know nothing.”
Damian vaults over an AC unit, boosting off a chimney to reach the roof of some residential building. The vantage point gives him a better plan, mapping out a route in his head. He fires off another grapple, cutting across two streets in quick succession.
“Hm.”
“Dammit, B.”
The next time Damian spots the assassin, they head downward. He turns left and straight. Attempts to shake him off their tail continue for another five streets, each close call met with him grasping empty air or losing ground with each dodge, until with a hop, skip, and a jump, his shadow overtakes theirs on the next swing.
His opponent startles at the sudden shadow over them, twisting to face him. Pride bubbles in his chest at the sight.
Not bad, reads the tilt of their head.
Both their grapples release at the same time, sending Damian barreling into the assassin’s open arms. Even as they hit the roof, rolling in a bundle of limbs wrapped tight, for the first time since he left Nanda Parbat, he feels settled.
He feels safe.
The chest under his ear rumbles with a laugh, sharp and loud. He doesn’t need to see his brother’s face to know he wears a crooked grin.
The brother he thought dead.
Damian’s eyes sting and he refuses to cry. Not now at least.
“I see all the training’s paid off,” Jason compliments, voice like liquid smoke and freshly baked Baklava. “You really shocked me back there. Didn’t think you’d catch up to me so fast.”
I had a good teacher, Damian thinks as he tightens his arms around Jason’s waist and he swears he hears the man wheeze. He can’t find it in himself to care, not when he’s afraid that if he lets go, he’ll wake to find this to be a dream.
That he’ll be right back where he started.
In a house of strangers, utterly lost and alone. He must be silent for too long because he feels Jason pulling back.
“Little Prince? Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Damian says, fighting to keep his grip as hands try to extract it.
“What did I tell you about lying to me?”
“That my ears turn red when I do.”
“Exactly.” Jason tugs at Damian’s ear gently. “Talk to me, kiddo.”
With one last squeeze, he complies, shuffling back enough to give Jason space to sit up. There’s so much he wants to tell his brother, so much that he wants to seek comfort for though the League in him tells him to suck it up. He wants to ask how Jason’s here, how he survived, and why he broke his promise to always be by his side.
“I missed you,” he says, hands balled in the front of Jason’s robes.
Jason covered his hands with his own, easing his grip. “I missed you too.”
Before anything more could be said, Damian’s comm lit up again.
“Found him,” Batman says as he lands on the roof behind Damian. Jason pushes him behind him, an action that both warms and irritates Damian, and Batman relaxes his stance to show that he isn’t a threat and not to try anything. “So you’re the General. Talia let me know you’d be arriving soon.”
Damian perks up at the mention, peering up at Jason. “Mother sent you?”
“She said you were having trouble settling in and that my presence could ease the process,” Akhi explains in League Dialect and he easily makes the shift.
“She is wrong,” Damian huffs petulantly, crossing his arms. “I am not.”
“Oh? So then I am not needed? Shall I go then?” Jason makes a show of stepping away and Damian lunges to grab his arm, clinging to it like he used to when he was much smaller.
“That is not necessary,” he blurts, flushing. “I will not say your presence is not welcome.”
Jason hums thoughtfully, placing a hand atop his head, brushing through the windswept strands. “It is nothing to be ashamed of, Damian.”
“I am not.”
Jason shakes his head, flicking Damian's ear.
Batman clears his throat, shifting awkwardly. “If you’ll follow me, we’ll head back for introductions.”
“I can take him," Damian jumps up, already tugging Jason towards the edge of the roof. “You should go find Grayson."
“Fine,” Father says after a moment of consideration. “Be careful.”
“Yes, Father."
The journey home passes quickly, interspersed with games of cat and mouse, and Damian changes into his civilian clothes faster than if he’d been told the manor was on fire. When he speeds back out, Jason is standing in front of the second Robin’s memorial case, eyes locked on the tattered suit.
“You were smaller than I thought you’d be,” he says at Jason’s side. Damian recalls the stories the latter has told him over their years together. The home he found in the vigilante he’d hit with a tire iron, the adventures they had kicking ass and taking names, and ultimately, the grief. Face to face with the memory of that life, Jason appears as an imperfect replica of the kid who died in this suit.
“Malnourishment stunted my growth. Alfred and Bruce fattened me up while I lived with them but that damage had already been done. There was only so much they could do to get me to grow,” Jason explains, hand pressed against the glass. The plaque below reads “Jason Todd, a Good Soldier,” and Damian wonders if his memorial would say the same if he’s taken from this world early.
A good soldier.
The very thing he’s been trying to be.
