(Still based on DCeased&DCeased Unkillables. Spiritual sequel of this one because that's the mood, folks.)
Jason sees Damian in the Batman's costume for the first time.
-
“Don’t laugh”, Damian growls, and his voice is so much deeper than it used to be back when he was ten years old and he barely reached Jason’s chest, but it hasn't lost that particular brand of petulance that practically begs to be teased.
“I’m not laughing”, Jason lies, doing his best to keep a straight face.
Damian clicks his tongue and keeps studying the stack of paperwork in front of him in that elegantly indignant way of his.
“It’s just weird”, Jason continues after a moment, unsolicited. “You’ve got to give me that.”
“I don’t have to give you anything”, Damian answers. “My sympathy for your horrendous sense of humor least of all.”
“I didn’t say it was funny, I only said-”
“You were laughing”, Damian cuts him off, deadpan and matter-of-factly just like his dad used to be. That thought makes Jason bites the inside of his own cheek. He feels conflicted between the urge to laugh and this sadness that keeps eating at his insides.
“Maybe I was laughing a little bit”, he admits eventually. “But it’s just because it’s weird, you know, having a Batman who’s younger than me. Having a Superman who’s younger than me. I could’ve been the kindergarten teacher of half the Justice League right now. Let me laugh on it, otherwise my head will implode and you don’t want that.”
Another dismissive click of the tongue.
“That’s what you think.”
“That’s what I know, sweetheart.”
“I’m still an assassin”, Damian reminds him, almost affably. It used to be his favorite intimidation back in the days. Tim had probably heard that sentence too many times to count them.
“Nope, you’re not”, Jason laughs. “You’re the goddamn Batman now, kiddo. And that means no more assassin threats for you. You can’t afford it anymore.”
Damian stops reading Green Canary’s latest report and looks up for the first time since this whole little squabble started. The cowl is currently pulled back on his neck, his hair is so long it curls around his temples, and Jason makes a mental note to ask Alfred to arrange an impromptu haircutting session as soon as he can.
“Is that what’s bothering you?”, Damian asks, and maybe his intention was to sound aggressive, but Jason only hears the insecurity that almost breaks his voice.
“I didn-”
“Do you think that you should be the Batman?”, Damian continues in one quick breath, as if he believed that if he slowed his words down too much, they wouldn't come out of his mouth, and it’s obviously not a spur-of-the-moment thought that one, but something he’s probably mulled over since the very first moment he’s discovered Jason was alive.
And yet, he doesn't say it out of anger, he doesn't sound bitter, he doesn't even sound mad, but almost... hopeful? Yes, that’s what knocks the wind out of Jason: the idea of Damian actually asking him to take the cape and the cowl from his hands.
“No”, he refuses immediately, without even thinking. “My sweet lord, no. I can not be Batman.”
“I was crazy once. I was also dead once. And an Outlaw. And a killer. And a lot of awful things we don’t need to list right now”, Jason retorts. “Point is, I’m not good Batman material. But kid, if you don’t want to be Batman either, no one can force the responsibility on you, not even Bruce or - god forbid such thing from existing - his ghost.”
Damian shakes his head and leans back on his chair, looking exhausted.
“It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
“You are… older.”
Jason snorts.
“Thanks for the reminder.”
“You were Robin before me”, Damian adds.
Jason feels conflicted again. Once upon a time, he would’ve snapped, insulted Damian, and left the room slamming the door behind him. He would’ve disappeared for at least a couple of weeks, just to show up some time later and act like nothing had happened. Once upon a time, he could’ve afforded all of that. Now he can’t.
“Not all Robins want to be Batman, Damian”, he answers after a moment, because that’s all he can offer to the kid: white lies, and a shoulder to cry on. That’s all he’s good for, now.
Damian looks away from him and doesn’t comment. For a moment Jason wonders if maybe even Damian - the little assassin specifically bred for the job, the proud heir of the Wayne’s bloodline, Bruce’s one and only biological son - had dreamt of something different. It’s weird to even think about it, but.
“Good”, Damian announces.
“Good?”
“You would make an awful Batman.”
