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“Look at you, little Robin,” the taunting words sudden and near enough to almost distract him. Almost. “I think a little terrorist like you’s more close to our side than the Bat’s, huh? I’m sure we could-”
The thump as the unconscious body hits the floor is satisfying, in a vicious way Damian does not yet question.
It is not yet midnight, barely halfway through what has been an uneventful patrol so far, and still Damian feels… drained. The kind of quiet tiredness rarely felt, so different from the hazy sleep of injury or the ache of training.
Batman looks at him, just a hint of a tilt to his head as he stands in the darkness. A question.
Damian opens his stance, showing the lack of injuries, absentmindedly pulling the hood down. “I’m alright, Father.” he says, because he is. Because the buzzing in his ears and the weight in his chest are not physical. He knows injury, he knows pain, and this is not quite the same.
A gloved hand ghosts over his hair, gently, an acknowledgment and a thank you and a follow and maybe, if Damian is feeling especially weak, maybe a quiet reminder of love as he is passed in the shadows. Robin disappears after him into the night, only half a step further behind than he usually would be.
a little terrorist like you
He wakes late, that morning, late enough that the instinctive tendrils of panic cling to him tightly, because he is supposed to be better than this. He can’t afford anything but perfection, he is Ibn Al Xu’ffasch, he is Robin, the son and heir of the Bat, perfection is a fate woven for him long ago.
He must be perfect, Damian thinks.
He stares into the mirror, just long enough that it could no longer be a passing glance. He wonders.
Wonders if perfection would be closer to his grasp if brown skin did not stare back at him.
Things were different in the League. Simpler. Because in the midst of training and missions and blood and death there were long fingers in his hair, warm chai cups pressed into his hands that tasted almost like home, quiet embraces in shadows he had long grown into, kisses whispering at his brow - a reward for fulfilling his duty, for doing what he owed, and yet a greedy, childish little part of him wished it was freely given.
Because killing was not right, nor wrong, exactly. It just was. (but he hated it, hated it, could feel the dark thing near his heart twisting tighter and tighter with dark blood, crushing him, choking him, killing him too-)
Because he knew who he was, and what was expected of him.
Because arabic made more sense than english, because people in the league didn’t look at him like he was an outsider in passing, or grimace at his accent, because no one in the league had ever looked at him carefully, horribly gentle, and whispered “ oh Damian. ” at his scars.
Grayson understood best, but even he didn’t quite understand.
He had asked him, once, when they were still the dynamic duo, crouched on a rooftop in the comfortable shadows, summer finally close enough that the warmth stayed even as the sun left.
“Is everything about,” Grayson looked at him, patiently, likely surprised at the abrupt break of their silence which was slowly becoming familiar. “Is everything about before wrong?”
Maybe Grayson saw something in his face, not quite hidden in time. Maybe he sometimes asked himself the same, because his face softened, visible to anyone who knew the truth behind the cowl.
Damian startled, silently, almost imperceptibly, as he was gently pulled towards dark kevlar, a cape covering him until he felt more hidden than seen. Familiar arms bracketed him, gauntlets carefully maneuvered not to injure, and Damian wondered why, when they both knew he had taken worse, inflicted worse, deserved worse.
He allowed it anyway.
It was quiet, for a moment, as Grayson stared out from the rooftops and Damian felt the warmth at his back and the arms around him, looked down at the fingers casually toying with each other in thought.
“No,” Grayson’s voice was quiet, but sure, the words considered and chosen as he continued. “It would be easier, maybe, for me to tell you that everything from before this, us, was wrong, and that everything that happens now that you’re here is right. But that would be wrong, Robin, because I don’t know before the way you do. Killing is wrong, and a lot of what Talia and Ra’s did to you is wrong. I’d say almost all of it.”
He sighed, his arms tightening around Damian. Damian just stayed there, shrugging off the instinct to fight, because nowhere was safe and weakness was failure and failure is death. He stayed there, and waited for Grayson to continue, because that wasn’t the answer to what he had asked.
“That doesn’t make everything wrong. That doesn’t make you wrong.”
He wasn’t sure what he was asking.
Galas grate on him, rain water dripping slowly into stone until it broke. Damian is not sure what he’ll do when he breaks.
