Chapter Text
Three Days Ago
“What is he doing here?” Nightwing scowls, stalking over to the figure leaning against the console next to Batman, glaring daggers at him from behind his mask.
“He has clearance,” Batman grunts, not tearing his eyes away from the computer.
“Since when,” Nightwing hisses, taking the last few steps to slot himself between the two.
The only thing that stops him is the gauntleted hand that rises between them, pressing down in the center of Damian’s chest, directly over the stripe of blue in the middle.
“Since I granted it to him,” Jason says, the gauntlet encasing his fingers still pressing into Damian’s suit.
Their eyes meet through their masks— not Jason’s mask anymore, the lenses of the cowl that Damian really never should have let him put on in the first place, and Damian sees how determined his little brother is, knows in an instant that he thinks there is a good reason for this.
What reason could possibly be good enough to allow the Red Hood into the batcave, Damian wonders.
He doesn’t have to wonder for long.
Red Hood’s helmet is turning to him, and it settles in his direction, and every nerve in Damian’s body is thrumming with adrenaline, the need to get him away from here, away from Jason—
“You’re growing your hair out,” Red Hood says. There’s no way to read his tone through the modulation of his helmet, but Damian feels like a cat with its hackles rising.
“Feeling nostalgic?” he asks, and Damian’s mind presents him with the image of a young robin’s grin as his boot lands on a goon’s face, an image that doesn’t line up with the body of the man in front of him at all.
“Why are you here?” Nightwing demands, though it earns him a sharp look from Jason and a terse laugh from Hood.
“Polite as you ever were, Damian. Your dad’s alive,” he throws in, like an afterthought.
The ground feels like it’s tilting under him.
The information isn’t actually news to Damian. Neither is the news that Hood knows who Damian is, because Damian knows who Hood is too.
It’s the way he says ‘your dad’, with what sounds like a sneer on his lips, that makes Damian want to grab him by the lapels of that stupid leather jacket and shake him, drag him over to his memorial case and throw him through the front panel. Pick each shard of glass from his skin, patch him up like he used to, and hold him close to his chest, refuse to release him.
He doesn’t respond, because the only thing he wants to say to Tim is, Our dad. He’s our dad.
His mouth presses into a thin line with the force of keeping that thought in, because Jason’s eyes are on him through the cowl again.
“You know him?” Jason asks, an edge of anger in his voice that Damian always hates to hear.
“Yes,” Damian answers, because he tries not to lie to his brother if he can help it.
“What the fuck? Then why the hell isn’t he allowed down here?”
Jason isn’t facing Hood, doesn’t see the way his head tilts to the side curiously, like he’s waiting for the answer too.
Damian’s mouth finds a way to make an even tighter line, somehow.
“Wait a minute,” Jason says, and that edge of anger isn’t just an edge anymore, it has swallowed his tone. “You already knew that Bruce is alive.”
“Yes,” Damian admits, turning to meet Jason’s gaze once more.
“What the fuck?” Jason snaps, and Damian does not flinch. “How long?”
“I was just informed—”
“How long?” Jason shouts. Tim leans back farther on the console, places his palms behind him and lounges, a small, modulated laugh bleeding through the helmet.
Damian huffs out a sigh, his whole body deflating.
“A month.”
Hood’s helmet snaps up to him, but Jason is too stunned to form an answer. There is a tilt of betrayal in the curve of his brother’s lip.
“You hid it from him for a month?” Hood asks before Jason can recover. Damian wants to rip that helmet off as Tim stalks up to him, wants to hear the anger in his voice uninterrupted, because even if his voice is angry it’s still his.
“Yes.” The answer rips viciously out of his throat. “I am working on a solution—”
“Oh, and you thought you’d just do that yourself? Let Jason throw himself in front of a few more bullets while you puzzled it out on your own?”
“I—”
“God, I should have known! Always acting like you have to do everything by yourself, like you’re always right—”
“Hood—”
“Every day he’s out there is another day he’s lucky to have survived! It’s like you want him to die, too!”
“That is enough!” Damian snarls, angry enough for Tim’s shoulders to rise a fraction, for his gaze to actually snap back to his.
He reaches a hand up and peels off his domino, so Tim can see every ounce of sincerity and rage and regret in his eyes.
When he speaks again, his voice is as low and deadly as Jason’s was.
“I will not lose another brother. I do not require a lecture on the matter.”
