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“Where are you going?”
Dick straightens up and turns. Damian is standing there on the driveway, arms crossed and frowning—at him, at the used camper trailer Dick bought today, at the bags of supplies that he’s packing into the storage compartment.
The kid has been avoiding him for the past while, though not very well. If he really wanted to be unseen, he would. Like Bruce does. It’s a pretty easy task in such a big house. But Damian lurks close by, often just around the corner or in the next room, guilty and stubborn and hopeful all in equal measure.
Truth is, Dick isn’t even angry with him. It’s understandable that he’s frustrated. but there’s nothing Dick can do about it. There’s nothing any of them can do, and Damian needs to accept it.
“I rented a campsite in the mountains for a couple weeks. I thought it would be nice to get some fresh air. Clear my head.” And get the hell away from all of them, now that he has the chance. After months of recovery, his doctors say he’s well enough, medically. He has a window of freedom until his next appointments and he’s not going to spend it hanging around this dusty manor.
“Can I come with you?” Damian asks quietly.
The word no is already on his tongue. Damian is the one he’s most looking forward to leaving behind. But Damian looks so miserable, his eyes downcast, hands dug into the pockets of his hoodie, already bracing for the rejection, and some wires get crossed in Dick’s mixed-up brain.
“Okay,” he says, surprising himself.
Damian seems surprised, as well. He stares as though unable to believe what he’s just heard, his mouth slightly agape. Then quickly snaps himself out of it. “I can be packed in five minutes.”
“I’m not leaving until tomorrow,” Dick says, before he can rush off. “I want to be on the road at first light.”
Damian nods seriously. “I’ll be ready.”
Dick watches Damian hurry away, a barely perceptible spring to his step—if he was a less austere little boy, he might be skipping. Sighing, Dick turns back to his packing, shoving a folding chair into the storage compartment with frustration. Saying yes was a mistake, he already knows that. It would have been kinder to tell him no. He’s just setting the kid up for another disappointment.
Damian is packing a cooler and extra bedding into the camper when Dick walks outside. He’s bright-eyed and alert like he’s been awake for a while. Titus is pacing in front of the truck, his tail wagging with the eager ferocity of a dog that knows he’s going for a car ride.
“Fine,” Dick says, before Damian can ask. “But you’re cleaning up after him.”
The dog will be a good buffer, anyway. And it’s more fun hiking with a dog. Dick knows this, somehow, even though he doesn’t really remember ever having a dog. There are pictures in the manor that tell a different story.
Damian falls asleep after an hour on the highway, curled up in the passenger seat. Dick has a hunch that he never slept a wink last night. His dog is quietly snoozing in the back, as well. It’s just Dick and his thoughts and silence. Like he wanted.
Every so often, Dick glances over at Damian—he looks so soft and vulnerable when he’s asleep, nothing like the bitter, angry boy Dick is used to seeing around the manor, skulking around doorways and looking away resentfully whenever Dick catches him staring.
Dick searches his face, testing himself, trying to feel something for him other than the usual pity, but there’s nothing.
His memory loss has gotten better. The first week after he woke up he barely knew his own name. He’s not sure how much of what he knows are things he actually remembers, and how much is what others have told him, but he does know things about himself. He knows he grew up in a circus, his parents died, he was Robin and then Nightwing and then Batman a couple times. He knows Damian was his Robin.
He understands that all these things should mean something to him, stir some kind of emotion, but they’re just cold, empty facts.
Damian is his brother, legally. He’s sure they cared about each other like brothers, based on how upset Damian has been with him. He was even Damian’s guardian for a while. Knowing that doesn’t matter—it doesn’t make him feel any latent affection for the boy.
There’s a photograph in the manor, on a fireplace mantle, that shows how that affection is supposed to look. It pictures himself and Damian, along with his dear friend Zitka the elephant. Zitka has her trunk wrapped around Damian’s shoulders, the boy grinning in genuine happiness, while Dick looks over at him with so much fondness and pride. Dick has studied himself in that photo many times, but it’s like looking at a stranger.
He doesn’t know who the man is in all those pictures, the one who smiles while surrounded by family and friends, but it’s not him, it doesn’t even look like him. He has short hair from being repeatedly shaved for medical procedures. An ugly scar gouged along the side of his skull that he hides with a beanie. A face that’s thin and weary, and annoyed, every time he catches it in a mirror.
His parents, his family, are dead. And he doesn’t have any brothers.
It isn’t until Dick pulls off the highway and into a drive-through that Damian rouses, blinking groggily and squinting at the bright sunlight shining through the window. This must be quite a departure from his regular schedule, usually he sleeps half the day after spending all night fighting crime.
“So, was your dad really fine with you taking off like this?” Dick asks as they wait for their order. “What about, you know, your night job?”
“I didn’t ask Father. He left town yesterday morning. I doubt he’d even notice I was gone, either way. I told Alfred, and he didn’t seem to mind,” Damian says. He attempts to stifle a yawn, without success. “The others can take care of the city until I return. Hopefully it won’t be in shambles by then.”
They sit in the parking lot so Dick can scarf down his meal before hitting the road again. Titus pokes his head forward between their seats, snuffling around at the smell of food. Damian pushes the demanding snout away from his fries and forks over a dog biscuit from his pocket instead.
“No pickles,” Damian remarks, having opened up his sandwich to check.
“Yeah. Isn’t that how you order it?”
“I never told you that.”
“What? Sure you did.” Dick frowns, brow furrowed as he searches his memory.
A little smirk turns the corners of Damian’s mouth. “No, I didn’t.”
“It doesn’t mean anything, Damian,” Dick says wearily.