His so-called siblings all seem to have much more quiet ease. Grayson charms with easy smiles and crinkled eyes, Todd glowers from a corner but watches the room carefully with sharp eyes, Drake spins webs around businessmen with quick words and inside references, Cain wanders gracefully between them all, eyes following her only to be ignored. His father has a comfortable routine, and while it may be ludicrous it is still well worn, tested and true.
Damian has a suit that rests oddly, judgement that chokes him, and too much pride to hide from it.
“He’ll be so handsome ,” a presumably rich old lady croons, her tone clearly implying that handsome is not the word she means. “So much like dear Brucie.” He gives her a fake smile with too many teeth as thanks, and can see her eyes narrow back at him.
“Still,” her friend titters. “I wonder what kind of tan his mother must have had, for him to turn out, well , like this. It’s all right, you’ll be handsome despite all that, won’t you, dear?”
Damian thinks, quietly, that he has forgotten how to breathe.
“Demon,” Drake whispers at him in greeting, and for an instant all Damian can see is his grandfather staring coldly down at him, men bathed in blood praying for an end, his mother and her quiet ruthlessness, which was easily mistaken for mercy.
The moment passes. He does not have the energy to strike, he thinks. Not now.
“What- actually, I’m busy. Go bother someone else.”
“You are a worthless pretender and no one will ever love you,” he manages. Drake doesn’t even blink.
It may have come out emptier than he intended.
Pennyworth takes him to an asian market, every month on the first Wednesday, after school.
He stares at extra harsh tan remover face washes, and Fair and Lovely , and paling hand creams. He thinks of his mother, and her unquestionable deadly beauty. Thinks of his father, and magazine covers of Gotham’s Most Eligible Bachelor.
He doesn’t pocket one. He wonders what it might mean that he considered it.
Look at you, little Robin
Grayson has an accent. Not as Nightwing, or as Richard Grayson at galas. But at the Manor, with those he considers family, it peeks through, just barely, and he lets it. An enunciation here, a soft exaggeration there.
It’s subtle, but present. Only there when he wants it to be.
Damian, in his quiet mornings in the pale light, wishes.
After a presentation in his history class - he’s ahead by two years, best in the class, and hated - his teacher pulls him aside.
“Damien,” she says, pulling the door shut behind her, leaving them in a large hallway. The name is cold in the air between them, sharp edges and disbelief, because it’s been seven months. “I’d like you to send me a quick summary of everything you said today, kiddo.”
“Why,” he asks, and chokes on the condescending name, buries the glare and the rage deep down because he’s one suspension away from expulsion, and Father might never forgive him for it.
She laughs, almost sheepishly. “Well, I just- with your um. With the accent I didn’t, didn’t quite get everything, and it seems unfair to just grade you based on what I got.” The laughter is still in her voice, because maybe to her this is something funny, something to tell over conference tables to colleagues.
“I will send the presentation to you.” A compromise said as a statement, because he spent hours making this final presentation just right, and a summary could never be as accurate, and he refuses.
She looks relieved, and slips inside again.
He stands in that hallway, the lights bright and Gotham’s usual chill somehow harsher in that moment. Then he follows.
On the comms that night, after breaking a mugger’s arm and breaking a few blocks away from Batman, he asks, because he hadn’t thought of it before, and now it bit at him until his head stung and his throat closed and he just. He needed to know.
“It would be harmful to our performance in the field if you had trouble understanding me because of your own incompetence,” he says into the open line.
“Robin?” Grayson says after a beat.
“The fuck are you on about, brat,” Todd interjects before Damian can answer. There’s a hitch in his breath as if he hit something, hard, revealing his position in one of the disputes between Penguin and Two-Face goons. Damian watches Batman slowly appear in the corner of his eye and then leave again. An unspoken command.
“My,” he falls silent for half a rooftop as he follows. “My accent does not impede your understanding of me, does it.”
“Keep the comms clear.” Batman says.
And that is that.
a little terrorist like you’s more close to our side than the Bat’s
Except it isn’t.
The Cave is unusually occupied, when Robin and Batman finally return from patrol. Drake is at the Batcomputer, Grayson and Cain are eating sandwiches while Todd fiddles with his helmet, one of Pennyworth’s post patrol cookies stuffed in his mouth and hot chocolate set down next to him. Gordon logged off early for the night, after two days of back to back missions with her Birds, but Brown was leaning across from Drake, mask only half off and dangling as she talked to him, seemingly unconcerned with the half hearted answers.
