Work Text:
Pennyworth says, “It’s Jason.”
There’s no honorific attached, and that alone would be enough to make something settle lead-heavy and just as poisonous into Damian’s stomach.
The words echo inside his skull like a gong. He needs Pennyworth to finish the sentence, but Pennyworth doesn’t need to finish the sentence.
Pennyworth is crying, and Damian knows.
There’s a nine year old sitting on Duke’s shoulders. Damian’s mouth still tastes like the stolen mouthful of Tim’s cotton candy. Cass is hiding bolt-cutters under her sweatshirt.
I’ll cover for you, Damian had said. Come back soon, Damian had said.
Nobody else here knew Jason wasn’t in Gotham. Nobody here even thought Jason could be in danger.
“Ethiopia,” Damian says. It’s not a question but Pennyworth nods anyway.
Ethiopia. The Joker.
The Joker has just gotten back to Gotham, said the police scanner in the car on their way back to the Manor.
The Joker is in Gotham.
Cassandra’s already crying. The rest look mostly shell-shocked; Dick, who has already lost his parents tonight, just lost a brother he’ll never get to meet. He still has the tear-tracks on his cheeks, and the worst night of his nine-year-old life isn’t going to get any better.
The Joker is in Gotham.
It’s about to be the worst night of someone else’s life, too.
In his head, Damian hears his mother’s voice. “You will reach shock before grief. Grief will paralyze you. Use the shock.”
It’s a lesson Father had been too stubborn to impart.
Damian knows he’s in shock. It’s maybe one of the few things he feels capable of processing at the moment.
He can’t slip into grief and guilt. Not yet. Grief will immobilize him, so he squeezes his eyes shut, and pulls on the guilt like thread on a spinning wheel.
He lets guilt slide into anger. It will be easier this way.
He can make it about revenge. Terms that feel colder, ones he doesn’t use as much, decades removed from the League’s lessons—this anger can be about a blow to his honor. An attack on an ally. It’s an insult to the family legacy, for one of their own to have been killed. What Damian has to do feels like a checklist in his mind, a set of directions: show that you are not weak; show that you will protect those who serve you; show that you are not to be crossed.
Make them pay.
Duke says something to him. A brush of fingers against Damian’s hand. They’ve grieved before, lost Bruce, but Jason isn’t—it’s not even comparable. Losing Father had been a mess of grief and practicality—Batman and three younger siblings and the company and a funeral.
There will need to be a funeral. But right now, the only thing Damian needs is something to hit.
He barely remembers what happens next. Nobody tries to stop him when he goes; he’s not sure any of them are really aware of their surroundings.
The clock. The Cave. Shadow’s uniform. His bike.
His sword.
There’s a warehouse in Ethiopia.
Then there isn’t.
There’s the Joker.
Then there isn’t.
Damian’s brakes screech in the echoing, damning silence of the Cave as he slows down just enough to clear the bike when he leaps off, not even bothering to stop. The sound of metal over stone as the bike scrapes to a stop is harsh and it’s not harsh enough.
The leftover rage is a feral thing in Damian’s chest. He tears his motorcycle helmet off and throws it at the hard stone floor of the Batcave. He snarls at it when it fails to break, to shatter like he wants it to.
There’s blood on his gloves. It isn’t enough. Katanas are a clean weapon, meant to be sharp and precise. Damian wishes he had been trained to be less efficient about murder. Wishes he’d made it hurt.
He wishes with snarling fury that anything he could’ve done would cut through this overwhelming feeling, like never-ending lightning. Everything that touches Damian feels like too much against his skin.
He wishes there had been more blood. Wishes he was stained in it, physical evidence. Something to take the edge off the rage, sate the guilt.
Damian hadn’t even spared a thought for any of Father’s rules. His head is filled with noise, anger like a hornet’s nest, like white-water rapids. There’s no space for regret.