“It means you remembered something new.”
“It’s just a fact. A tiny fact. It happens sometimes. It’s not— It’s not a breakthrough, okay?” He reaches up to rake his hand frustratedly through hair that isn’t all there anymore, and falters, his fingers accidentally brushing the line of his scar through his hat. “I don’t want to fight about this again. Not after last time.”
Last time being that incident they don’t talk about, the one that’s had the kid skulking about for the past couple weeks. Damian had found Dick gazing up pensively at the family portrait in the library—he’d gone there searching for a book to read, and pushed himself too hard trying to focus on the text even as his head pounded in protest, until he was frustrated and dizzy and still empty-handed.
But he made an effort to smile and be nice to the kid, remarking on what a good job Damian had done finishing the painting. Which he’s sure someone had told him about—Alfred, or Damian himself—but Damian insisted that wasn’t the case. He kept pestering Dick, demanding he look at more drawings, at photos, that they go speak to Bruce about this “breakthrough”.
Dick is sick of that word, always so hopeful, reminding him that, to them, he’s just something to be fixed.
He regrets what he had said. Not entirely; it was true, and needed to be told, but he’d spoken in anger, most of it not Damian’s fault. He was tired and his head was aching. The kid didn’t deserve that. And then Damian’s own pent-up anger and frustration suddenly erupted. Instead of lashing out with words, he used his fist, striking Dick on the jaw with surprising force for his size. It left quite a bruise, that has only just faded.
“I’m not trying to fight,” Damian says. His voice, and expression, both seem very young. “I already apologized.”
He did, knocking on Dick’s door that same night. The apology was quiet and sincere, and clearly meant for someone else. Dick had listened without opening the door.
Dick sighs. “I know. I’m not mad at you. I’m just…” he trails off, not knowing what he is, exactly. Neither of them speak for a while, eating their food silently. “Do you want to talk about it?” Dick asks eventually.
“Talk about what?”
He shrugs. “About what you’re feeling. About why you punched me. I know you’ve been going through a hard time, too.”
“I don’t want to talk. To you,” Damian says haltingly, unable to meet Dick’s gaze. “Not right now."
Dick nods, not offended in the least. He understands.
The rest of the drive is quiet. Dick focuses on the road, the steady passage of trees and highway being pleasantly meditative, and Damian spends the time either on his phone or gazing out the window.
Dick breaks the silence only once. “I want to set a rule,” he says. Damian glances up, tugging out an earbud. “You can’t tell me things to try to jog my memory,” Dick says firmly. “I know when you guys are doing it, even when you think you’re being sneaky about it, and it sucks. No hints. No telling stories about how I used to be. Otherwise I’m turning this car around and taking you back home.”
“Fine,” Damian says flatly.
“I could still turn back and take you home if you’ve changed your mind about this,” Dick offers. Just in case. “Not sure why you wanted to come along, anyway.”
Damian ponders it for a moment. “It’s important to cultivate a variety of experiences,” he remarks. There might be a hint of a smart-alecky tone buried in there, but Dick isn’t confident enough to say for sure. “I haven’t been camping before.”
“You haven’t?”
“Not ‘real’ camping, apparently,” says Damian, with exaggerated finger quotes. “I’ve been told wilderness survival training doesn’t count.”
“No, I don’t think it does,” Dick agrees.
“Titus hasn’t been camping, either,” Damian adds. Hearing his name, Titus stands up in the backseat and wags his tail eagerly. “I believe he will enjoy it.”
Well, Dick thinks wryly, at least one of them will.
Setting up camp goes quickly, even attaching the awning to the camper, which Dick was most concerned about since it kept jamming when he tested it earlier, takes no time at all. Turns out the two of them are a pretty good team. Dick almost says this out loud, but thinks better of it.
Damian is particularly good at building fires, methodically arranging the firewood and kindling—he scoffs at the lighter that Dick hands him and uses a small metal fire-starting tool from his own pocket instead. Soon the fire pit is full of bright crackling flames. Damian stands back with his arms crossed, watching his work with satisfaction.
Must be a skill he picked up from that survival training he mentioned. Sometimes Dick forgets that Damian was raised as an assassin. They’ve told him enough times, and the kid certainly acts like it, but it’s still wild.
“You feel like making s’mores?” Dick pulls out a package of marshmallows from one of the food bags. He didn’t pack these, it must have been Damian. Meaning Alfred, most likely.
Damian catches the bag of marshmallows tossed at him, then the box of crackers, then a chocolate bar, without fumbling a single one. “Dessert? What about dinner?” he asks, frowning up at Dick. He really is an unbelievably strange child.
“That’s the freedom of camping. We can do whatever we want, whenever we want. And that fire is looking just about perfect for roasting marshmallows.”
“I suppose I see how this is different from a training exercise,” Damian admits later, as he spears another marshmallow on his roasting stick. “Although, we could have just as easily set up camp in the woods on the manor grounds.”
“Just give it a day or two. You’ll understand.” Dick leans back and looks up at the deepening indigo sky. “It’s nice to escape everything, for a little while. Get some distance.”
Some of the best memories he still has are of camping with his parents. When the circus had some extra time between destinations, even just an extra day, they would sometimes drive their trailer into whatever campsite they happened to find on the way. Dick adored the hustle and bustle of the circus, but those peaceful days spent surrounded by trees instead of tents, seeing the stars instead of the lights of the big top, just himself and his parents, were special.
“Is that what you’re trying to do?” Damian asks. “Escape?”
“Yes,” he says honestly. “I thought that was obvious.”
“It would probably be more effective if you had come out here alone,” Damian points out.
Dick smiles. “Yeah, you’re probably right."