An elbow jostles his shoulder, breaking through his thoughts.
“Don’t you feel smug?” Jason asks and Damian’s brows furrow.
“About?”
“Being the same height I was when I died despite being a fetus.”
He scowls on principle at the jab.
“I suppose.”
🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇
Damian was beyond relieved when Father allowed him and Jason to head to bed before introductions when he claimed they would best be served in the morning once everyone has rested. This, of course, was an excuse. In actuality, he simply wanted time with his brother.
As Drake said, he is selfish.
In the privacy of his room, there is no need for lies.
“How are you adjusting?” Jason asks, curled around him just like they used to back in the League. Without the mask and visor, Damian can see the faint glow of the Lazarus in his brother’s eyes and, while it's unnerving to many, it’s comforting to him. Like a travel-sized piece of home.
“Poorly,” he answers curtly, hoping that if he answers as such, Jason will get tired and drop the subject. Unfortunately for him, being stubborn as an ox runs in the family.
“In what way?”
“All of it.”
“That can’t be true.”
“It is.”
“Damian,” Jason sighs and he buries himself against his brother, duvet pulled tight to his chin. “Alright, fine. We’ll do this like pulling teeth. How’s Bruce?”
“Holds me in contempt.”
“That’s extreme.”
“It’s true.”
“Okay. What about Tim?”
“Definitely hates me.”
“Why? What did you do?”
It's not an accusation, he knows it's not. But after nearly a year of being barraged by those very same words with the intent to dole out punishment to him when they should've been asking for the facts of the case, it's triggering in a way he wishes it wasn't. Damian reels back, glaring up at Jason with enough venom to kill a blue whale, and his brother visibly startles.
“Why do you assume it’s my fault? Why can’t it have been Drake’s for once?” He snaps, overly defensive.
Jason blinks wide, running a hand along his back soothingly. “Hey, hey, you’re right. You’re right,” and immediately Damian feels ashamed for reacting so strongly, for taking out his frustrations and hurt on the one person in this stupid house who would listen to him. Unlike on the rooftops, the burn in his eyes refuses to be quelled.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, palms pressing against his eyes to the point he sees stars. “I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s alright, Damian.”
Don't lie to me.
“No, it’s not alright,” he whines, sniffling. The pressure in his chest builds, clogging up his throat. “Nothing about this is alright.”
“I know." Stop. "I know it isn’t–” and the pressure blows.
“No, you don’t!” Damian shouts, sitting up so abruptly the bed shakes. “You don’t know, so stop saying you do! I was left here by Mother with nothing and expected to live with these strangers who see me as more of an inconvenience than anything else. You know what I did on my first day here? I attacked Drake because that is what's normal in the league, a simple test of skill to evaluate our peers, and instead of being commended for my skill, I was punished!”
Somewhere in the midst of his vent, he switched to Arabic judging by the stillness on Jason’s face, a sign of his focus being cranked up to a hundred percent and Damian can’t find it in himself to care that his brother might be missing a few words here and there from the speed of his speech nor does he care that the rest of the house can hear him. The one saving grace is that they can't understand him.
As if they ever can.
“The rules here are different and trying to understand them is like trying to keep water from slipping through my fingers. I was never taught to live like this and you were supposed to teach me."
“Damian,” his brother says.
Damian bats Jason's hand away. “You were supposed to help me.”
“I know I was.”
"You promised."
"I know."
"You promised you'd be here and you weren't!"
Damian punches Jason in the chest with all the coordination of an upset child.
Jason doesn't stop him when another fist follows.
"You were supposed to be here with me, I needed you."
"I know you did—"
"THEN WHY!” He screams into the jagged void in his chest, crafted from broken promises and months of pent up pain and alienation in a home where no one has tried to understand him. The edges burn from his tears, the first to fall since he arrived in this miserable place, and the sobs that wrack the cage of his chest force them to fray into an ugly, uncontrollable thing—the wails of a child who's been abandoned. "Why did you make me leave?"
They both know nothing Jason said would be enough. So Jason holds him, pressed so tight against the former's chest that he almost wishes it would crack open and steal him away from this place.
"I needed you," Damian whimpers.
"I'm sorry." He can feel Jason's arms trembling and feel tears that aren't his wetting his temple. "I’m so sorry.”
Out of all his confessions tonight, Damian still hasn't uttered the hardest one of all. When both of their tears have run dry, he finally finds the courage.
"I feel like a freak," he admits, and Jason's breath hitches.
"Oh, Damian," Jason croaks. "You're not a freak."
"Then why do they act like I am?"