He throws his katana across the Cave. It ricochets off one of the armor cases and the blade clatters out of its sheath, still bloody. The sound of clanging metal does nothing to cut through the laughter still ringing in Damian’s ears.
It’s a mercy Father is still in Ethiopia. It’s a mercy the rest of the family is still upstairs, tangled in grief and the mess of a new arrival.
It’s a mercy that no one is in the Cave to hear Damian scream. Because he does—loudly, and brokenly, and it takes him full minutes of it to realize that he’s crying, too. It takes him full minutes to realize that he’s sitting on the floor of the Batcave and he’s been curled up into a ball and the blood on his gloves has matted his hair together where he’s been clutching it. He realizes it, now, but he still can’t stop it, and the screams choke down into sobs.
It takes him another few minutes to realize that Duke is standing at the bottom of the stairs.
Damian gasps for breath, the next sob choked off by shock. He draws another breath, abruptly aware that his head is spinning, he’s been hyperventilating, he hasn’t been breathing.
Duke approaches slowly as Damian tries to reign his breathing back in. Duke’s eyes are rimmed in red, and his face is splotchy and off-color. He looks terrible, and Damian wants to tell him, wants to snark and snarl, but Duke’s eyes are gleaming a soft gold, and Damian finds instinctive comfort in it after so many years. The cruelty fails him.
“Where did you go?” Duke asks, and his voice is raw. How long was Damian gone?
Damian closes his eyes and manages, throat hoarse from the screaming: “The Joker.”
He wasn’t sure if he was expecting to feel guilt, after he’d done it. He doesn’t remember much about deciding to, really—it’s all a blur, and he knows he won’t remember this either, between the anger in his chest and the bottomless wave of grief waiting beneath it, like Damian is standing on sheet ice.
The Joker had tried to taunt him. Damian’s siblings often traded lines and chatter, smart and sarcastic in their remarks. Damian had never played the same way, and he certainly wasn’t playing tonight.
This wasn’t a game anymore, and he remembers a rush of satisfaction at the look on Joker’s face when he’d realized that.
Damian remembers laughter twisting to a scream. The feeling of the grip in his palm. The weight sliding off his sword. Back on the bike, back to the Cave.
The fingers of his gloves, stained red.
Damian opens his eyes and looks at Duke. He isn’t sure what reaction he’s expecting.
Duke has never killed anyone. He’s an idealist; he grew up under Batman’s watch, safe from that kind of violent necessity in a way Damian wasn’t. Duke wouldn’t, even if he wanted to.
He’s not prepared for Duke to slide the blood-stained gloves off, gently, delicately. Like Damian is injured in a way that shouldn’t be jostled. He’s not prepared for Duke to pull him close, his head against Duke’s chest, held close with his jaw pressed into Damian’s bloody hair.
Damian is going to open his mouth to warn Duke about the streaks of blood this will leave on his neck, but before he gets the chance, Duke says, “Thank you.”
Damian stiffens in uncertainty.
“I wasn’t going to be able to,” Duke tells him. “And Bruce—shouldn’t.”
His voice sounds like he’s trying his hardest not to cry, but with this much contact, Damian can still feel the hitch in his chest of the sob he’s holding back.
Despite that, something like relief seeps into Damian, past the cold anger. He’d been so sure—well, Father won’t take the news like this, but Damian had been sure Duke would condemn him for this. Duke’s beliefs were unyielding in a way Damian had never quite understood, and he had been worried he wouldn’t yield for this, either.
“I don’t think I’m going to regret it,” Damian manages, because if this—maybe the only thing worse than Duke rejecting him for this, would be Duke forgiving him because he thinks Damian is sorry. Damian will never apologize for this.
“I don’t think you should,” Duke tells him, and his voice is choking up again, and he tries, “It w-was—the Joker—” and Damian isn’t sure what Duke’s trying to say until the words are punched out of him: “he was our little brother.”
Tears drip into Damian’s hair. He presses his face into Duke’s shirt, hand fisting in the material, and tries to pretend he can’t feel it growing damp against his face.
