He remembered the way down, even after all this time. Halfway across the bay, halfway to Gotham, take the sub deep down and down and down, through an airlock, and there it was, resplendent in its teenage superhero headquarters glory. A couple of gaming consoles, a mini fridge he’d kept stocked with pizza rolls, a couple of fighting dummies, some assorted tech he’d never understood. All the essentials.
He expected the Fortress to reject him. He expected it to look all old and abandoned and lonely. He expected it to feel weird and foreign, like watching the old home movies his mom loved to play when she was feeling sentimental. Instead, it looked… fine. There was still a half-empty box of pizza rolls in the fridge, nowhere near its sell-by date. The Mountain Dew he’d left on the couch had barely gone flat. He had an old pair of socks strewn on the floor, and a hoodie draped on the back of his favorite gaming chair.
It was exactly the same, as if he’d never left.
Experimentally, Jon picked up the hoodie, and slid it on. As he’d thought, it was too small, stretching tight on his arms, straining against his shoulders. It was still studded with Krypto’s fur, still smelled like gym class and his parents’ detergent, just a little. He needed to get new clothes–almost everything in his closet was about five years too small, so he’d liberated a few things from his dad’s closet, but Clark was built, like, well, Superman.
He was sure he looked funny then, a gangling scarecrow in a too-small hoodie and a too-big tee shirt. Out of place, out of time. Out of his mind, too, probably. This whole thing was a weird nostalgia head trip. If he blinked, he was ten years old again, excitedly tripping over the corrugated metal flooring, proudly declaring it the FORTRESS OF ATTITUDE!, dreaming up a whole team, a future, in this magic clubhouse he shared with his best friend, who was older and scarier but also half his height, so. They were just about even.
Jon didn’t know if he wanted to see him. He didn’t know why he was here, really. Maybe he was looking for him? Maybe he was avoiding him? He didn’t know how to tell him. How did you tell him? Maybe his dad had told Damian’s dad, who’d passed it on in turn, in that weird growly I am the night voice that Damian swore up and down he’d inherited (he hadn’t). This place was so strange and empty without Damian’s vitriol to fill it, but Jon wondered if it wouldn’t be worse with it. Maybe that would be one step too many, one move too quick.
And then something moved, and Jon turned, and he didn’t have time to anxiety spiral any longer. It didn’t matter what he wanted now–Damian was here. He looked exactly the same, and Jon didn’t. Not even a little bit.
The continuous red flash of the small device on Damian’s desk mocked him, beeping softly with each repetition as the day went on. There was only one notification set to that particular tracker - one that Damian had set many years ago and had continued to influence throughout the years.
Jonathan Kent was back in orbit.
Summer vacation had been an endless onslaught of training for Damian. While Bruce wasn’t fond of his son spending large amounts of time in the desert with his assassin-oriented mother, they did get to occasionally see one another, especially now that Damian was out of school (as if he ever really went) and able to make more decisions on his own. Their training consisted of swords and meditation and a lot of boring nonsense that Damian had wanted nothing more than to skip because it was just like being back home with Bruce and Dick, legs crossed on the floor of the cave, breathing and existing.
With his mind constantly going-going-going, summer break had been a good way to work out some of his energy. He saw Jon for the first few weeks, until he had announced his intention to go to space (without him), and subsequently would be leaving Damian behind for a week or two. While irked, that was fine. Jon was his own person. They didn’t spend every moment together, after all. They weren’t attached at the hip like they had been when they were just pre-teens. They weren’t dependent on one another in a stupidly unhealthy way that their father’s mocked, and Damian’s brothers teased him about. Not anymore. They were grown, independent teenagers.
And if Damian had to swallow thickly around the lump in his throat at the thought of Jonathan Kent not needing him anymore, then he would blame it on allergies or thirst. Anything to hide this nurtured dependency on his best friend.
Now, it seemed, his time was up. Damian was tanned and golden from the harsh desert suns near his mother’s base, and he couldn’t wait to rub it in Jon’s face at how he’d grown nearly half an inch just over the few weeks they’d been apart, Damian a solid 5′6″ now, and growing.
His descent to the Fortress of Attitude was a well-worn one, Damian finding the little pleasures in the ride. Jon must have been incredibly bored without Damian to preoccupy his time - ready to pull that ridiculous Kent-curl from his head with frustration at being unable to see the youngest Wayne. Although he’d never admit it, Damian was beginning to feel restless without Jon by his side too.
The door opened with his access code, the back entrance to the Fortress closer to the manor than the main. It was also a fantastic hiding place, if he did say so himself. One that even Richard would be proud of, he thought.
When the main panel slid open to reveal their hideout, time seemed to stop. Or go forward. Or, or, or something. Damian’s head swam, gloved fingers reaching out to press to his forehead for a moment.
The man in front of him hadn’t spotted him yet, and really, Damian couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak, or breathe, or think. The frustration of it all bubbled like poison in his guts, tainting him from the inside out.
And really, it was just that: the Jonathan Kent in front of him was no longer a boy, a year or two younger than him, taller than him by a few mere inches. In his wake, there was a man; broad shoulders, a striking jaw, and dark hair no longer curled around a round baby face. There was a pounding in the room, constant and heavy and it felt like bass at one of those ridiculous clubs Grayson attended, and -- maybe that was just his heart echoing in his ears.
What could he say? How could he say it? What happened? What’s wrong with you? Where’s Jon? The ridiculous blink of the machinery in his hand continued its mocking pattern and Damian couldn’t help but throw it at his feet, smashing it into pieces between them. “Explain.”
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