Jason laughs, and briefly considers the idea of walking over to the desk to give the kid a hug. In the end he decides against it. Damian may be the new Batman, but Jason’s not so sure he's given up his habit of carrying knives everywhere.
“On that we agree”, he answers simply.
He allows a few minutes to pass, then he clears his throat. He could leave it at that, with a shared laugh and a silent confirmation of support. But this is a brave new world, and they both deserve a little more than that, at this point.
“You will not”, he adds then, and Damian, who was just getting back to his papers, looks up at him again.
“You will be a great Batman. You already are”, Jason clarifies. “Bruce would be proud of you. And Dick too. Tim would probably have some smart remark about gnome-sized costumes, but he would be also very proud of what you’ve become.”
In spite of his lame humor attempt, he spots a watery gleam in the kid's eyes, so he hurries on before his courage fails him.
“And I am too. Just so you know it”, he concludes, looking at his own hands.
He pretends not to hear Damian swallowing back a few times. It’s not his business. Beside, if they start crying Cassandra and Alfred will hear them, and that wouldn’t be good.
“Okay”, Damian manages to say, and he almost succeeds in keeping his voice even. “Thanks.”
“Hey, what are estranged older brother for, right?”, Jason jokes.
Damian nods stiffly, then pulls the cowl back on his face.
Jason can’t say he blames him.
“You do look funny, though”, he says instead, and when Damian throws a knife at him he feels almost relieved.
I’ve realized I’ve never written about Barbara and Damian before, so I corrected myself. Have some whump from the DickBat Era.
-
Barbara doesn’t panic. Ever. It’s not her style. She usually doesn’t get angry either, not right away at least, because anger is not her way of dealing with things. But this is Dick, here in front of her, strapped down to a gurney, unconscious and almost blue and still oh so cold at the touch. And the damn kid is just. not. speaking.
“How long?”, she asks.
Damian ignores her, his face unreadable behind the domino mask. He's staring at an undefined spot above Dick's head like he's trying to pierce the wall with the power of his mind.
“Robin, look at me!”, Barbara snaps in her best Oracle voice, and if Dick were awake he would start singsonging something like oooh someone’s angry in that annoying, teasing voice she’s hated for years, because it’s one of the few things that actually manages to get under her skin when she’s under pressure. But Dick is not awake, that’s the whole point. So she’s free to get as angry as she likes.
Not that her anger's having much of an impact, anyway, since Damian does turn towards her, but he does it slowly, like she’s an inconvenience to be endured.
“Two hours”, he answers with the same aplomb, and Barbara never thought that one day she'd want to slap a child so badly she’d have to actually restrain herself, but she clutches the wheels of her chair tightly enough for her knuckles to go white, and she counts three heartbeats before speaking again.
“And it took you two hours to call for reinforcement? Two hours to push a goddamn button and get in contact with me, or Tim, or Alfred-”
“I called Brown”, Damian interrupts her, flat as pancake.
“What?”
“Brown. The current Batgirl”, Damian explains, like he’d really need to. “She didn’t answer.”
“Of course not”, Barbara snaps again. “She’s in Chicago this week.”
And Damian didn’t have to know that, because knowing that it’s not the point. The point is that he should’ve called her, and he should’ve done so the very moment Dick had been hit. Barbara pushes her glasses back up her nose and looks at the boy with the same intensity that Damian’s using to stare at the wall.
“Dick could’ve died, Damian”, she spells out, loud and clear. “Freeze’s gun could’ve killed him as easily as a bullet to the head, do you really not understand it? Do you care so little for him?”
“I called Brown”, Damian insists, with a little more strain in his voice, and Barbara gets the message all too well: I trust her. I don’t trust you. That only makes her even more ruthless.
“Stephanie is not your contact, I am. Alfred is. This is the protocol, and you should know it by now”, she says, not yelling, but letting her voice vibrating all the same. “If you don’t, then you don’t deserve that costume you’re wearing, and Dick was a fool to give it to you.”
She expects her anger to be countered by Damian’s less than pacific temperament when it comes to take criticism, but the kid doesn’t react, doesn’t insult her, doesn’t even try to defend himself.
He just stands there, watching the wall above Dick’s head like it would help anything.