The rage is washing out too quickly. Damian feels terrified in its wake—it’s a layer of sheet ice, the only thing keeping him precariously above the ice-cold grief and the numb guilt.
He wants the rage back. Anything would be better than this. Anything.
Curled up in his brother’s arms, Damian squeezes his eyes closed and cries, still and shuddering.
It’s a nightmare. It’s unimaginable.
Duke shifts how he’s sitting so he can bend his legs around Damian, tucking him in closer. In the back of Damian’s mind, something wants to spit that he’s not one of Thomas’ little brothers, that he doesn’t fit sitting on Duke’s lap, but the vitriol loses to the grief long before it gets anywhere close to his tongue.
He isn’t sure how long he lets Duke hold him. Time is meaningless; dawn or dusk, it doesn’t matter.
Something in Damian’s chest is repeating on a loop, Jason is dead Jason is dead Jason is dead. Damian is a broken record and a broken body and a broken heart.
There isn’t space for anything but grief.
And then Duke says, stuttering around choked-down sobs, “We—I need t-to. Go b-back upstairs. There’s—Dick.”
Fuck. There’s a new kid to look after. They can’t collapse inward from the grief, no matter how much Damian feels like he’s been hollowed out.
He feels bad, for a split second, about leaving Duke to deal with them all on his own. They’re both the older brother, and it’s—the urge to shirk the emotional weight onto Duke comes with another wash of guilt, and Damian has to press his eyes closed.
“I’ll come,” Damian croaks out. “I—you don’t have to do that alone.”
Duke’s arms tighten for a second, and then he lets go. He stands up, pressing a hand absently to the underside of his jaw.
His fingertips come away red, and Damian waits for the disgust, the revulsion, the hatred.
Duke just says, “I’ll wash this while you get changed.”
Damian shuts his eyes against the relief. Father will be a different story, but Duke, at least, will stay in his corner. That’s worth something.
Getting changed out of Shadow’s suit is both aching familiar and absolutely alien. The Cave is so quiet, where Damian is used to a crowd of voices, and the motions are well-practiced even if Damian’s own hands feel leaden.
Duke uses a towel to help rinse the blood from Damian’s hair in silence. Damian tries hard not to think about whose blood it is, because he’s—because thinking about it is thinking about Jason, and—well.
Duke uses the end of his sleeve to wipe the tear tracks from Damian’s face. Damian makes himself look up at Duke, and says, voice barely above a whisper: “Don’t let me try the Lazarus Pits.”
Duke goes still against him, the side of his palm against Damian’s face. The warm, humming gold of his eyes is unwavering.
Damian isn’t sure if he would actually try the Lazarus Pits. Jason is – was – twelve, and what it would do to him—Damian can’t even begin to guess. But he’d have his little brother back, one way or another, and the thought that it could possibly, impossibly, potentially work, is all-consuming as soon as Damian considers it.
Damian is pretty sure he shouldn’t try the Lazarus Pits. Access to them would place Damian deep into the al Ghuls’ debt, something that Father – that Jason – would never forgive him for.
But Damian just killed the Joker. He doesn’t have limits. The guilt is still clawing at him, and it digs in deeper, because he’s sabotaging the possibility of bringing Jason back—
“Please,” Damian stresses, pressing a hand over Duke’s, still frozen on his face. He doesn’t want to see what expression that neutrality on Duke’s face will turn into: shock, disappointment. Disgust, maybe, or fear.
Duke’s limits are an immutable truth. The Signal has things he simply won’t do. Shadow has never been as good at holding to any limit, self-imposed or otherwise.
Damian needs Duke to hold him back. For his siblings, Damian’s pretty sure there’s no line he wouldn’t cross. Tonight has gone a long way to proving that, and it will make him dangerous, if he lets it.