There’s a moment of thick silence between them, and it feels like everything around them is fading into nothing, the shadows in the room swallowing everything but the two of them.
Then Hood reaches up and pulls off his helmet, and the sight hits Damian in the gut like Tim had pulled out one of his guns and shot.
His bangs are exactly the same, curling in over his forehead the way they always have. There’s a slice of pain in his chest, an echo of the faint scar cutting across Tim’s forehead, cut off by the edge of the domino. It begins again at the bottom of the mask, reaching down to his cheek. His jawline is sharper, longer, all the baby fat gone from his face.
It’s as bad as the moment he first realized Tim was alive.
There is nothing he regrets more than the man in front of him.
“If anyone—” Tim starts, and his voice is low and shaking with anger, but it’s his brother’s voice. Like a beggar, Damian will accept whatever he is given.
Tim doesn’t finish the sentence. He does not need to.
If anyone has the right, he would have said.
“I know,” Damian says, and his voice has lost all trace of rage, only regret left in its wake. “I know.”
Tim looks him in the eyes and he feels flayed, bare. He remembers when he had to tilt his head all the way down to look at him, the way Tim’s head barely reached his ribs when he wrapped him in a hug, once.
Now, the crown of his head reaches Damian's chin.
Jason’s voice breaks the moment, and Damian just barely manages not to flinch at the interruption. “I’m not planning on kicking the bucket any time soon, and we’ve got shit to do, so if you two could stop acting like I’ve been marked for death and help me figure out how the fuck we’re going to get Bruce back, that’d be great.”
Damian keeps staring at Tim, wishing they could still communicate silently, the way they used to when they were on the same team.
Now, there is only empty space between them.
“Fuck this,” Hood says, quiet and low, then he turns to leave.
“Hood!” Jason calls after him, and it doesn’t stop him, doesn’t even slow him down.
Damian is frozen as Jason follows him. What power does he have, what right?
Tim deserves better than this anyways. Better than them.
Damian is still frozen as he hears the throttle of Hood’s bike. He thinks he might never move again, that they’ll build a second memorial case around him right here. Another cautionary tale.
When Jason stalks back as the roar of the engine fades away, Damian is still there, staring at the place his brother used to be.
It always feels like he’s staring at the place his brother used to be.
A different brother from a different life walks up to him, shoves at his chest, and finally, the glass encasing him shatters. He throws up a hand to block the next shove easily, but Jason had already given up. He wasn’t really looking for that kind of fight.
“Why the hell did you start a fight with him?”
“He started a fight with me.”
A strong sense of deja vu hits him, when he says those words about Tim to Batman.
It’s ruined when Batman reaches up and rips off the cowl, and the face he’s met with is not his fathers.
“Are you fucking serious? And why the hell didn’t you tell me about dad?”
Damian scowls, though it’s mostly at himself. “Because he is not your responsibility.”
“It’s not about responsibility, are you for real? We thought he was dead!”
“Jason,” Damian says in that voice he knows always calms him down. It doesn’t really work in this moment, but it gets him to stop shouting, at least. “Him being alive… it’s not certain. This isn’t a fact. I did not want to get your hopes up.”
That works. Jason’s shoulders deflate, the fight going out of him at once. His head tips forwards, his brow falling on Damian’s shoulder, and Damian wraps an arm around him, holding him.
He holds him like he wanted to hold Tim, like he needs to know he’s real, that he’s there.
Tt, he’s still so young.
“Who is he?” Jason asks, his voice muffled by the Nightwing suit.
Damian doesn’t do him the disservice of pretending not to know what he means. He simply doesn’t answer.
But Jason is a dog with a bone, sometimes, and he does not know when to quit. He pulls away, and Damian tries not to let his hands linger, tries not to let him know he wasn’t ready to let go just yet, but he feels his body fail at the effort.
“Damian,” Jason says, so sincere he’s almost begging. “Who is he?”
Damian swallows, a thick, dry motion, and attempts to force out an answer.
No one, part of him wants to say, but he can’t even make himself say it in an attempt to get Jason to drop it.
It doesn’t matter makes him feel the same way. Of course it matters.
Of course Tim matters.
Tim, he can’t say. My brother who died, the robin after me, before you, your robin. He is alive.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” Jason asks, only sounding a little petulant, and Damian can’t help but smile just a little at the familiarity of it.
“He doesn’t want me to,” Damian answers. A half-truth, but it is as honest as he is capable of being right now.