The camper feels more like home than the manor ever did, with its cold rooms and lofty ceilings and endless, echoing hallways. It was like living in a museum, one curated around his past life.
Dick curls up in his small bed in his small camper and closes his eyes, feeling content for the first time he can remember since waking up in that hospital room.
His earliest memories are some of the clearest. Sleeping in a trailer with his parents every night, the smell of the cool night air. The sounds of crickets chirping outside and other bodies breathing nearby. Maybe he’s grateful to not be alone.
He sleeps like a baby that first night.
Dick was expecting to take this camping trip alone. He had only a vague idea of how he’d spend his time—hiking and swimming, sure, but also a lot of puttering around the campsite. Mostly he was just looking forward to resting in the calm wilderness, and thinking. Slowly figuring out his brain like someone might idly assemble a jigsaw puzzle, though admittedly one with plenty of missing pieces. It’s incredible how much effort it takes him just to think.
In that very brief amount of time he spent planning this escape from Gotham, he certainly didn’t know he’d be bringing a kid along. Only after they finished setting up camp did it strike him that maybe he should be concerned. He didn’t plan any specific activities, or consider how to keep a kid entertained.
But, fortunately, Damian isn’t a normal kid, and doesn’t need much attention. He keeps himself busy—waking up and training, taking care of Titus, and drawing. He does a lot of drawing. He’ll spend much of the day hunched over a sketchbook, turning all the nature around them into pencil strokes on paper.
After one morning hike, he’s refining some sketches at the picnic table when Titus emerges from the trees at the edge of their campsite stubbornly dragging along a stick twice as long as him.
Damian shakes his head, but smiles, and picks up his phone to snap a picture. He types something and sets his phone down on the table. It lights up a moment later, making him grunt in amusement. It’s the closest Dick has heard him come to laughing.
“Who are you texting?” Dick asks, and immediately wishes he didn’t. That’s probably over-stepping their carefully drawn boundaries. He was just curious.
Damian is frowning. Dick assumes he won’t answer, that he’ll simply ignore the question, but after a moment he says, “My friend. Jon.”
Dick didn’t know Damian had any friends. None of them have ever come by the manor that he’s seen. Damian doesn’t go to school, he doesn’t play sports or do much of anything besides fight crime, and train to fight crime, and complain about the lessons assigned to him by Alfred and Bruce but then breeze through them in an hour or two once he finally deigns to give them his attention.
It’s good that Damian has a friend. Someone he can talk to. It will make it easier for him, when he eventually accepts that his brother is gone.
Their nearest neighbours are an older couple with a golden retriever that Titus instantly befriends. They’re friendly as can be, frequently extending offers of tea and snacks. Dick declines, as politely as he can—he just doesn’t have the capacity for new people right now—but Damian surprises him by accepting their invitations.
He’ll often see Damian over there, sitting by their neighbours’ RV with his sketchbook in his lap, drawing the two dogs as they play.
“Damian, lunch is ready,” Dick calls, crossing over the boundary between the two campsites. He stops and waits a good distance away, hoping it’s a clear enough hint that he can avoid another generous invitation.
Before he goes, Damian carefully rips a page from his sketchbook and gives it to the old woman. She beams and coos over the drawing of her dog, and doesn’t let Damian leave without a hug.
“Your brother is a very talented artist,” she tells Dick warmly.
Dick is about to correct her, but instead he finds himself saying, “Yeah, he is.”
Denying it would raise all kinds of suspicions—he’s sure he already seems plenty cagey and suspicious, he doesn’t need to add to that. And explaining the truth feels impossible.
Damian’s good mood changes quickly as they walk back to their own campsite. Dick actually saw him smiling, over there. It only lasts a few steps, and then he’s back to his usual faint scowl.
“Why did you want to come on this trip?” Dick asks. Maybe he’ll get an honest answer this time.
Abruptly, Damian stops walking. He looks down at his feet. “I miss him,” he admits, so softly that Dick almost doesn’t catch it.
“I’m not him, Damian. I’m not your brother.”
Damian glares up at him, his jaw set stubbornly. “He would never give up on me. so I’m not giving up on you.”
Dick sighs. “After lunch, let’s go swimming. I heard there’s a rope swing nearby.”
Later, Damian does a triple somersault into the pond and his form reminds Dick of his parents. Of himself. There’s no denying who taught him that—a bit more coaching and he might be able to pull off a quad.
His family is gone, he watched them fall. He never thought he’d see someone move through the air like them ever again. There’s a tinge of sadness, but also something else… he actually catches himself smiling at the sight. He shakes off the strange feeling and leaps into the water.
Dick often dreams of falling.
It’s not a nightmare. He’s never afraid. He looks down from a great height with determination and chooses to step off the edge.
The rush of air is exhilarating. He laughs joyously. The fall seems to last forever, miles and miles of sky passing by and the earth still far below.
Dick stretches out his arm, reaching for something just out of his grasp. A feeling aches in his chest, one that’s familiar but one he’s unable to name.
He jerks awake. He isn’t falling, it was just a dream.
His arm hangs over the side of the bed, down to where Damian is sleeping on the convertible dining booth turned bed. His fingers are brushing Damian’s shoulder. He withdraws his arm carefully. Damian doesn’t stir.
Dick found the guitar in his closet, at the manor. Tucked away at the back, along with boxes of memorabilia—trophies and yearbooks, old birthday cards and school art projects—things that should have made him nostalgic, that he looked through with hope at first, and then a sort of obligation, and then carefully packed up again and returned to the closet.