“Okay,” Duke says, even though he sounds like he doesn’t want to. Sounds like he might want to try the Pits himself. “We won’t,” he promises, and Damian—
If it were Father, he would have said I’ll stop you, and there would have been a seed of doubt in it, that maybe Father wouldn’t stop himself, if it came down to it. But Thomas is more steadfast than that, simpler, and Damian lets out a breath of relief.
The grief is still heavy as a stone in his chest, but the tiny hint of relief is enough to help him reign himself back in. He has training, to work through grief—and it’s—
He’s done it before. With Father. There needs to be—a, a funeral, and—
No. No, he can’t do this yet.
“Upstairs,” Damian says. It’s better than breaking down again.
Father is a tornado and a blizzard. Father is stony silence and an avalanche.
Father is grieving, and Damian loves him, but he moves out again.
Damian stays long enough to help keep the others together. It takes Father two days to get back from Ethiopia—one day flying back, and one day before that to handle the process of moving—of his—
One day to handle bringing Jason back.
Damian stays for two days. He helps Duke and Pennyworth; there’s a household of grieving children, and they’ve done this before, but they’re a mess, and Dick buries himself in the back of his closet and cries for an entirely different reason than the rest of them, and Pennyworth is the only one collected enough to remember there should be an extra at the dinner table. It feels like a house of ghosts, quiet and empty and desolate.
Father gets back the second night after—after the news, and Damian already has his stuff packed. He’s already been living halfway between his apartment and the Manor, between his father’s death and coming back and all his siblings, so he doesn’t have all that much stuff. A few bags.
Damian knows he won’t be wanted.
Father slams through the front door of the Manor and comes to an abrupt standstill in the foyer, an article reporting the recent news open on his phone, and it’s been a long time since Damian saw him this angry.
“What did you do,” his father snarls, and it’s not even a little bit a question.
And maybe Damian should be offended, that it’s not a question, but he and Father know each other well enough that at least they don’t have to pretend.
“It was justice,” Damian says. He already knows Father will never agree.
When he came here, at eleven years old, Damian would have done anything to make himself seem worthy to his father. Heir to the Bat. He’d make himself into anything to be allowed to carry the mantle.
He’s carried the mantle, and it’s heavy. He found something he liked more than the mantle, cared about more than any legacy Ra’s or Bruce could offer him, and the Joker killed it.
“It was murder!” Bruce yells, and throws his phone at the ground. The article proclaiming the Joker’s death shatters into pieces when his screen splinters.
“Yes,” Damian says, and he was going to leave before it got to this, but Father is here now and Damian has a lot of grief and a lot of leftover anger and still no regret. “It was murder. And in any other fucking state, Father, the Joker would’ve got the death penalty! How many people were you going to let him kill?”
“We don’t get to choose that!” Father roars. His hands curl into fists, and Damian knows he wishes he had something else to throw.
Father yells, “Jason is your fault!”
It’s ice water and ignition all at once. Damian hasn’t looked at the guilt, because he let Jason go, he let his little brother go to fucking Ethiopia, go to the Joker, and that’s—
It’s too much to think about. Damian curls his hands into fists.
He almost doesn’t pay attention to what they say after that. It’s a red haze, fury and grief and yelling. It’s the loudest thing that’s happened in the Manor for three full days and Damian hopes desperately that it’ll finally be enough to spook the ghosts out of place.
Father yells a lot of things about Damian never being a vigilante in Gotham again. Damian yells something about being twenty-four and not controllable anymore. Father punches a hole in the wall. Damian punches him.
Duke appears at the top of the stairs.
“We can all hear you,” he says, and the harsh quiet of his voice is somehow louder than their shouting.
Damian’s knuckles hurt, a perfect match to the angry red mark blooming on the side of Father’s face. For a long second, he doesn’t think Thomas will actually affect the outcome of this, that he might just brawl with Father right here and now, their siblings be damned. Father looks angry enough for it, his face filled with a bottomless fury that not even Batman has ever been willing to show.
But then Damian looks up to Duke, the gleaming gold eyes.