Father’s hand falls heavily on Damian’s shoulder for a moment. “Robin.”
Damian shrugs it off, and walks over to Brown and Drake, who look up at his arrival, quiet surprise in their bodies.
“Drake,” he says, and tries to sound casual, because Bats pick up unease as a shark does blood in the water. “I am. Concerned. That the Rogues might know my identity.”
The silence that falls is thick and absolute, even the literal bats have also helpfully fallen mute, and Damian distantly acknowledges that maybe speedsters do have advantages, such as the ability to leave uncomfortable environments in seconds and end up seven states away with milkshakes and no responsibilities. It seems his unease had been bleeding.
“What. ” about six different voices say at once, in various states of anger and volume (and explicit language, thank you, Todd). And then they are surrounding him, his back to the computer and flanked by Brown.
Whatever enquiries they may have swarmed him with are cut off by Father.
“Explain.” His voice allows for no hesitation, and yet Damian finds himself disobeying.
“They knew,” he whispers after a few seconds of choking, and still cannot force himself to be louder. “I- one of- of the goons, from a few weeks ago, they knew- ”
“Knew what, baby bird,” And. Todd does not sound mocking, not really, but there’s something so wrong in hearing that name, because he- they-
“They knew that I’m a terrorist. They- they must know that I am Ra’s-”
He squeezes his eyes shut as his words, rushed as they are, trail off, wishing desperately for a domino, a mask, anything to hide this shameful fear, because he ruined everything , he sold the secret, he is unworthy to his name, and, Mother won’t take him back , not after this, he’ll have to survive alone, and he knows how but he-
he-
He gasps as rough hands cradle his face, but he knows these hands, and Grayson- Grayson would never hurt him, he promised, he swore -
Someone is swearing in the background, not in sharp arabic but not in jagged english either, and Damian. Damian doesn’t understand.
“Damian.” his father’s voice rumbles from- from behind him? But that- oh. There are arms holding him, gently, carefully like he is something precious, they are not slender with sharp nails but safe just the same, and he waits for them to tighten their grip, to punish, to hurt. “My son. Open your eyes, sweetheart.”
He does, because it’ll be worse if he disobeys, he already ruined so much-
Grayson meets his eyes, and he looks devastated, and Damian did this, he did this-
“Damian, baby brother, listen to me, okay?” Damian does, braces himself for the yelling that surely must be to come.
Instead Grayson gently, kindly, brushes away a tear he had not known had fallen. “You,” he says, with all the firm command of a Batman, the warmth of a brother, the strength of a leader. “Are not. ”
There’s a post-it on his night stand, when Damian finally makes it up to the Manor after being given a long but oddly gentle lecture by Father (while Grayson attached himself like an octopus).
A phone number, and if anyone says shit like that again i’ll beat their racist ass into next week and have kory drop them from the eiffel tower while me n roy target practice on them or smth fun like that (: written in red ink. As if there had been any question as to who had left it there.
Drake corners him at breakfast, looking dangerously awake for the hour.
“I remembered that gala,” he says, and finishes what’s left of his tea. “WE bought out their company stocks and bankrupted them.”
Father looks up from his newspaper, frowns a little, glances between them, and then goes back to it. Drake leaves.
The next morning the bankruptcy declarations are on the front page.
Cain pulls him into her room, one day, and sits him on the bed while she rummages through something. When she looks up again, she has a bottle of Fair and Lovely clutched in her hand, squeezing it like it caused her great offense. He supposes it might have.
“I, too.” she says quietly. “Wanted. For a little while. To be, like them.” Her voice drops even further at the end, her nose scrunched in disgust. “No more.”
Pennyworth catches them throwing the bottle in the fireplace. He does not reprimand them, or even raise an eyebrow, as Damian is sure he would.
Instead, his lips quirk a bit. They watch it burn.
It is night, almost morning. Damian stands at the stove, stirring slowly and trying to remember how it was when he was younger, looking up at the pot next to his mother’s waist, hand gripped in her long skirt as her hands went through his hair.
His father takes the cup of chai and smiles at him, drinks it immediately and then valiantly tries to pretend he didn’t burn his tongue.
Damian smiles into his own cup. It tastes just as it had before - like home.