The guitar, though, seemed like something that could belong to him. Not just the old him, but him as he is now. His dad used to play, and tried to teach him more than once. While he was at the manor he would take the guitar out of its case now and then and gently strum it a bit, wondering if he knew how to play, but would always put it down after a few minutes. He was hesitant to make too much noise in that echoing, cavernous house.
Now he’s sitting by a campfire in the woods, far from the manor, with nobody to judge him… except Damian. But Damian isn’t paying attention to him, too engrossed with the glowing screen of his phone.
It’s something else that’s blocking him. Something stopping him from playing that first note—maybe he just doesn’t know how, or maybe he’s too afraid to find out. He crosses his arms atop the guitar on his lap and sighs in quiet frustration.
“Do you know how to play guitar?” he asks Damian. The boy glances up briefly.
“It’s not my instrument of choice,” he answers inscrutably, looking back down at his phone.
“Did I used to play a lot?” Dick asks. He receives a skeptical look in response. “What is it?”
“I thought you didn’t want me to make you remember things.”
“It’s fine right now. I’m asking.”
Damian thinks about it seriously for a moment, before answering. “You always said you wished you had more time, to “get back into it”.” A smile flits across his face, though it could just be a trick of the flickering campfire light. “Once, we were investigating this case—a series of abducted street musicians. You decided to go undercover as a busker to lure out the kidnappers.”
“Did it work?”
“No. You went out every day for a week, making a complete fool of yourself, but they must have simply been uninterested in you. Eventually we found another lead.”
“Guess I’ll have to think of a different career choice,” Dick remarks, amused. “Good to know.”
“You had plans to open a gym someday,” Damian offers. “You wanted to teach children trapeze and gymnastics.”
“That does sound like fun.”
“We can make it happen.” Damian says it a little too quickly. He leans forward slightly in his chair. “We just need to find the right place. I can arrange it, when we’re back in Gotham.”
The weak smile that Dick forces isn’t fooling anyone. He lets it fall away, and takes a long, steadying breath. There will never be a good time to tell them. He might as well admit it now.
“I’m not going back to Gotham. Not to stay.” He avoids looking at Damian as he says it, reaching over to grab another piece of firewood. The log sends up a spray of sparks as he drops it on the fire. He continues, casually, “I’ll go back for my next appointments, but, after that I’m thinking I’ll do some traveling. Probably head west, somewhere warmer.”
“That’s ridiculous. You can’t just leave. You’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury, you need your— your doctors.” That hesitation, the falter in his voice, make it clear he meant to say something else.
“They say I’m pretty much healed up now. I mean, I’m sure they’ll want me to keep following-up, but I can get referrals and stop in on the road, get my scans, get my prescriptions refilled. Not like anything’s going to change at this point.”
“No. You’re not well, not yet! You don’t remember!” Damian bursts up onto his feet, his outrage ringing loudly in the calm night around them.
“This is as good as it gets.” Dick gestures at himself with a self-deprecating smile. “I can’t stay in Gotham anymore. Being around you, all of you, watching you mourn me, right in front of my face, it... it’s just too sad. I need a fresh start.”
Damian stands there stiffly, too distraught to speak. He just stares at Dick in helpless grief. “See, just like that. That’s the look,” Dick says gently. “I can’t live with that anymore.”
They spend the next morning hiking to a nearby waterfall, on the recommendation of their neighbouring campers. It’s a beautiful day for it, blue and clear with a refreshing breeze, clouded only by Damian’s gloom. He’s been sullen and quiet since the night before, even the joyful antics of the dog on the end of the leash he’s holding haven’t gotten so much as a smile out of him.
“Pretty impressive, huh?” Dick remarks amiably. The cascading falls in front of them, spilling out over shelves of jutting rock, water sparkling in the sunlight, were definitely worth the hike.
Damian shrugs, glancing impassively at the roaring water. “It reminds me of the one I used to meditate under when I was five,” he says. Which isn’t necessarily a no.
Damian’s phone buzzes with the sound of an incoming call, and he fishes it out of his pocket at the same moment that Titus spots a squirrel on the trunk of a nearby tree and lunges, yanking on the leash so hard he nearly pulls the boy over. The phone slips from his hand and lands in the grass, and Dick leans down to pick it up for him while he’s wrangling the excited dog. The name BRUCE WAYNE is displayed in large text on the caller ID.
Dog under control, Damian accepts the phone, frowns at it, and ends the call without answering.
It’s none of Dick’s business. He tells himself this as they begin to trek back to the campsite. He shouldn’t say anything, but…
All he does is take a breath, he hasn’t yet said a word, and Damian cuts him off snappishly as though reading his mind.
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Yeah, I’ve gathered that. Him, or anyone else,” Dick says with a weary sigh. “He’s your dad, Damian. He cares about you. And at least he’s trying. Maybe you could answer next time.”
“Next time I’ll hand it to you, and you can answer it,” Damian shoots back. Dick flinches, turning away, and they walk in silence for a while longer. Damian marches, his posture taut with barely restrained anger, like an annoyed bulldog that could turn around and snap at any moment.
“Who do you go to, when you need to talk?” Dick asks, treading carefully. “Alfred? Your friend Jon?”
Damian turns and gives him a look, and Dick realizes. Oh. He bites his lip in regret.
Damian’s phone rings again the next day, and he hangs up on it with the same annoyed scowl. That time, Dick knows better than to say anything.
The strange thing is, Dick does remember Bruce. From the moment he woke up, even before he could speak or understand what had happened to him, somehow he recognized Bruce’s face. Even when he didn’t know his own name, he knew Bruce’s.