Deflated, Barbara goes back to the monitors, to the steady heartbeat line and the rhythmic beeping of the machinery, which is all is left to fill the silence around them.
*
“He said not to worry you.”
Damian’s voice is soft, almost too low to be heard, especially after something like two hours of complete silence. Barbara turns around, sees the kid still standing in the same spot, the mask still on his face, his gaze still on the wall. She’s vaguely surprised to discover Damian can be so quiet for so long.
“What?”
“Grayson said not to worry you”, Damian repeats. “That he was fine.”
And you believed him?, Barbara almost asks, but she stops herself in time. Of course Damian had believed him. Everybody believes Dick when he says that everything’s going to be fine: he’s so charming, so convincing, so very, very, believable. And it’s always so comforting to have someone that in a bad situation will always be able to smile at you and tell you that things will be okay. Barbara’s guilty of having committed that same mistake over and over again, and without having the excuse of being a child or the latest addition to the family.
So she sighs, grabs the chair by Dick's bed and drags it next to hers.
“Sit”, she says.
More than the silence, more than the lack of insults and temper tantrums, is the way Damian follows her order that gives her a measure of just how much the kid’s not in himself right now. Barbara had assumed that he hadn't really understood the situation, or at least that he had seriously underestimated the danger of it, but it’s now obvious that she was wrong: Damian understands all too well, and he’s scared just like her.
She waits for the kid to sit down, then she turns back to stare at Dick’s profile, almost in anger because he really ought to know better.
“Listen to me. I won’t repeat this ever again, and especially not in front of him, but you need to know this, you have to learn it by heart and believe it”, she pauses a second, allowing herself to remember a night of many years ago, when she had given the same speech to a much younger Dick, while being not that much older than him at the time. The problem with Robins is that they all have the same weak spot, apparently. “You’re Batman’s partner, and that means that sometimes you’ll have to decide what’s best for him the same way sometimes he will decide what’s best for you. Otherwise one of you will be killed either to follow an order, or by not following it at all. And both ways are stupid ways to die, is that clear?”
Damian lets her words settle down, then he shrugs without refusing nor agreeing with her, which is more of what Barbara was expecting.
“If at some point you called Stephanie, it means that you thought a backup was necessary. And if you think a backup is necessary you call everyone. It doesn’t matter what Batman says, what his orders are. If you are in doubt, you call me.”
Next to her, Damian stiffens.
“He said-”
“It doesn’t matter what he said”, Barbara interrupts him, not too harshly. “You’re Robin, you don’t need his permission to call me.”
“I know”, Damian answers weakly.
Barbara’s not so sure about that, but she doesn’t say it.
“I’m trusting you with his life every night”, she continues. Normally she would feel uncomfortable about putting such a heavy responsibility on a child's shoulders, but Damian’s not most children, he ticks in a different way. And, apparently, he tries to listen to them sometimes. So she goes out on a limb and actually reaches out to take the kid’s hand in hers, and if he’s surprised by her gesture he hides it well and, most importantly, he doesn’t reject it. Still, Barbara makes sure Damian’s looking at her when she says: “I need you to trust me too, kiddo.”
Damian scrunches up his nose, and it’s difficult to say if he does so in faked contempt or because he’s trying to hide a stronger emotion, but Barbara chooses to believe that Dick’s right about this kid, that there’s lots of good in him, and not just because he’s Bruce’s son, but because he’s here, with them, trying harder than ever to do the right thing.
“Okay?”, she asks, and she smiles for the first time tonight.
Damian doesn’t say okay, doesn’t even nod, but he squeezes her fingers a little, and doesn’t let go of her hand as they both turn to Dick once again.
“I heard you scream. Nightmares again?” for Tim & Dami
Bad as it might sound, the only thing Tim can think of, as he stands barefoot on the roof, is that he’s never asked for any of this. Yes, back in the day he did annoyed Bruce into making him Robin, but he was asking for a job and a chance to do something right with his life. Not this.
He’s never asked to be dragged into a new family, for starters. He’s never asked to have to care about a handful of problematic people that can deal with anything and anyone except themselves and their own trauma. He’s never asked for Dick (he’s mostly grateful for him, though), he’s never asked for Jason (but it’s nice to have someone to share his anger with, sometimes) he’s never asked for Cassandra either (dumb luck for them all, that one), but, above anything else, he’s never asked for Damian.