Duke looks sad.
Damian says, “I’ll get my bags.”
Father is a lightning storm and a glacier.
Father says absolutely nothing, and Damian leaves.
The Joker’s death is like a gunshot in a forest: Gotham is silent in the weeks that follow.
Gotham’s Rogues curl up in Arkham, half-made escape plans and dark schemes left quietly unattended. The criminal underworld feels like an abandoned highway, stalled-out cars. The Shadow moves through Gotham only where no one will see him, not even Batman, and there’s almost nothing happening above petty crime.
It feels like the city is mourning.
In the wake of the Joker’s death, it doesn’t take long for Puck’s absence to be noticed. Damian hears about it on the news; an article about a confession from one of Penguin’s right hands, that he’d mentioned the name Puck halfway through a question and got beaten blind by the Bat.
The article doesn’t specify the injuries. The police records do: six broken ribs, broken nose, skull fracture, shattered ankle, broken femur. Major bruising and moderate concussion.
Batman’s reaction to the name alone is all the answer Gotham’s underworld needs.
Damian’s hoping it will improve after that. He’d been violent after Bruce’s death, after all, but Duke had reigned him back in quickly enough. Father still has Duke, a steady – a responsible – presence at Father’s side, and Tim, and Cass. Brown has at least gotten Dick out of the fallout range, but Father has to know that they all still need him. That they’re all still there for him.
Two weeks later, Damian tears his gaze from miles of endless bloody police reports and texts Duke:
He needs to get it together.
The reply from Duke is quick: i don’t know if he can.
Damian scrubs a hand over his face. There’s nothing he can do for Father. Maybe not ever, but certainly not while his grief is still a forest full of dead wood, waiting for a spark.
Damian types out, I can take the day shift if you think you can help. He hesitates, looking at it written out, but Duke probably stands some of the best chance of coaxing reason into Father.
Once he sends it, the reply is nearly instantaneous: he won’t listen to a word if you help me.
A pause, then Damian receives a sorry.
And a tim is already hiding our texts so b doesn’t find out, he’d LOSE it.
Fuck. Damian drops his phone onto the counter in his unlit kitchen and scrubs a hand over his eyes. Father’s really gone hard for shutting Damian out entirely; it’s a relief Duke and Pennyworth had told him about the funeral, because he’s honestly not sure Father would have.
Damian isn’t sure anyone but Duke can pull Father back at the moment, is the issue. Damian himself is undoubtedly off the table; Tim is a possibility, but it’s more likely that he’d just wind up getting in a fight and moving out, and Damian’s not sure his apartment is big enough for the amount of space the two of them need from each other. Cass is fourteen, and for all her speech has improved so much, she’d have to physically intervene to get the message across to Bruce, and—
Damian still feels the press of Father’s jawbone against his knuckles. Can still see distinctly the wild fury in his eyes, grief so ready to become rage.
He can’t put a kid in front of that.
The idea of not being able to do something makes Damian itchy. He’s not a schemer like Tim, not upfront like Duke, not as stubborn as—as Jason. Damian’s talents have never been with people, but someone needs to do something.
It’s not guilt, he tells himself. He’s not doing this out of guilt. Duke’s told him: it’s not Damian’s fault, it’s not, he didn’t—he didn’t cause—
Damian grabs the keys to his bike and storms out to go have an argument.
It goes exactly as he’d expected. That doesn’t make the yelling any less satisfying, the shattered vase any less broken, or Father any less angry.
The police wind up calling in ambulances, that night in Gotham.
Damian climbs in through the window into the shelf-lined storage room of the Lucius Fox Center for Gotham Youth at three forty-six P.M.
He has seven seconds to push himself back out of sight of the door before it swings open, and Duke flicks the light on as he steps further in. They stare at each other in silence for several moments, before Duke kicks the door closed behind him.
“What the fuck,” he says. Quiet enough his voice won’t carry through the door.