Despite all the procedures and medications and therapy sessions, his last solid memory is still the night his parents died, as much as he wishes he could forget it. The details are stark and burned into his memory. That night is the sheer edge of a cliff, anything after that is like grasping at empty air. And Bruce was there.
Dick remembers that. Bruce was like an anchor in all that chaos. He should have been intimidating, with his dark suit and stern face, but his eyes were haunted with understanding and his voice was kind when he said he would take care of Dick, keep him safe. Dick believed him.
It’s the reason Dick agreed to stay at the manor, with all those strangers claiming to be his family, after he was discharged from the hospital. It’s the reason he didn’t run away after being led down those hidden stairs and learning the truth.
When time and conventional medicine didn’t seem capable of restoring his memories, he went along with Bruce’s other suggestions, the telepaths and magic users and alien technology at Batman’s disposal, that didn’t work, not really. Any unearthed memories were always from before that tragic night, never his life afterwards. Bruce would retreat to his cave after each unsuccessful attempt, emerging again after a while with a new theory, something else to try. The time between new ideas grew longer and longer, until eventually Dick hardly saw the man at all.
There was a costume in a glass case that Dick saw the few times he was in the cave. A costume in his family’s colours. Apparently it belonged to a boy who died. He noticed the way Bruce looked at that case—it’s the same way Bruce looks at him.
On those nights when Dick had difficulty sleeping, which were frequent, he would wander the manor out of boredom. He thought it was boredom, anyway, but as he walked through the endless dark rooms he sometimes felt like he was searching for something misplaced. As though he’d find some important memory left upon a shelf.
He would often find himself in the study, the one with the secret door behind the grandfather clock, and if he lingered too long he’d suddenly seethe with the urge to march down those stairs and tear Bruce away from his work, or his guilt, or whatever the hell he was so preoccupied with down there.
Despite how often he thought about it, Dick never stormed down into the cave. Maybe he was too scared, of confronting something more than just Bruce. He couldn’t understand it, it just didn’t make sense, that he could feel such deep anger at a man he barely knew.
Dick wakes to stars bursting in his vision, and he knows it’s going to be a bad day.
He’s still lying in bed, hiding from the daylight under his blanket, when Damian returns from his sunrise kata, clanging open the camper door far too loudly. Dick lifts his head, squinting from the pain, and sees Damian looking down at him in concern. “Are you okay?”
“Headache. Just need to sleep it off,” Dick forces out, each word like a nail driven into his skull. It happens, now and then. Less often than it used to, fortunately. His doctors say it’s a reasonable side effect of getting shot in the brain. He thinks the bullet must have hurt less.
“Have you taken your medication?” Damian asks. Dick grunts in the negative. The boy frowns at him disapprovingly and turns to the tiny kitchenette, digging the pill bottles out of a drawer. He leaves the correct combination of pills next to Dick’s bed along with a glass of water.
“I’ll bring you some food later.”
“Don’t need any,” Dick mutters. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll bring you food, and you will at least try to eat it,” Damian orders with the authority of one much older. He reminds Dick of someone—not his father, he was never stern like that, but almost like—
A fresh wave of pain crashes over him, replacing both vision and thought with blinding white agony. He turns, burying himself under the blanket once more. Damian slips out, closing the door softly behind him.
Dick manages to doze off a few times, Those brief moments of sleep are a relief, but always ripped away from him too soon. For the most part he lies awake, kept company by the incessant pounding in his head, suffering from boredom as much as pain.
He has no idea how much time has passed before it begins raining. The rain against the roof of the camper is gentle at first, but steadily grows until it’s hammering angrily overhead.
The door opens as Damian and Titus seek refuge inside, both of them moving about very quietly, even the dog, for which Dick is grateful. He can’t handle any more noise right now. The downpour against the roof feels like it’s roaring inside his own head, the throbbing pain squeezing tighter and tighter.
There’s another sound, nearer and quieter—the soft scrape of pencil against paper. Damian is drawing. He focuses on that instead, listening to the gentle pencil strokes, and the rain doesn’t seem so loud anymore. The pain eases enough that he starts drifting off to sleep, his last thoughts of how deeply familiar that sound is, if only he could remember…
After two days of rain, the sky clears for the evening, the wind cool and gusting in a way that means it might not stay that way for long.
Sick of being cooped up inside, they hike over to a nearby clearing, carrying flashlights and a plastic tablecloth to spread on the wet grass. There’s no moon yet, and not a single cloud to block out the night sky overhead.
You can’t see this many stars in a city like Gotham, not even out by the manor. Seeing the constellations bright and sprawled across the sky reminds Dick of his parents. It doesn’t seem right, that these constellations could still exist without his dad pointing up and tracing them out with his finger, and without his mom telling stories about them that she’d made up herself.
Dick points at the stars. “Look, there’s the Big Dipper, part of Ursa Major, and right next to it you can see Ursa Minor. My mom had a story about them, she said they were a bear and her cub, and one day the cub got lost…”
Damian is probably just humouring him. He must already know all the constellations and the real stories behind them, being the unsettlingly smart kid he is, but he listens quietly, and when Dick finishes a story Damian points out another cluster of stars and asks, “What about that one?”
Dick finishes the story about the swan, and Damian doesn’t ask for another. They lay there in silence, looking up at the sky. Dick can hear Damian crying, the short, hitching breaths as he tries to hide it. Eventually, Damian says, barely keeping his voice from shaking, “How can you remember all that, but you can’t remember me?”
Dick glances over. “Damian…”
“I’m going to bed,” Damian snaps, turning aside to roll onto his feet. His silhouette storms away across the field and disappears into the trees, the dog following at his heels.