Jason’s eyes flash to the memorial case, his gaze lingering on the suit long enough for the spot under Damian’s ribs to squeeze.
“Did Hood know Tim?” Jason asks, and Damian’s heart breaks once more tonight at the look on Jason’s face, the devastation he always wears when he speaks of Tim. “It seemed like… like he cared about him.”
“You could say that,” Damian says, his voice more quiet than he wishes it to be, and he is angry at Tim once more. For jerking Jason around like this, for playing with his heart even now.
He cannot talk about this.
“Come. I’ll tell you everything I know about Father.”
He presses his palm to Jason’s shoulder and pushes in the direction of the computer, but Jason stays still for another moment, eyes still locked on the suit behind the glass.
Damian has caught him staring at it before, that mournful look in his eyes, and he always knew Jason was sifting through the memories he was afraid of forgetting, as he is now.
He always knew, because he does the same thing.
“Okay,” Jason agrees, finally allowing himself to be guided back to the computer. His voice is strained, like he’s trying to pull himself back together when he says, “You owe me a million trips to the bookstore, though. I can’t believe you kept this from me. Seriously, you’re funding my library for the rest of my life.”
Damian ruffles his hair, even though he doesn’t have to reach down to do it anymore, and a half-smile forces its way out as he says, “Anything for you, little wing.”
Two Weeks Ago
Damian wakes up to the noise of his phone ringing. He lets out a small groan as he cracks an eye open to peer at it— unknown number, Gotham area code.
He doesn’t answer. It always wakes him when someone calls, a flash of panic that it’s happening again, the one call he should have never had to receive.
So it wakes him, and it’s nothing, like it has been every other time but the one.
He curls back up on his side, closes his eyes and lets it ring out. There is a reason someone invented voicemail.
But then it starts to ring again. It’s the same number.
He lets it ring out again. What the hell kind of journalist is bothering him at this ungodly hour? It’s almost 5am, the first rays of sunlight creeping in through his window.
It rings out, and he figures that’s that.
And then it starts buzzing again. An irritated “Tt,” presses out from behind his teeth, for no one but him and the empty room, and he rejects the call. He holds the phone in his palm, waiting for it to ring again.
He’s happy to play this game, if necessary.
But it doesn’t ring again, it just sits in his palm, the background photo of him and Jon staring back at him.
He’s just putting it back down when it vibrates.
1 new voicemail from (unknown).
He unlocks it quickly, pulling up the voicemail and pressing play.
There’s a rustle, and then an angry, harsh voice begins to speak.
“Answer your fucking phone, Damian, I know you’re awake.”
Damian pulls the phone away from his ear to stare at the screen, a scowl on his face.
The voice sounds familiar, he’s sure of it, because he’s… reacting. He feels wrong, like everything in the room has slid to the left.
He just doesn’t know why.
The phone starts ringing again, that same number buzzing angrily under his fingers, and this time he answers.
“Hello?” he says, his voice rough both from caution and irritation at being pulled out of what little sleep he was in the middle of seeking.
“What the hell is Jason doing walking around Gotham in a batsuit?” A voice snaps at him, and Damian’s fingers tighten around the phone as he shoots upright.
“I do not know what—”
“Cut the shit, Damian. I know how to secure a phone call, you used to trust that much from me—”
“Who is this?” he demands, not that he gets an answer.
“Putting him in the Robin suit was one thing, that I can understand, but letting him be Batman? What the hell is wrong with you?” the voice snarls.
That’s when he places it, the wrong feeling in his gut. It sinks into his stomach like a pit.
“This is quite the change from your usual,” he sighs, letting his eyes slide shut, rubbing at his brow with his thumb and fingers as he accepts that this is happening again.
The anger in the voice slips for a moment, pushed aside by confusion. “My usual— what the hell are you talking about?”
“Usually you just show up.”
It’s a little confusing that Tim is calling him this time, but then again, it’s a little confusing that he’s back. Damian hasn’t seen him in a little over a year, long enough that he’s forgotten to be afraid of his reappearance.
He thought he’d gotten better.
There’s a long pause on the other end, and Damian waits for it, for the berating to continue. He deserves it, he supposes.
“Damian,” Tim says slowly. “I haven’t talked to you since I died.”
The pit in his gut twists, his eyes snapping open.
The hallucination always remembers, whenever Damian’s brought it up to him.
“Yes, you have. I used to talk to you every night.”
