#shari writes

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.

-

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.

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.

-

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.