Dick watches him go. Chasing after him won’t fix anything. It won’t do anything but cause another argument. A dark bank of clouds is creeping in threateningly from the north, and he leans back and looks up at the stars again while he still can, filled with a quiet loneliness that he supposes he’ll need to get used to.
The slam of the camper door startles Dick awake. The rain has returned, pelting against the roof loudly and steadily, and Damian is gone.
He just walked out into the downpour, his raincoat left hanging on the hook by the door. His devotion to his early morning training has crossed the line into genuinely troubling. Titus paws at the door and whines over being left behind.
Dick shrugs on his own coat and goes out to chase after Damian. This time he doesn’t have much choice. The kid will get himself sick, or worse—the paths outside will be treacherous with slick mud, one wrong step could lead to a nasty tumble. He can only hope that Damian hasn’t gone too far from the campsite.
There’s no need to guess which direction Damian went—the dog sets off running, all he has to do is follow. He stumbles and nearly slips a few times on the wet, muddy grass, but manages to keep up.
They find Damian in the woods, soaking wet and using a tree as a punching bag. He slams his fists against it recklessly, with none of his usual control or perfect form. The rough bark has scraped up his knuckles to the point of bleeding, but he keeps going.
“Damian!” Dick shouts, running towards him, but he doesn’t seem to hear. “Damian, stop.”
He grabs Damian by the shoulders and pulls him away from the tree. Damian looks up at him with raw, furious eyes and for a moment Dick thinks a punch is going to be thrown his way, too. Instead, a choked cry escapes Damian’s throat as all that anger crumples into anguish. He grabs onto Dick’s jacket and clutches tightly, his face pressed against Dick’s chest and his entire body shuddering with quiet sobs.
Dick hesitates at first, standing there frozen in alarm at suddenly being clung to and cried on, but he wraps his arms around the boy.
He takes Damian back to the camper, finds him dry clothes and sits him down on the bed with a blanket around his shoulders, then gets to work cleaning and bandaging his bleeding hands.
“How’s that?” Dick asks, setting aside the first-aid kit. Damian flexes and clenches his fist slowly, testing the bandages, and nods, keeping his gaze down. Since he calmed down he’s been silent, except for the occasional sniffle, and he’s avoided meeting Dick’s eyes out of sullen embarrassment.
He looks so forlorn, all his armour broken and fallen away, blanket wrapped around his hunched shoulders. Dick feels like he’s supposed to hug him again, comfort him somehow, but stops himself. He can’t be someone that he’s not. It’s not fair to either of them.
“You aren’t him. But you are,” Damian says, hoarse but unwavering, his gaze fixed pensively at the wall. “Sometimes I let myself think that, even if you can’t remember, it could still be okay, as long as we’re together. We’d be starting over, sure, but perhaps someday it could be like it used to be.” He lets out a sharp scoff at himself, mouth twisted in disdain. “But then I realize how pathetic that sounds. It’s just pretending. Things will never be the same.” His next words are barely above a murmur, spoken into his knees as he hugs them against his chest. “You may as well have died that night.”
That stings. Dick turns away, responding brusquely despite himself, “In that case, I guess you won’t mind when I leave. ”
“I didn’t mean…” Damian starts to say, but he gives up on the rest with a frown, his jaw set stubbornly.
The solemn atmosphere is broken slightly by Titus, fur still soaking wet, hopping up on the tiny bed to cuddle with Damian, who groans and unsuccessfully tries to push away the huge dog sitting on top of him. Some other time, Dick might have laughed.
After the past few days of rain, not to mention getting completely soaked while chasing Damian through that rain, Dick is dying for some clean, dry socks. They drive into town to drop their clothes off at a laundromat and buy more supplies.
While waiting for their laundry, they get lunch at the diner next door. It’s a nice change of pace from the camping food they’ve been having day after day. Dick makes sure to order them extra fries, and pie for dessert.
Damian’s veggie burger accidentally arrives with pickles. He makes a disgusted face as he takes it apart to scrape them off.
“How can you hate pickles?” Dick asks.
“I don’t. I enjoy pickled vegetables greatly. I only despise these soggy green discs that Americans put on everything.”
“Here, give them to me. I’ll eat them. I love a good soggy pickle.” Dick opens his burger to add them in. He notices Damian looking at him oddly. “What?”
Damian shakes his head. “Nothing.”
Dick has known since the beginning that this was a mistake. At times it seems like the two of them could almost get along, but they’ve proven over and over that they’re only ever one misstep away from another big fight, and he’s tired of it.
The best thing to do now would be to just pack up and head back to Gotham early, but when he brings it up Damian vehemently insists on one more hike, pointing out that they haven’t yet made it to the top of the mountain.
It’s obvious that Damian is desperate to drag on this trip for as long as possible—even with how much pain it’s causing him, he just won’t let go.
Damian stops on the trail and pulls his buzzing phone out of his pocket. He looks at the screen for a moment, then hangs up without answering, scowling down at the dark glass. Dick doesn’t need to ask who was calling.
“Maybe you should talk to him,” Dick suggests gently. He’ll have to, eventually, when he’s back in Gotham.
“The reception is terrible out here. I’ll call him later.”
“Damian—“
The phone buzzes again. Damian answers it this time, tapping the screen aggressively. Listens with a frown. “Yes, Father. Fine. No.” For a while he’s silent, listening to the voice on the other end. Finally, he lets out a *tt* and lowers the phone from his ear, staring at it in his hand.
He strides forward and hurls it over the edge of the mountain to smash against the rocks below.
Damian stands there silently, hands clenched into fists at his sides. He lets out a few long breaths and then turns to look at Dick calmly.