“No, we—”
“I miss you,” Damian confesses, cutting him off. He’s not supposed to talk to the hallucination, it never helps, but he just can’t stop himself from indulging. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t going to wash my blood from your hands,” Tim hisses, viciously.
This is familiar territory, at least.
“I know,” Damian says, the mournful thing that lives in every corner of his flesh rising to the surface. “But I’m sorry all the same.”
“Great, thanks. That fixes everything, I’ll see you at sunday dinner,” Tim scoffs, his humor dry as it ever was. “Listen to me. You haven’t seen me—”
“I have,” Damian insists, unable to bear the thought that Tim has forgotten him, even if this version of him isn’t real. “I see you everywhere.”
“I’m not talking about a fucking hallucination! This is real! I’m here in Gotham, and I’m furious! How dare you do this to Jason?”
And that’s when the world tips. He feels like a marble rolling down a hill.
His hallucinations never denied being anything other than what they were. That Tim would taunt him with it, rub it in his face that he was losing his mind.
“Tim?” he asks, his voice smaller than he’s ever heard it, distant, like it’s coming from across the world.
Tim lets out a frustrated noise into the phone, and now he hears it— he doesn’t sound like the hallucination either. Even through the phone connection, his voice is lower. Deeper.
Older.
“Call your grandfather, Damian. When you’ve realized you’re not losing it, call me back. And get Jason out of that suit, or I will.”
“No, wait—” Damian lurches forward, as if he could’ve grabbed Tim through the phone and kept him there.
But he’s already hung up.
“Jon,” Damian calls out, aiming for loud and clear, but he can hear his voice shaking, the wrongness in his tone.
One second later and he isn’t alone in the room, Superman is standing there, looking around frantically for a threat.
That old, familiar fear creeps back in, one he’d almost forgotten, and he embraces it like a sibling.
Is Jon real? Is Damian? Is anything?
How much has he lost?
Then Jon’s eyes land on him and widen in understanding, and Damian wishes he could submerge himself in the bright, unnatural blue and never resurface.
“Woah, hey. Hey, hey, hey,” Jon soothes, the same voice he uses on the cows at the Kent farm. Damian wants to resent it, but he can’t.
Jon is by his side between two hammering beats of his heart, sitting next to him with a hand resting between his shoulder blades.
It helps. That was one of the hardest things to get used to, that touch helps.
The touch is real. This is real. He’s real.
He doesn’t know if that knowledge is better or worse, this time.
“What happened?” Jon asks, his voice still steady, low and soothing.
“I spoke to Tim.”
He doesn’t have to look up to know the expression on Jon’s face. Damian sinks into his side, deflating into him, wishing he was better.
“You aren’t supposed to talk to him when you see him, Dami,” Jon answers quietly, carefully.
“I know,” Damian snaps, and Jon doesn’t flinch, doesn’t do anything but slide his palm to his shoulder and tug him in closer.
He’s grateful that he doesn’t have to watch his teeth right now.
“Is he still here?” Jon asks tentatively.
Jon has seen him at his worst, knows it all. Has been there for it, held him on nights where Tim stood at the foot of his bed, bloody and broken, watching them for hours.
“He never was.” Damian picks up his phone and realizes his fingers are shaking, passes it to Jon so he doesn’t have to see him fumble with it.
Just because Jon knows this part of him doesn’t mean that Damian wants to put it on display.
“Go to my voicemail,” he instructs.
It was the correct decision to make, because seeing Jon open the voicemail, seeing him see it, seeing him press play—
Feeling the way his body stiffens against Damian’s side, the way his hand stills on his shoulder.
It’s real.
And that might be more torturous than any hallucination his brain could have materialized.
“Holy shit,” Jon mutters.
“Language,” Damian mumbles instinctively, the way he always does when Jon manages to squeeze a curse past his manners.
Jon steamrolls over it. “We have to tell—”
“We can not tell your brother,” Damian cuts him off before he can even get the name out, yanking out of Jon’s hold to glare at him. He doesn’t want to risk Conner even hearing this discussion.
“We have to tell someone!” Jon says frantically, but Damian is incapable of comforting either of them at the moment.
“Who?” Damian snarls.
“My dad, or, or— an adult—”
“We are the adults, Jonathan!”
Jon’s mouth snaps shut, his gaze falling back to the voicemail, something like fear attempting to hide in his eyes.
“Well, you have to tell Jason, this is definitely a Gotham problem and he’s Batman now—”
“I know what my brother is!” Damian snarls, his body’s reaction to a nerve-strike.