“It’s easier than texting,” Damian says, like that’s obvious.
“It’s been two months,” Duke says. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Hi, Damian, how are you? I’ve barely been holding it together, thanks for asking.”
“If I wanted to exchange pleasantries, I’d have called Pennyworth.” And Damian does feel a little bad, because Duke’s the closest thing he has to a best friend, so he adds, “How—are you? Doing.”
Duke says, the words heavy, “Bruce caught Dick in Gotham a month ago. He was trying to hunt down his parents’ killer. So now he knows how we spend our nights.”
Damian feels his skin go cold. “He can’t be training him.”
Has Gotham learned nothing? Has Father? One son dead to the city and he still thinks it’s safe to teach kids to pick fights? All of Damian's guilt is swallowed briefly by anger. Can it really be his fault, if Father repeats the same mistakes?
He’d thought the kid would maybe stay safe, when Brown took him. It was only temporary, sure, but it kept him away from Father. Away from the thing that’d slowly, inevitably, dragged all of them into Batman’s orbit. Pockmarked, cratered moons.
“Bruce isn’t,” Duke says. “Steph gave him some self-defense, but—" and Damian’s half-waiting for but I’m training him, except that this is Duke, and it doesn’t come. “He’s refusing,” is what Duke says instead, “but he still has to pick Dick up from somewhere in Gotham once a week.”
Damian isn’t sure if that’s better or worse. The last time a kid got out from under supervision, it—
“Can’t you stop him from leaving?” he asks. “Surely that’s within your abilities.”
Duke sighs, rubbing the heel of a hand over his face. “We’ve tried,” he admits. “The kid’s a natural. Short of physically holding him down, he’s basically impossible to keep in the house.”
Circus kid. Christ, they really know how to pick them. He can’t even blame this one on Father.
“How’s he doing on tracking down the killer?” Damian asks. It’s worth an ask, at least.
Duke lifts his hand from his face long enough to give Damian an unamused glare. He admits, “Anthony Zucco. Dick’s got enough evidence for me to keep an eye on him, but not enough for the GCPD.”
“I can help,” Damian says. “Two months is enough for Father to—”
To what? Cool off? Two months isn’t even approaching enough.
To forgive him? Damian isn’t going to hold his breath. That’d just be another dead son.
The thought is harsh, and Damian curls his hands into fists, the pressure grounding, and finishes, “Two months should be enough for Father to not punch me.”
Duke says, “Don’t push yourself, hedgehog.”
Damian feels the minute freezing of his shoulders at the nickname. It’s been months since he’s heard it, and for a moment, it’s out of place—it’s a single sepia-tinted picture of someone’s grandparents getting married in a book of glossy baby photos. It’s something from another life. Someone else’s life.
Duke’s gaze is gold and unwavering.
“He’s a child,” Damian says.
He doesn’t need to say anything else. The protectiveness, the guilt, the grief—Duke will read it all on his face at a glance.
He’s a child. The statement bears more weight than it was ever meant to.
Damian turns and climbs back out the window.
The Shadow runs into a kid not even four and a half feet tall, and he thinks Jesus Christ.
Kid’s wearing a bright green homemade mask—is that one of Brown’s scarves with eyeholes cut in it? Fuck, she’s never going to forgive him, nine years old or not—and leggings and a fitted T-shirt.
At least he’s wearing hard-to-grab clothes.
Dick Grayson stares up at Damian, squints slightly, and says, “I’m gonna kill Anthony Zucco.”
Jesus fuck, Damian thinks, looking down at him. This kid lives in Father’s house? Clearly he actually has something he ought to learn from Batman. Bloodthirsty runt.
The anger and disbelief are a screen over the guilt. Last time Damian let a kid – a little brother, he tries not to think, a little brother – run off on his own, it was—that was—
“That’s a terrible idea,” Damian says aloud.
…and it looks like he’s lost any ability to use tact since—
Since he hasn’t needed it for Jason.