Damian is the last thing he’d ever ask for, as a matter of fact, since he’s never felt the need to have a brother, and especially not a younger one.
(This is a lie, though, and Tim is aware of his own dishonesty even while he's thinking it. For years he had prayed, silently or otherwise, that his parents would put a stop to his loneliness, if not with their love, at least by giving him someone to share his empty days with. But that hope had faded over time, along with many other childhood delusions.)
Anyway, it’s not like Damian is really is brother. But if he were, Tim wouldn’t want him to be. Younger brothers are not a thing any rational person would ever want: there’s a promise of injustice and one-sided responsabilites coming with having someone who’s younger than you, who depend on you even if they don’t want it, someone who - although you might not like it - begins to belong to you in virtue of their very existence alone.
And Tim doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to feel responsible for Damian, doesn’t want to have to crawl out of his bed in the middle of the night just because the room next to his is too quiet, doesn’t want to know that it’s because Damian’s too scared to go back to sleep only to wake up screaming again, as it's been happening for weeks now. Tim doesn’t want to know that when Damian’s afraid he climbs on the roof to watch the city’s lights, he doesn’t want to know that he does that because Bruce had once said to him (like he once had said to Tim himself, and maybe even Dick and Jason and Cassandra) that that’s what he likes to do when he feels scared. And if it’s good for the Batman, then it’s good for everyone else, right?
The night wind makes him shiver in his pajamas as he carefully walks over the damp roof tiles. Damian is little more than a shadow among the shadows, and the only thing Tim can see of him is that he’s trembling too.
“I heard you scream”, Tim starts, because he’s too sleepy to think of an excuse. He doesn’t even try to sound gente or sympathetic. It’s too cold for that. “Nightmares again?”
He expects yelling and name-calling for his trouble, but Damian only shrugs and turns his face away from him. Which means things are even worse than Tim thought, and that give up the warmth of his bedroom and drag his sorry self here was the right thing to do. He sighs.
“Mind if I sit with you?”, he asks again, and again a shrug is the only answers he gets.
So Tim sits down with him, and they freeze their ass off together, watching Gotham’s lights turns on and off in the night, their shoulders barely touching.
And Tim’s never asked for any of this, that’s true, but really, he doesn’t mind.
(Based on DCeased&DCeased Unkillables, so be warned: this is just Jason, Cass and Damian crying. No plot, only sorrow)
-
It takes them almost three weeks to find and finally reach Damian, and when they do, when their eyes finally meet from one side of the room to the other, Jason feels this stupid, unexpected and overwhelming urge to start crying. He had not cried when he had to face the battered corpses of Bruce, Dick and Tim, he had not cried when he had to dug holes in the ground to bury them, he had not cried when he had to drag them like they were empty and broken things to get rid of, and he had perhaps felt a brief pinch in his nose when he had found himself standing in front of those makeshift graves, but crying he had not.
But now he’s looking at this kid that’s always been too similar to Bruce for his own good and Jason’s peace of mind, this kid who had owned a piece of Dick's heart for so long it had become almost impossible not to associate one with the other, this kid who’s the only one who can understand the complexity of Jason’s relationship with Tim, the only one who knows how you can hate and hurt the people you love so deeply that you can no longer tell what is one thing and what is the other. This kid that looks up at him and then at Cassandra and can’t hide his own tears.
So Jason lets Cass go first. He lets her run to their brother and watches them as they hug, and a spark of amusement hits him when he notices they’re almost the same height now. He can’t hear what they’re saying, the wet whispers hidden against necks and shoulders, the lullaby of pain and regrets that he’s been singing in his own head since the very first day this shit’s happened. He still moves towards them, even if he does it in slow steps, almost reluctantly, not because he doesn’t want to share his sorrow, but because he knows that the very moment he reaches them, something will change: there’s going to be an end, and after the end a new beginning.