He wants to hit things, wants to throw a tantrum, wants to shatter his phone against the wall. He desperately wants not to be the adult in this situation.
But he is the adult, and he has to do something.
“We can’t tell Jason,” Damian sighs, rubbing his brow. “We don’t even know that— The call was real, yes, but this could still be a trick.”
“Okay, but—”
“My grandfather,” Damian says, at the exact moment he realizes it’s what he has to do next. He doesn’t need to have a whole plan right now, does he? It’s doubtful he could even create one in his current state.
Jon’s eyes snap to his, that look blown past fear and into shock.
“That was not what I meant by an adult, Dami—”
“No, I have to speak with him. I need you to take me to him. Please,” he forces out, because his best friend is a sucker for manners, especially when Damian means it.
Jon’s shoulders sag, his head tipping to the side, his expression deflating the way it always does when he’s resigning himself to the fact that he’s about to do something he doesn’t want to, because Damian is the one asking.
One Week Ago
Damian is sitting cross legged on his roof, his thumb resting over his phone screen. He’s fondled the idea of pressing call, permitted his thumb to fall on the call button and hold there until his phone gives up on registering his touch.
There would be no going back after this.
There’s already no going back. If there was, he would’ve found a way.
His phone screen fades to darkness, auto-locking him out. He sighs at it, and then Jon’s feet float down in front of him, hovering there like gravity hasn’t noticed his presence.
Gravity is a fool for never caring for Jon. Sometimes Damian wants to tie his feet to the ground to keep him from drifting away.
“Damian, you don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do.”
Jon sighs at him, floating over to sit next to him, copying his position. His head falling on Damian’s shoulder is a comfort.
“I know, but… you don’t have to yet, if you’re not ready,” Jon says.
“By the time I feel ready, we will—”
He cuts himself off, as if speaking the thought will make it true.
We will be purchasing his second coffin.
“I will never be ready. I still have to do this,” he says, steadying his voice.
Jon sighs once more, lifting his head up and placing a hand on Damian’s shoulder.
“Okay.”
“The plan—”
Jon cuts him off with a roll of his eyes before he can finish the demand. They’ve worked together long enough that Jon knows that Damian is aware that he knows the plan, and he knows that Damian’s going to make him run through it again anyways.
“—I’ll be following from out of sight. If there’s any sign of trouble, I’ll come help, and if no one shows, which, seriously? I heard the voicemail myself— okay, okay, stop glaring. If no one shows, I’ll wait. If no one shows and you start talking, I’ll come get you. If someone shows, I’ll text you. Phone’s on vibrate, yeah?” he asks.
Damian double checks, to be certain. He throws Jon a nod of confirmation. He didn’t want to use comms tonight at the risk that the earpiece would be spotted, even though it’s the only way he would have been able to hear Jon’s voice.
He hates that he has to treat this as a mission.
“It’ll—” Jon clamps his own mouth shut, and Damian knows he’s biting down on the phrase It’ll be okay. “We’ll figure this out, alright?” he says instead, rising to his feet and offering Damian a hand up.
Damian takes it, that warm, familiar, comforting grasp. He allows himself to soak in the feeling until he’s on his feet, before he forces himself to let go instead of clinging like a child.
Jon rises a few inches off the ground, hovering before him.
“Jonathan,” Damian starts, and Jon sinks an inch down, like Damian might ask him to stay a bit longer, and he’s ready to agree.
“Thank you,” he says, as sincere as he can make it sound, because he has never done one thing in his life to deserve a friend like this one.
The smile Jon responds with is radiant, even though those two words aren’t enough. Nothing will ever be enough.
“You don’t have to thank me. You don’t owe me anything, we aren’t keeping score.”
Damian knows the score.
“I am grateful all the same.”
“Don’t start going sappy on me now, Dami.”
Damian scowls at him, and Jon laughs, that free, loose noise that always unravels something in him. “I am not sappy—”
“You are stalling, though,” Jon points out, and Damian’s scowl deepens. “Call him. I don’t have all night,” he teases, even though they both are well aware that Jon does in fact have all night, because he cleared it for this. Conner is covering for them, which concerns Damian, because Jon is not known for his skill in lying to his family.
Damian tilts his chin up to direct a glare at him. “I am not stalling.”
Jon shrugs. “Okay, then make the call.”