“You were right. About coming out here and getting some distance. It feels good.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” says Dick, still stunned at what he saw.
“Don’t you dare presume you can tell me what I should or shouldn’t do,” Damian snaps. “This is all your fault. You were careless enough to let yourself get shot and now—“ His voice breaks, and he turns his face away. “Father will never recover.”
“You can’t keep blaming me for this. I get it, I was the glue holding you guys together. Well, I can’t be that anymore! There’s nothing I can do. You’re all going to have to learn how to deal with that and come together on your own.”
“I can’t!” Damian blurts out angrily. Tears fill his eyes, that he stubbornly blinks away. “I’m not you. I’m not enough for him.”
Something in Dick’s chest pangs painfully enough that his breath catches. Without thinking, he reaches out and grabs Damian’s shoulders reassuringly. That feeling, that sense of certainty, slips away suddenly. Damian looks up at him in confusion and desperation, and he’s at a loss for what to do.
“You’re his son. And besides, you’re not alone.” Dick lets go and steps away, each movement awkward. “You’ll figure it out.”
Dick’s about to suggest turning back—clearly neither of them are in the mood for this hike—but Damian is already marching with determination up the path. All he can do is follow.
It happens so quickly.
Titus, exploring at the very end of his leash, sniffs his way into some bushes to the side of the trail. Whatever he’s found has him intrigued, and he wriggles past the branches while ignoring the tugs on his leash.
Damian takes a few steps away from the trail to try to pull him back. “Titus, that’s enough—“
They both yelp as the earth suddenly crumbles under their feet. Titus disappears over the edge, dragging Damian along with him. Dick is too far to do anything but watch in horror.
He rushes over, cautious around the still-crumbling earth, and is relieved to see that Titus has landed on a stable ledge not far below. But just a few feet away from that safety, Damian is clinging precariously to the face of the slope, balancing on a narrow foothold. It’s a steep drop to the ground below. Survivable, but far enough of a tumble to seriously hurt.
“Can you inch over?” Dick calls down. He can’t hear Damian’s response over Titus’s panicked barking, but the clumps of dirt falling away beneath his feet are a clear answer to that question. “Just hold on, I think I have a rope.”
He does, a small slackline still in his backpack from a previous hike. It’ll do. He anchors it around the nearest tree and feeds it over the edge to Damian. Just as Damian shifts to reach for the rope, nearly in hand, the foothold collapses and he starts sliding down, grabbing at the crumbling dirt.
Dick doesn’t waste time thinking about what to do. He doesn’t need to. His body moves as though possessed as he wraps the rope around his wrist and leaps over the edge.
The rush of air against his face as he swings through the air is familiar. He almost wishes it wasn’t over so soon. They land back on solid ground, and Damian immediately begins berating him for his foolish actions, while trying not to get knocked flat by the affectionate jumping of his concerned dog.
Dick barely hears him over the pounding in his ears, his pulse hammering with adrenaline and the fear that’s finally caught up to him. The startling fear that he could have lost Damian.
He feels different. It’s as though the world around him has tilted back into alignment. Something has clicked back into place.
“Damian,” he says, finally giving name to the feeling in his chest. “Damian.”
Damian looks up at him questioningly, and it’s like they’re seeing each other for the first time after months of being apart. Damian throws his arms around Dick’s waist, some long-held tension easing from his shoulders. Dick hugs him back tightly, until Titus, feeling left out, pushes his way between them, and they both laugh.
The best patrol nights ended with takeout on top of a tall building. Usually Wayne Tower, but they would often mix it up.
Bruce would never have done this—whenever Dick convinced him to get fast food it was strictly the drive-thru, which was always entertaining, and then straight back to the cave. But Dick was learning that being Batman meant he could make his own rules.
He glanced over at Damian, noticing his scowl. “What is it, Robin? Did they forget to leave off the pickles again?”
“I only told them twice,” Damian grumbled. He opened his burger, carefully removed one slice, and flicked it off the edge of the tower.
“No, don’t do that!” said Dick, though he couldn’t help letting out a laugh. He reached over and speared one with his plastic fork. “Here, I’ll eat them.”
“Disgusting,” Damian said, but he allowed it.
“I didn’t know you played guitar,” Damian remarked. He stopped on his way past the living room to watch Dick strum the instrument.
“Yeah. Not for a while, to be honest. Things have been so…” Dick winced rather than finish that sentence. He squinted at his tuner and adjusted a string. “I’ve been looking for a chance to get back into it, and I actually think it might help us with that new case, the busker kidnappings. Maybe instead of just waiting for the kidnappers to strike again, I can lure them out.”
His phone rang with a call from Donna, and he took it in the other room. When he returned, Damian was nearly finished tuning the guitar by ear.
“You can play?” asked Dick, leaning over the back of the couch.
A bored shrug. “Mother had me master many instruments as part of my education. The guitar is not particularly challenging. It’s not dissimilar to other stringed instruments.”
“I’d love to hear you play a song.”
Damian let out an annoyed *tt* and shoved the guitar at Dick. “I have work to do, Grayson,” he said evasively. “I’ll let you know when I’ve finished reviewing that surveillance footage.”
His response didn’t come as a surprise. Damian only played his violin behind a closed door. Dick sat down with the guitar and strummed experimentally, impressed at the sound. It really was tuned well.
“Damian…?” Dick asked, tentatively pushing through the half-open bedroom door.
“He is infuriating,” Damian declared, tossing his pillow across the room in frustration, and Dick could tell it was really bad, if Damian was venting without his feelings having to be pried out of him like usual. “He doesn’t trust me, he won’t even listen to me. This isn’t working!”