Jason doesn’t know if he’s ready for that, and yet Damian’s sobs hurt his heart too bad not to push him forward - always forward - and he’s heard Cass crying before, every night for a whole month, even if she did her best to hide it, but he’s never held her, never had the courage, never felt like it was in his rights. But now they’re all here, and pretending that they’re not mourning is not going to work anymore, and eventually all this grief has to go somewhere, they need to put it one place, let it crystallize, so that one day, maybe, it will hurt them a little less.
He learns that, even if Damian’s not that little anymore, he can still circle them both with his arms, and it’s weird to feel Damian’s soft hair against his cheek, it’s weird to feel how incredibly solid Cassandra’s body is - what with her looking like a doll and all of that - and most of all it’s weird to realize that he’s never held any of them in his arms before, he’s never shared his affection like this, he's never shown them how much he loves them, just like he's never shown it to Bruce and Dick and Tim and Barbara and Roy and who knows how many others who will never be able to find out now.
He cups the back of Damian’s neck with his hand and pulls the kid closer to him. He wants to tell him that he took care of their family, that they’re all resting next to each other in their home - a place where he hopes none of them will ever be forced to return to - but he’s crying too hard now, the words feel like stones trapped in his throat, and he’s not sure Damian would be able to hear him anyway because he’s crying even harder than Jason is.
There are so many wrong things in all of this. If Jason would’ve had the chance to choose which member of his family he would be holding right now, Damian and Cassandra probably wouldn't be here. And he knows it’s the same for them. Damian would’ve killed to have Dick and Bruce here. Cass had always been closer to Tim and Barbara than any of them. But it's the three of them who survived, the three of them who, ironically, have all already died once, only to find themselves alive at the end of the world, alone, except for each other.
Jason falls on his knees, exhausted, and Cass and Damian fall down with him, crashing on him in a mess of limbs and tears and a half choked laugh that sounds like his own. Their weight makes his bruised ribs hurt, but he doesn’t care, not really, because the important thing is that they don’t let go, they stay close, and their grip on him feels like a promise for a future that, in spite of everything, will still come, a future that they will have to face together and, because of that, it now seems just a little less terrifying.
Or, the one where nine years old Dick almost gets shot and Bruce has a panic attack and gets in a quarrel with his own kitchen. (AO3 link)
-
It hits him about three hours later, when he’s already home, all showered and bandaged up and ready for a long night sleep, even if there’s not much night left at this point.
It starts slowly, with a little pressure on his temples, like a migraine in progress, but somewhat softer, and colder. A lot colder. Then the cold gets under his skin, seeps into his blood, freezes him in the middle of his kitchen, one hand reaching for the fridge’s handle.
Bruce looks at his fingers, his very pink, warm-looking and freshly washed fingers, and he notices that they’re shaking. His whole hand is shaking. He raises the other one to his face and yes, it’s a two out of two.
“Just adrenaline leftovers” he says to his kitchen. None of his appliances is willing to comment on that, but the buzz of the refrigerator now sounds like it's making accusations.
“I’m fine. He’s fine”, Bruce continues. And it’s all true: apart from a couple of bruises he's physically fine, and as for Dick, the last time he checked, i.e. no more than four minutes ago, he was lying quietly in his bed, apparently unaffected by the events of the night.
And yet his hands are shaking, and his veins feel like frozen underground rivers running through him like a high-speed train.
It was the gun, Bruce figures. The black barrel pressed so close to Robin’s face. The smell of burning still hovering in the air. Gotham’s alleys can all look the same if you don’t pay close attention. And some nights more than others the white reflections of the streetlights still reminds him of pearls.
He opens the fridge, grabs a bottle of water and drinks a long sip that leaves him almost breathless. Cool drops slide down the corners of his mouth, dampening his chin only to jump into the void that separates them from the tiled floor. Splash.
The clink of glass against marble creates an echo around the empty room when Bruce puts the bottle down on the kitchen counter. When he presses both his hands against the fridge’s door, they’re still shaking.
Dick was never in any real danger, he argues with himself. God knows how many times he’s seen with his own eyes how slippery that kid can become when he wants to. No, even if Batman had not pounded full force into the man that was holding him at gunpoint, Dick would’ve freed himself with a cheerful casualness Bruce himself has never possessed.
He’s sweating now, which is ridiculous, since he’s still freezing.