“Tt.” Damian pulls the phone out and allows himself a single, deep breath as he punches in his passcode. The call button is still waiting for him, and he looks up, lets his breath out in a huff that makes Jon snicker, and forces his thumb to press down.
Jon smiles at him, a comforting grin that hits him slowly, like the morning rays of sun creeping in through his window after a night gone well.
And then the call connects, beginning to ring.
His stomach sinks as he watches Jon rise into the air, shooting up and disappearing by the second ring.
By the third ring, his stomach feels like it’s sunk all the way to the basement of the building he’s standing on.
The fourth ring cuts off halfway through, a rustle of noise coming through the speaker before a voice begins to speak.
“You talked to Ra’s, I take it?” the voice asks.
Damian’s jaw sets. “That is one way to describe what happened.”
“Tell me you hit him,” the voice says, and Damian can’t help but smile at the way the voice sounds conspiratorial.
His knuckles still ache beneath the phone he’s grasping. The punch had been an impulse acted upon, and he wishes he could see the bruises on his own flesh.
He wants to wear them like a trophy.
His grandfather has never deserved to be punched more in his life, Damian thinks. He wants to eviscerate the man, to reduce him to ash.
Even so, he knows that if this isn’t an elaborate ruse, he’ll be grateful to him.
The thought turns his stomach.
“I may have hit him,” Damian confesses, his voice softening. “Just the once.”
The laugh that remark earns him tears through him like an earthquake, and he knows, he knows, he knows that this is his brother.
“Wow, what do I have to do to see that in person next time?” Tim teases.
Nothing, Damian thinks. I would do anything you asked of me if it meant I got to have you back.
“I got him in the jaw.”
He is aware that it sounds like bragging, like he wants to impress him, and finds he doesn’t care at all.
“Didn’t even see you coming, did he?” Tim asks, and something is shifting, and Damian hates it. He wants to grab onto time itself, yank it back. “You always did have a temper.”
“I need to see you,” Damian says, before the words I’m sorry slip out of him again.
“This isn’t about what you need,” the voice says, viciousness bleeding through the speaker of his phone. “But I need you to listen to me, and I know that’s not going to happen until you’re sure I’m really me, which is why I’m waiting for you. I’ll see you here, if you haven’t forgotten where we used to talk.”
The call ends before Damian can say something like I could not forget even if I tried, and I would never try to forget you.
That’s probably a mercy.
Damian looks at his phone, only now noticing the text message from Jon.
Jon: You punched your grandpa in the face????
“Tt.” Damian utters, but it’s a fond one. “He earned it.”
Jon: He’s earned worse
Damian cracks a bit of a smile at that, just for a moment, before he directs the texts to his mask display and says, “The corner of 5th and Gate. There is a building across the street from Wayne Tower.”
As soon as his foot is stepping off the roof, Jon sends another message.
Jon: Someone’s there. Red helmet, leather jacket, red bat symbol on his chest
Jon: Shit, Dami, he has guns
Jon: NOT LIKE THAT
Jon: LITERAL GUNS
Jon: WHAT IF HE WANTS TO SHOOT YOU?????
“Then it’s a good thing I brought Superman with me,” Damian sighs, rolling his eyes.
Tt. As if he isn’t wearing armor.
“I’m heading in that direction. Do not intervene unless a bullet leaves the chamber.”
Jon: Are you serious???
“Of course. I get shot at for a living, Jonathan,” Damian huffs as he grapples to the next building.
Jon: You’re a fencing instructor, dude
“Tt. You knew what I meant.”
Jon: Just be careful
Jon: please
Damian sighs and pretends his stomach isn’t coiling tighter with each block he crosses over.
“I will be,” he lies.
The truth is that he doesn’t need to be. Jon will never let anything happen to him, and that’s why he’s here.
As the distance between himself and Wayne Tower shrinks, he makes a mental note to buy Conner something nice for covering for Jon, half-heartedly trying to distract himself from the way each of his nerves feels like they’re buzzing. He wishes he could break the sound barrier.
There is nothing in his veins but the need to see his brother. His chest aches by the time he sees his father’s building.
And then he swings past it, catches sight of a glint of red on the rooftop he’s heading towards, and his stomach slides. The man is leaning back against the barrier, his arms spread across it on either side, exactly where Damian used to sit with his brother and stare at the name on the tower he’s swinging past.
The man’s head turns to the side, and two white lenses sear into him. Why does Damian even need his grapple with that gaze pulling him in?