“I know how difficult he can be.” Dick sat down next to Damian on the bed. “Do you want me to go talk to him?”
“No. There’s no point.” Damian flopped onto his back, frowning up at the ceiling. “I always thought that when I met my father, he would at least care about me.”
“Damian—”
“I know he doesn’t,” Damian said flatly. "Not like he does for you, or even Drake.”
“You’re still getting to know each other. Just give it some time and you’ll see that he does. He just doesn’t show it easily,” he said reassuringly, even as his stomach clenched uneasily. Making excuses for Bruce was always frustrating. He thought that perhaps he would have to have a talk with him later, after patrol, once Damian had been sent to bed.
“Will you come on patrol with us tonight?” Damian asked. Dick could hear the tinge of hopefulness in his voice.
Grinning, Dick clapped Damian on the shoulder. “Of course,” he said, then stood and walked to the door. “And we should get suited up before he leaves without us.”
Dick dropped another armful of wood next to the steadily crackling campfire, and brushed the dirt and bits of bark off his jacket. The little clearing where they set up their campsite was just far enough into the woods to block out the lights of the manor house, but a few steps in that direction would have revealed it again, opulent and looming.
“The fire is looking good. I think we’re ready for these.” He tossed a bag of marshmallows at Damian, who caught it before even glancing up. Damian frowned as he inspected the bag in the campfire light. “Yes, they’re vegetarian. Alfred managed to find some at the store.”
Dick looked up at the sky, and sighed in disappointment. The manor may be out of sight, but that small illusion of wilderness couldn’t make up for the pollution in the sky, smog and city lights tinting the sky a burnt red, hiding the stars even on an otherwise cloudless night.
“One day we’ll go camping for real, I promise,” he told Damian. “Once things slow down enough that we can take a break.”
“Crime never takes a break,” Damian pointed out.
Dick smiled ruefully. “Ain’t that the truth.”
“Must we leave?” Damian asks, sighing up at the blue sky in a rare moment of wistfulness.
It is a shame to miss out on such a beautiful day, but the trailer is hitched up and ready to go. The campsite that’s been their home for the past couple weeks looks sadly empty with all their gear packed away.
“I don’t want to miss my appointments,” says Dick, and he actually means it. He’s looking forward to what his doctors will say. “We can always come back. I’m not getting rid of the camper.”
The way Damian is standing with his arms crossed, the unhappy tilt of his head, gives Dick a sudden sense of deja vu. He remembers Damian wearing a mask and cape, standing in front of a different car, one black and gleaming. His own cape was heavy on his shoulders—he always hated it, how it dragged as he walked…
He blinks, a bit light-headed. Damian is at his side immediately.
“Grayson? Are you all right?” he asks, looking up with that endearing, brow-furrowed expression of concern that reminds Dick so much of Bruce. “If you’re not feeling well, I can drive instead.”
Dick lets out an amused breath. “No, no. I’m fine.” He shakes off the disorientation and pulls open the truck door. “Let’s get going.”
The memories come back in a trickle, slowly—there’s no overwhelming rush like a breaking dam, and he’s thankful for that. He can barely handle them as it is. It hurts to remember, more often than not.
Just the night before as he was trying to fall asleep, he couldn’t stop replaying Damian’s death over and over in his mind, more details resurfacing each time. He knew it happened, but now he can remember the despair. The way Damian’s lifeless body looked, lying broken on the floor. The fresh dirt piled on top of his grave. He tried to hide his crying in his pillow, but evidently it still woke Damian.
“Richard,” Damian said softly, crawling up from his own bed. He nestled in under the blankets and let Dick hold him, for which Dick was grateful. He needed that, the proof that Damian was still there.
“You died. It happened right in front of me, and I couldn’t—” His voice caught on a sob. “You were dead.”
Damian shook his head against Dick’s shoulder. “That’s over now. Do you remember when we found each other again?”
He does. Not all of it, but he remembers the way Damian flew through the air towards him and leapt into his arms. The joyful relief that they wouldn’t have to be apart any longer.
And maybe it’s not yet as simple as it was then. But, as Dick is driving, he finds himself taking his eyes away from the road a bit too often—every time he glances over at Damian in the passenger seat, he gets that fond thrill of recognizing him. Actually recognizing him. That’s his brother.
“I’m sorry,” Damian says. He’s been quiet for a while, frowning thoughtfully out the window. His words are very carefully composed. “I regret the way I behaved, and what I said to you. I was being selfish and angry, and I— I did blame you.” He sniffs and scrubs at his eyes with his sleeve. “Everything was falling apart and I didn’t know what to do. I missed you so much.”
“I know.” Dick reaches over and squeezes his shoulder. “It’s okay. It was a tough situation. I wasn’t behaving so well myself.“
“But it’s not okay. I made you want to leave.”
“That wasn’t because of you. Not really,” Dick says, but Damian looks unconvinced. Dick clarifies, gently, “It was because of a lot of things. I just... I couldn’t think of a good reason to stay. The manor, and Gotham, they weren’t my home. I was tired of making everyone around me miserable all the time. And, Bruce…” He gives a tired, sighing laugh, shaking his head. “God, I’m really going to need to have a serious talk with Bruce, aren’t I?”
“We’ll go talk to him together,” Damian suggests. “There are… some things I need to say to him.”
Dick smiles. He thinks about how much Damian has grown, how mature he is compared to that boy he met years ago. He’s so glad to be able to remember that. “I’m really proud of you.”
There’s a picture at the manor, of the two of them at the circus. Dick may not fully remember that day, yet, but when he sees it again, he’ll recognize the expression on his face—he knows that feeling now. He won’t be looking at a stranger anymore.