His brain quickly fills itself up with incontrovertible facts. One: Dick is not faster than a bullet. Two: the average survival rate of a gunshot wound to the head is about five percent. Three: Dick is nine years old and his responsibility. Four: Alfred’s going to be mad about the water ring. Five: Dick could’ve died tonight.
It’s stupid to have a panic attack about it now, in the dark loneliness of his own kitchen, after it all went well, but better now than then, in the middle of the street, where one little hesitation could’ve given the evening a much, much worse ending, Bruce supposes.
Hard, deep gulps of air come in. Short, choked breaths come out. Now he’s pressing his forehead too against the refrigerator door, and the cold surface helps him to keep his thoughts under control. It’s not difficult. He’s trained for this.
He wants to, but doesn’t close his eyes. Keeps them open even when they start to burn, and stares down at the floor until he loses the focus and his eyes feel like glass. In his head, Bruce counts.
It takes him one hundred and sixty four seconds to calm himself down. Way too long. He should be able to stay under the two minutes, by now. He’s been practicing a lot and for a long time, after all. But he’s sure he will improve, eventually. It’s not like Dick’s not going to provide him any more training in regard of that.
Slowly, he turns around and steps away from the refrigerator, leaving it alone to its stern buzzing that Bruce, in his head, somewhat associates with Alfred's stark gaze. It’s stupid, maybe, but he’s seen a lot of stranger things, and a kitchen that takes on the personality of its owner wouldn’t even make it to the top ten.
He looks out the window, where the cold has decided to freeze into snow. The easy dance of the snowflakes in the night sky and their journey to the windowsill helps him to calm down a little more, until there's no trace of that unexpected rush of panic left but the sweat-soaked tank top still sticking to his back.
Part of him wants to go outside, to walk barefoot on the pristine blanket of fresh snow just to feel the bites of the cold against the skin, let the ice bring back peace and immobility into his mind and body. It sounds much more inviting than going up the stairs to his bedroom and lie down to stare at the ceiling with wide-open eyes, waiting for a few hours of rest that he knows just won't come.
The footsteps behind him are as soft as only children footsteps can be, but still not light enough not to draw Bruce’s attention. He allows himself to close his eyes for one moment then, to take one last second for himself before turning back to the dark kitchen again.
Dick is a little more than a shadow lingering in the door frame, but Bruce looks into the kid’s eyes and makes sure to adjust his voice into a soft humming before speaking.
“Milk or water?”, he asks, because he’s tried to ask other questions before, normal questions like how are you, or are you hurt or do you want to stop now, but Dick’s still too angry for that, or maybe he still doesn’t trust Bruce enough to answer him honestly.
“What about cocoa?”, Dick asks back, after a moment of silent consideration.
“I’m not Alfred.”
“Meaning you don’t know how to do it?”
Bruce is moderately convinced he knows how to make a cocoa, or at least the steps necessary to transform cocoa powder into cocoa liquid, which should be more or less the same thing, provided that a lot of sugar would cover any mistakes anyway.
“I can hardly imagine it to be such a hard task.”
Dick sighs, and even in the dark Bruce can almost see the eye-rolling. It makes him smile.
“Okay, I guess I’ll have to teach it to you”, Dick says with exaggerated contempt in his voice. Bruce isn’t even sure Dick actually knows how to make a cocoa or if he’s even allowed in the kitchen in the first place.
“Okay”, he answers anyway.
And it sounds easy and very domestic, like they were a normal family, when, in truth, Bruce doesn’t even know if they’re a family at all, if they ever will be one, or even if they want to be one. And Dick probably doesn’t know either, because despite his snarkiness and his apparent self-confidence he doesn’t move just yet, and they stay in the dark for a little more, quiet and hidden, while the snow keeps falling.
Not for the first time, Bruce wonders if this wall between them it’s his fault or Batman’s, if for Dick’s the same thing, if Robin is a mistake, if they are going to regret it sooner or later.
He also wonders where Alfred might keep the pots, and if they're going to need pots at all.
“Should we turn on the lights?”, Bruce asks eventually, because he may not know much about families anymore, but he knows about responsibilities, and doing the right thing, no matter how small it is.
“Yeah, we would make a mess if we tried to cook in the dark”, Dick agrees, sounding almost relieved, and since he’s the closest to it, he presses the light switch, flooding the room with white light.