As his feet land on the roof, he assesses the man in front of him and tries not to let his hope get out of hand.
The helmet means he can’t see his face, so Damian’s gaze sweeps over the rest of him. His jacket makes his shoulders appear broader, but he can tell that under the leather they’re still much wider than Tim’s were, before. He’s still shorter than him, like Damian always said he would be, and he’s still lean, but he is undeniably in good shape. His pants are baggy where they meet his boots, but the material is tight around the thighs, where a holster sits on either side, a gun slotted in each. The man’s waist is small, but the tight fit of his shirt leaves the musculature there on display.
He’s almost the same age now that Damian was when Tim died, he realizes.
If this is Tim.
The man across from him tilts his head curiously to the side, and lets out a laugh.
It sounds victorious.
“You look like shit,” he says, metallic and grating through the modulator in his helmet.
Damian knows how he looks.
“Good,” the man adds, viciously.
Damian ignores the comment.
“Prove it,” he says, his voice shaking with what he hopes sounds like anger, rather than fear.
The man scoffs and breaks away from the barrier he’s been leaning casually on, reaching a hand up to his collar.
As he strides over, he tucks a finger under it, and the way he walks, even with the added height, is an echo of the way Tim carried himself as Robin, towards the end. Long, even, confident strides, perfect posture, silent steps. Like he thought he could do anything, if he had enough time.
When the man stops in front of him, he tilts his chin up and tugs his collar down, displaying the pale skin of his neck. Damian’s eyes fall on what he’s meant to see before he even makes the decision to look.
His body decides to reach out before he can, too, his gloved fingers finding the mar in the creamy skin.
Damian’s thumb strokes over the reminder, thinking of the first time they practiced with real swords instead of fencing, the first time he ever hurt Tim, the first time he ever said sorry to him, and the scar is solid under his touch, warm through his gloves, ridged and raised.
Jon: He’s real, flashes across his mask.
The weight of the world crashes down on his shoulders, and he flinches at the realization.
Every word his grandfather said was true.
Tim is alive. Tim has been alive. For years.
And he never once returned to them.
He realizes, distantly, that his fingers are digging into the flesh of Tim’s shoulder, the two stripes of blue standing out in contrast to all the black between their costumes. Even as his fingers sink into him so hard they must be leaving bruises, two spots of Nightwing’s color in their wake, his thumb is gentle where it’s pressing just above Tim’s collarbone.
“Believe me now?” Tim asks, and Damian doesn’t even care that he’s being snarky.
“I’m sorry, I had to know,” Damian murmurs, because his voice isn’t capable of being louder than that right now. He feels hollowed, like Tim flayed him open and scraped everything out.
He should have known. Should have looked, should have checked. How long has he been leaving stones at an empty grave? How could he have failed him like this again?
How long is it going to take before he learns that he will never be there when Tim needs him the most?
Tim loses his patience, tries to knock Damian’s hand off of him. Damian’s hand doesn’t release him, though, because it isn’t ready to let go of him yet.
But then Tim’s gloved hand wraps around his wrist and shoves him away.
“I’m sorry,” Damian repeats, and he isn’t sure which thing he’s apologizing for because he is apologizing for everything. He has never done anything right when it comes to Tim, and he doesn’t know how to begin.
“I don’t care,” Tim hisses at him. “I’m not here about me. This isn’t about us, this is about him!”
Damian’s gut twists like Tim has shoved a knife into it. “I know you’re upset that he took on the cowl—”
“Upset?” Tim snarls. “This isn’t about me being upset, this is about his safety!”
“He is capable—”
“It doesn’t matter what he’s capable of! Robin has Batman to keep him safe, that’s the point!”
“We didn’t keep you safe,” Damian says, because why not prod his own wound?
“Cut the martyr crap, you little shit, I know I died!” Tim shouts, beginning to pace a furious circuit across the roof. “And yes, we all had a hand in that, especially me, but I saw what it did to you. To all of you! And I knew you were never going to let it happen to another Robin, so I let it be!”
Tim’s chest heaves as he stalks back to Damian, a gloved hand flying up to poke directly into the center of the stripe of blue across his chest. “And then I find out that you let him put that fucking cowl on!”
All at once, Damian finds his anger. His hand wraps around Tim’s wrist and his grip is iron, like a shackle.
“I did not let him do that,” he hisses.
“You are literally the only person with the power to stop him!” Tim yells, sharp and grating and wrong, and Damian hates that helmet more than anything right now, he wants to reach down and grab one of the guns strapped to his brother’s thigh and shoot clean through the metal.
