Work Text:
"Do you have any documents?" Bruce asks into the uncomfortable silence, and feels ridiculous for even speaking when Damian stops looking around the office with curious eyes, and turns to Bruce.
He looks wholeheartedly unimpressed, but Bruce finds that he can't help but stare at the boy. Damian is almost a spitting image of himself as his age, all of eight (and a half) years old — his head is even that familiar nest of unruly black hair that all the Wayne men seem to be cursed with in their youth.
But his skin is much darker, soft and youthful because he is a baby, if Bruce could be so selfish as to call him that. His features are sharper than Bruce's would have been at that age, and while the childish fat exists around his cheeks and jaw, Damian is all sharp and pointy, glaring daggers and mouth full of poison in a way that's almost beautiful (like his mother, a voice in Bruce's head supplies, longingly).
But also, like his mother, Damian is elegant in a way only dark shadows can be. It's hidden under a spiky exterior, but Bruce can see it in his small pudgy hands, something soft and mischievous and personable. Damian Last Name To Be Decided is irrevocably real and whole, an entire new person that's come into Bruce's life.
He is Damian Al Ghul. And he is wonderful.
There had been a moment where Damian looked intrigued by the paintings decorating the corridors leading to the study, eyes bright as he quickly tried to hide his curiosity when Bruce caught him staring.
Damian has a pair of the widest eyes Bruce has ever seen, a rich shade of green, cracked and shining like emeralds and stained glass. His eyes were the first things Bruce had noticed about his son, aside from the sword in his hand and the remnants of battle scars running down his arm.
(Battle scars. His son is eight.)
"Father, assassins do not have paperwork. It would be too easy to trail us." Damian tells him sternly, looking almost exasperated at having to explain such a concept. Bruce is obviously boring him with needless questions, but unfortunately, simply giving Batman a son isn't too bizarre. Stranger things have happened to the vigilante. Giving Batman a son with the last name Al Ghul is perhaps a little shocking, but again, explainable.
But somehow explaining how Bruce Wayne had acquired a biological son that he'd never known about, and was now going to raise with absolutely no word to the public about his mother or his previous last name? It was an entirely new ordeal. A PR nightmare, Lucius will soon tell him, once Bruce figures out how to tell him without risking the man's blood pressure.
But, selfishly, Bruce is distracted.
Father.
He's never been called father — and Bruce had never expected it either. All his boys had come to him with a ghost of their fathers already following them, whether that was a good or bad thing, and all Bruce did was help them overcome the hauntingness of it. Even if he was blessed enough for any of them to truly see him as their parent, Bruce had never tried to replace the one's they already had. So he settled for other names, names that sounded like gold coming from the mouths of his children — but none of these names had been father.
(There had been Jason, briefly, in a past life, who had called him dad with pink cheeks and curly hair, shy and ready to take it back if Bruce so much as blinked for too long afterwards. Bruce can still remember the faint pattering of something soft in his chest whenever he was addressed as dad come look at this! or you won't believe what I did today dad!
Sometimes, Bruce can still hear these conversations, drafting through the manor like a breeze, rustling past curtains and knocking over small glass ornaments. The ghosts in Wayne Manor have always been the restless kind.)
"You are not an assassin, Damian." Bruce tells him after a long moment of silence. Perhaps he should have added 'not anymore' to the end of the sentence, so as to not isolate the boy from his past. As upset as he was, as angry as he is — the more prevalent emotion in him is regret. If Bruce had been different, if he had been stronger, would Talia trust him enough to show him their son earlier?
Damian looks genuinely surprised by Bruce's statement, eyes bright and round, and Bruce's throat tightens when he's once again reminded at how young his son is. He cocks his head to the side, studying Bruce wearily, "If not an assassin, what am I?"
And that is the question, isn't it?
The answer is surprisingly easy for Bruce, and he's not sure if it's because he's had his fair share of this conversation before, each of his kids questioning their place as his, or because he'd rather have this specific conversation now and not when their relationship becomes irreparably damaged by the inevitable horrors of their lives;
"My son. Damian Wayne." Bruce pauses, feeling oddly self conscious after such a proud declaration, "If you find that name acceptable?"
Damian regards him for a moment, eyes green and young and real, before he nods, cheeks flushing pink under brown skin in a way that is hopelessly endearing, "I would be honoured to carry on the Wayne name. I will not disappoint you."
"You won't," Bruce promises, though he thinks Damian and him are talking about very different scenarios, though the words apply for both, "You could never disappoint me."
"You do not know me," Damian frowns.
"Perhaps not yet, but that doesn't change anything," Bruce reasons, hands clammy.
The boy fiddles in his seat for a moment, something that even after knowing Damian for a grand total of a few hours, seems worryingly uncharacteristic of him. He clears his throat and sits up in his seat, eyebrows furrowed in some sort of deep internal conflict, "I do not… know you either, father. Only what I have learnt through files and stories."
Bruce feels the irrational need to apologise, but he has a slight suspicion that doing so would only shatter this delicate honesty that's been offered to him, so he stops himself.
Bruce bites the inside of his lip for a second, reaching out to straighten the pile of paper in front of him, and then pulling his hands back to lay on his lap. There's a lot to be gained here, but a lot to be lost; Bruce is unaware of where he stands in the weak sensibilities of it.
His mouth is filled with cotton when he asks, "What would you like to know?"
Damian watches him for a moment, eyes calculating and precise. It's eerily similar to Talia's glare before battle, and for a moment, even Ra's — and Bruce meets the look undeterred. His son is part Al Ghul, and that side of him is something pure and beautiful, something Bruce is never going to hide behind.
"Everything," Damian admits, and for a moment, he sounds his age, talking in grand extravagances, asking his doting father for things that are impossible to provide.
But Bruce isn't just any father — he is Batman, and regardless, rarely anything is impossible for Bruce Wayne to provide. Especially when it comes to his son.
His son, Damian Wayne.
"Alright," Bruce nods, picking up his pen to continue signing the papers, starting with the birth certificate at the top of the file, "I hope you will learn a lot about me."
Damian blinks, young and bright, "As do I, father."