Bruce realizes he's still smiling only when Dick looks up at him and smiles back.
Oooh congrats!! Can I ask for Dick and “We’re still the best” (Dami lol) or “You will always be my little Robin” (Bruce (:)
At first there’s a lot of swearing, terrible, unrepeatable, and very creative threats bounce back and forth between them as they endure endless minutes filled with an almost unbearable tension. Then comes the silence.
Dick’s hands are sweating by now, and his grip shakes in exhaustion. Damian’s elbows are pressing hard into Dick’s ribs as the boy tenses against him.
“You can do it, Richard”, he says under his breath, and his confidence in his brother’s ability is almost religious, a sacred thing that Dick feels the need to preserve, no matter the cost.
Beside them Jason grunts, and with a quick glance out of the corner of his eye, Dick can see Tim leaning heavily on his shoulder, lips pressed in a tight grimace. They are all trying so hard. Maybe too much.
Dick cashes in two more punches and Damian hisses, perhaps contemplating for the first time the concrete possibility of losing. But Dick holds his ground and waits, still confident enough.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon”, Jason starts chanting to himself, and that’s his tell, even if only Dick and maybe Roy know of it.
So Dick stands still until the very last second, then dodges the attack Jason was so carefully packing against him and lands three kicks in a row, which allows Damian to hit the final combo and take out Jason’s fighter almost as viciously as he had killed Tim's.
For the split of a moment they all just stare transfixed at the screen going black.
Damian’s delighted laugh breaks the silence first, and yet it’s such a soft thing it nearly gets drowned under Jason's heavy cursing and Tim’s disappointed moaning, as the both of them crash back into the couch, finally defeated after two hours of constant Street Fighter challenges.
Still sitting between Dick’s crossed legs, Damian turns around to reward him with a smile so big and bright that all the bitching that Dick knows will start in a few minutes because of this victory look like they’re almost worth the trouble.
“We are still the best, Richard”, Damian states proudly, as he throws both the controller and his middle finger in Jason’s and Tim’s direction.
“We still are, kiddo. We still are”, Dick laughs, and he hugs the boy closer to his chest out of an overwhelming rush of affection, but also to protect him from their brothers’ unavoidable retaliation - allegations of favoritism be damned.
hey if you're accepting requests, could i get a part two/sequel or whatever to that adorable fic you wrote? The one with Dick and 3 month old Mar'i, and Damian being a big brother/uncle. It was so cute, and I would like to see Damian trying to change a diaper, lol. Thanks anyways! -Maca
Years later, here it is /o/
-
Dick had thought that the long stakeouts on the rooftops of Gotham first, and of Bludhaven later, had taught him patience like nothing else could have ever possibly done, but that had all been before Damian. Damian becoming part of his life had been a major turning point for him, something that - the rare times he allows himself to think about it - he links back to the very concept of becoming an adult.
Not that Dick hasn’t felt like an adult before, because he has. He’s started to feel it the night his parents died, and nothing has ever been able to shake off that sudden grip of reality and solitude that had crashed over him underneath that circus tent. But there was something different about being an adult for yourself and being an adult for someone else’s sake, and even in that last circumstance the difference between being an adult among peers and being an adult around a child - and a difficult one, while at it - was terrifyingly distinctive.
Damian had taught him all of that and a lot more (most of it without even suspecting it), but even Damian hadn’t fully prepared him for the life as a parent of a newborn baby.
And it wasn’t just that he was constantly out of patience for every little thing, it was also the constant fear and worry and the endless catastrophic scenarios that piled up in his mind even while he slept. All the normal everyday concerns and then the monsters, the criminals, the galactic and intergalactic threats. It’s exhausting.
But then there’s this.
Coming home to find Kory reading on the couch and, on the carpet at her feet, Mar’i in her playpen, gnawing at her foot and her Batman doll indiscriminately, and a little bit farther, Damian lying on his stomach with his sketchbook open in front of him. And they are all quiet and comfortable, and it’s probably not going to last, but for now it’s here, and it’s beautiful. So beautiful Dick’s tempted to stay just there on the doorstep, without disturbing any of them, but of course it’s impossible because they’ve already detected his presence.