“I am not able to control him,” Damian snaps.
“You could have put on that fucking suit! You should have!”
“Do you think I am not aware of that?”
“Then why don’t you?”
“Because that is the one thing father didn’t want, and no one would allow it!”
“God, you’re still so infuriating! Do you think he would’ve wanted Jason taking it instead?”
“I think he would have wanted you to take it! You were always the one he was training for that.”
He feels like a teenager again, nineteen and furious.
“Well I don’t want it! I don’t want anyone to take it, don’t you fucking understand that?” Tim flattens his palm against Damian’s chest and shoves, but they’re still tethered together by his unshakeable grip on Tim’s wrist. “That cowl is a curse, and you’re just going to sit back and let it kill another brother!”
Damian feels like he’s been thrown out of orbit.
His free hand flies to Tim’s throat, like his body has decided on its own to back Tim up to the roof access door, shove him against it with a bang as the metal of his helmet meets the metal of the door, another from his hand being pinned against it.
Losing his temper always feels like this. Distant.
“Do not tell me what I am allowing.” His fingers squeeze a little tighter on his neck, the barest hint of a threat.
“I don’t need to,” Tim answers, his voice tight and a little wheezy. “You already know, which is why your hand is around my throat. You’re projecting.”
Damian has always hated that Tim can carve the meat from an action, pull the bone of it out clean.
“I can not stop him,” Damian hisses.
“Who are you trying to convince?”
“I do not mean that I am incapable. I know better than to try.”
“If you’ve learned so much from my death, than why the hell are you letting him march into his own, just like I—”
Damian’s hand tightens, cutting off his words.
“You are mistaken.” Damian leans in close, steps in to crowd Tim against the wall with his body. “Robin has Batman to protect him, you are right about that. But Batman has me.”
He stares into the white lenses of the helmet for a long moment.
It’s only when he feels the flex of Tim’s throat against his fingers, the way his body is trying to gasp for air, that he realizes he’s still choking him.
His hands free him at once, his foot taking him a step back. Tim heaves in a breath, coughing on the exhale, and slides down the wall to the ground.
Damian stares at the aftermath of his actions, watching Tim’s hand rise to his throat instinctively. His coughing dies down to shuddering breaths, his wrists lying on his knees, legs bent halfway up to his chest, and all Damian can do is stare.
The metal of his helmet clinks against the door as he tips his head back to look Damian in the eyes.
“Since when have you ever been enough?”
That cuts clean through to him, like there’s no distance between him and his body at all.
“Since you made me realize that I wasn’t.”
Tim just scoffs and coughs a little, like his throat wasn’t ready for that noise just yet.
Damian doesn’t know how to fix this. This is not a thing that can be fixed.
Still, he tries, reaching down a hand to help Tim up.
“Get him out of that fucking suit,” Tim demands, shoving Damian’s hand away and pushing himself off the ground. “I meant what I said. I’ll stop him if you won’t.”
“Stay away from him,” Damian orders.
And then Tim is tilting his head curiously at him again, still breathing heavily.
“Want me all to yourself?” he asks, still rough from being choked, and Damian’s face burns, shame flooding through him.
Because yes. He does. He wants to keep Tim in a jar on his shelf, preserved. He wants to hoard him away like a treasure.
The ferocity of the feeling surprises him.
It isn’t something he has time to examine right now. Not when his brother is being threatened.
“I have watched him mourn you since the day I met him. Knowing that you abandoned him will break him again.”
“I didn’t abandon him,” Tim says, and it’s quiet, but fierce. His shoulders are tight, his hand cradling his ribs like he’s in pain. “Him finding out who I am isn’t part of my plan.”
“Leave him be,” Damian commands. “I will take care of him. He’s only doing what he thinks he must.”
Tim’s hand falls to his side, and he expects him to be angry, vicious. He deserves to be.
But he doesn’t. Damian watches his brother deflate, disappointed. Mournful.
“So was I. It didn’t save me.”
Tim pauses, like he’s considering Damian, his head tilted to the side again, and Damian knows that what comes next is going to hit him, and he tenses against it.
“And neither did you,” Tim adds, as quietly, as fiercely as he had spoken about Jason.
And then he turns, striding to the edge of the roof.
Damian wants to stop him, to grab ahold of him again, to keep him.
Instead, he lets his brother walk away and knows he will regret it.