Dick scowls. “You don’t get to say that,” he says. “You killed the Joker.”
Jackass. Damian doesn’t need tact anyway.
“The Joker was a mass murderer and I’m twenty-four,” Damian says. “You’re nine.”
Dick glares at him. “He deserves it.”
The Joker deserved it, too. Jason deserved vengeance. But Damian can’t let a child run off, not again, and he raises an eyebrow.
Dick’s glare couldn’t look threatening no matter how hard he tries. Brown’s scarf was made of a slightly glittery material, and the faint twinkle in the half-light is a comical offset to the angry expression.
“Tell you what,” Damian says, “how about we stick Zucco in jail, and if you want to kill him when you’re twenty-four, I give you carte blanche?” Wait, fuck, child. “That means you can kill him then if you still want to.”
“That’s dumb,” Dick tells him. “You’re so old. I’m not gonna wait that long.”
Once again: jackass. Have all his little siblings been this annoying?
Well, he hasn’t negotiated most of them down from a murder to an arrest, so probably not.
He can’t let a nine year old commit murder though. God, he wishes Duke were here. Duke’s better at people.
But Duke’s not here, and Damian is. How did Damian used to wrangle Jason, when they were Batman and Puck?
Damian feels his breath snag in his throat, caught in a lump. It’s not guilt, it’s not guilt, this is a child who needs his help, it’s not guilt.
He manages to say, “I’ll pinky promise. I’ll help you, if you still want to.”
He holds down a pinky.
“He’ll be in jail the whole time?” Dick asks.
“Yeah,” Damian says. “He’ll be miserable in jail for a really long time too,” he adds, which might be trying to oversell it, but hey, nine year old. Murder. No.
Dick wraps his pinky around Damian’s and nods. “We’ll put him in jail and kill him later.”
Damn. This is for sure Damian’s karma for being a murderous brat when Father got him.
But he might as well help the bloodthirsty idiot hunt down his parents’ killer for the night. Damian isn’t sure he’s got it in him to leave Dick unattended. He’s a child.
Technically, he’s Damian’s little brother now too—but thinking that is pressure on a wound of broken glass and guilt that Damian hasn’t healed from. He’s a child. That’s easier to think about.
Anthony Zucco goes to jail. There’s a vengeful gleam to Dick’s eye still, as the cops haul him away, but Damian certainly isn’t qualified to help with that.
He drives Dick back to the Batcave. Duke’s already waiting there, and so is Father. They probably came here to wait for Dick as soon as they heard about Shadow and some unknown kid working together on Zucco’s arrest. Father doesn’t turn away from the wall of monitors, doesn’t look over at Damian.
Dick slides off the bike.
“Thanks,” Dick says, and after a pause, “You promised, right?”
Damian wishes he wasn’t so relieved when Dick doesn’t specify what he promised. “Yeah,” he says. “Pinky promised.”
He doesn’t miss, out of the corner of his eye, the look on Duke’s face. He’s not going to stay to talk about it though—not going to risk being around long enough that Father will turn around and they’ll start up the most recent round of yelling. His stomach is a knot of guilt already, and he doesn’t need the accusations on top of that.
Damian flips the visor of his helmet back down and peels away.
There’ll be a new kid in Gotham soon. It’s a matter of time, a slow inevitability. But he’ll be trained, and they’ll make sure he doesn’t want to kill anybody over anything again.
Even the thought makes Damian’s chest ache with angry grief. It’s—Jason didn’t leave a space that could just be filled in, not in his family, not in Gotham.
But that’s not Dick’s fault.
Damian resigns himself to the inevitability of Father’s habits. Eventually, there’ll be a little bird, and wherever he goes, a second shadow will follow. Damian can be a backup plan, a safety net.
It’s not guilt, he tells himself, weeks later, watching the silhouette of a small cape flit across the sky visible from the alley. It’s not guilt. It wasn’t Damian’s fault.
He follows anyway. Just in case.