Damian is the first to attack.
“I was forced to change your daughter’s dirty diapers today”, the boy informs him.
Dick mentally observes that it’s been a while since the last time Damian’s called Mar'i your daughter with that tone that implied she was a wrong done against him.
Kory doesn’t look up from her book, but when he looks at her to seek a clarification, Dick sees that the corner of her lips is pulling into a smile she’s clearly trying to prevent.
“I asked Damian to help me with the baby”, she manages to explain composedly enough. “He was wonderful.”
Neither of them look at the other during this exchange, and Dick finds out he wants to know the details of that particular conversation more than anything else in the world, but this probably isn’t the right time to ask about it.
“I’m not doing it again”, Damian points out, refusing to acknowledge the praise. “It was disgusting.”
Dick would pay good money to go back in time and witness the scene himself. He wonders if maybe he can find a way to corrupt Zatanna into it.
“You chase people in the sewer at least two nights per week”, he answers for the time being. “I know from experience that diapers are not worse than that. At least the stuff is contained and doesn’t get in your hair.”
“Says you”, Damian scoffs, and at that Dick has to laugh. It couldn’t have been such a tragic experience if the boy decided to stay here instead of fleeing back to his father’s house to complain about the ignominy just suffered.
He drops his gym bag on the floor and, after kicking off his shoes, he picks up Mar’i and sits on the carpet, his back resting against the couch, legs stretched out next to Damian’s body.
“Hey princess, was Dami so bad at changing your diaper?”, he asks the baby, and she happily gurgles back at him. Dick nods in understanding.
“Oh, I see.”
“I was as competent as always”, Damian butts in, obviously offended by the very implication that he could fail at something so elementary, and he looks up at him for the first time since Dick’s stepped into the house. It’s not a welcoming look at all. “And stop pretending you can understand what she’s saying, she’s not speaking.”
“Says you”, Dick retorts, and Damian stabs him in the shin with his pencil. Not so hard, all things considered. Just hard enough for Dick to want to pinch him back in retaliation.
“Children, stop fighting please”, Kory chides from the couch, and to Dick’s amazement Damian actually stops giving him those dirty looks that usually promise long hours of bitching and snarky talk-backs, and goes back to his drawing. Kory must have some sort of children-taming secret he’s unaware of (and that he envies her a lot), and Dick’s about to comment on that but he catches his wife’s glare and thinks better of it.
Kory rewards his sensibility by stretching out to kiss him on the lips, then she goes back to her reading, and for a while the only sounds in the living room are the scratching of Damian’s pencil on the paper, the slow rustling of Kory’s book and Mar’i’s self-absorbed babbling when Dick tickles her stomach or pulls a funny face at her.
And this too is new, different from everything else he’s ever experienced. It’s surprising in a way only conventional things that you never think could ever happen to you can be. It’s scaring, and unnerving, and makes him want to scream his head out. And he loves it to pieces.
“So… what are we going to cook for dinner?”, Dick asks eventually, and he feels stupid, and too normal, and so, so very happy.
“i’d like for you to leave now” + dick for all the angst?
His first flight alone is something electric: a blue spark of pure adrenaline running through his body, high voltage blood pumping hard and fast into his veins, a breathless laugh barely held back into his mouth as the city opens up beneath him into rivers of lights and noises, like Blüdhaven was a full, living thing made to be taken and kept by him, and only him.
Now that he’s crash landed, Dick thinks about that first flight a lot.
He misses it, and he tells Bruce so.
“I lost it because of you”, he accuses him, and his voice is hoarse and wet, barely audible to his own ears. “It’s all your fault.”
Bruce doesn’t say anything, doesn’t defend himself. He hardly ever bothers.
“I’d like for you to leave now” is how Batman used to end their fights, and Nightwing would retort with months of silence and waves of resentments that burned them both like cold fire.
But now there’s a ten years old stranger asleep upstairs, an old butler smoking an even older cigarette in the backyard, and an unprotected city outside this broken house. Now Dick can’t leave anymore.
“I’d like for you to come back”, he whispers at the empty grave in front of him, and, as usual, he’s only met with silence and regrets.
