Chapter Text
“Stop,” Tim says, except his voice is all wrong. It’s hard, serious, and displaced from the groggy, bored tone he’d adopted the entire time he and Damian sat perched in front of the Batcomputer.
Sleuthing through old case files in search of a lead for whoever is behind a string of violent gang activity shouldn’t have caused that voice. And it shouldn’t have caused Tim’s hand to jump out, to snatch Damian’s wrist, keeping it from steering the mouse.
Damian narrows his eyes. “Unhand me,” he hisses, jerking his arm away. “I am perfectly capable of navigating Father’s files—”
“Not there,” Tim says.
Damian’s gaze flits to the screen, where their search had tread back several years. Old case files are meticulously ordered and labeled, by date and affiliations. Damian’s attention had snagged on a file with an inconspicuously labeled date, followed by a mere ‘JX3’. Damian’s curiosity had prompted him to click into the file—it was unlike Batman, or any of those he trained, to improperly sort information in the Batcomputer.
But here, someone had done so anyway.
“I am merely doing due diligence,” Damian says, reaching for the mouse between them. Tim’s hand jumps out to cover it first. For a moment, Damian’s filled with an urge to cut it off at the wrist. He swallows that impulse down.
“Explain yourself, Drake,” Damian hisses instead, eyes narrowed, fingers itching toward one of the knives concealed on his person.
Damian is prepared for Tim to deflect, a useless attempt to redirect Damian from whatever is within the file. Damian is prepared to rip through his excuses. But they don’t come.
Tim merely sighs instead. His hand comes unlaced where it’s closed over the top of the mouse. His voice changes again, not hard, not groggy, but still serious and tired. “Listen, Dames,” Tim says. “I’m not trying to fight with you—just, not that file. That doesn’t have anything to do with this case. It’s…it’s something else. You don't need to see it.”
“You’ve seen it.”
Tim sighs again. He blinks hard, the way he does when he’s working to keep a neutral face. “Yeah, I have.”
Damian scowls, a swell of irritation filling him. He had thought he and Drake had improved from the hostile relationship they shared when Damian first came to Gotham. He had thought that they had become something…more. Had quietly become closer to the brothers Richard insisted they were. But clearly, Drake continues not to trust him, to hold him at arms length, like Damian is an intruder, prodding at their defenses.
Disappointment, anger, and something Damian quietly recognizes as hurt courses through him.
Damian draws the knife.
“Damian!” Tim yelps, nearly falling as the rolling chair beneath him skids back—he’s nearly too slow. But Damian knew he would dodge the blade—sleep deprived or not, Damian must grudgingly accept Tim to be Father’s disciple, and also a recipient of Richard’s training. Not to mention the…other mentors. It would take more than a mere knife attack to incapacitate him. “What are you doing?”
Damian lashes again, this time toward the soft weakness of the back of Tim’s knee. He dodges again, but snatches at Damian’s wrist in the process. It’s with ease that Damian pulls away, but to do so also removes him from within knife-range. He settles quickly into a defensive crouch in case Tim reaches for his Bo Staff, which will give him the advantage of reach. Tim doesn't reach for the staff, and remains unarmed.
“Damian, stop,” Tim says.
But Damian is coiled. For a moment, his eyes track the pump of tension beneath Tim’s jawline, the arch of his too-skinny ribcage beneath the loose layers of Richard’s sweatshirt. His gaze finds each lethal point and lack of defense. It would be so easy to kill, paralyze, injure.
“Dami,” Tim says, crossing his arms.
He's...he's not fighting back.
And at that realization, Damian feels the tension melt. Huffing, he twists away, knife slipping within the folds of his pants. The nickname, the detested endearment the others insist on bestowing on him, brings him back to Richard’s words, soft and soothing like the hand he rubs in long circles over Damian’s back and shoulders. Richard begging him to use his words, to talk with them—to try.
Damian would rather wield the knife—that is what he knows. What he knew. But…things are different. Now, even as Tim spars, trading blow back, Damian always expects Tim to dodge the knife, he wants him to. But if Tim won't play his part...
Damian drops himself back into his chair. He hates how small it makes him feel, his toes dipping to trail against the ground, the seat raised to accommodate another family member—Jason, if he had to guess. Slowly, with almost comical care, Tim drops back into his own seat. The look he gives Damian is different that the animosity Damian expects, and maybe that’s why it’s so easy to say something.
Damian’s gaze flits to the screen, the mockingly present JX3.
“Why?” Damian asks. “Why can’t I click into it?”
’Why don’t you trust me?’
Tim eyes him wearily, silence begins to stretch. “You’re eleven,” he says finally.
“I am aware of my age.”
“Shut up for a second,” Tim says. “You might have had an…unusual upbringing, but you’re still eleven. And our family…” Tim seems to be having trouble ordering the words, nervous about lining them up the way he needs. Finally he shrugs. “Our family’s pretty fucked up.”
“Undoubtedly,” Damian agrees.
“And Bruce,” Tim says, like Damian didn’t interrupt. “Probably needs like, ten kinds of therapy.”
“Father is the strongest man in Gotham,” Damian says immediately. “He is the most capable—”
“He’s capable,” Tim cuts him off. “But he makes mistakes. He does things that the rest of us…that not all of us would do.”
“Spit it out, Drake,” Damian says, because his stomach is twisting at the round-about allusions Tim is making about Father. He wants to know what is behind the file, why he can’t see it, and he doesn’t like the sickening anxiety that’s crawling into place the longer Tim takes to explain it.
“The X’s on the computer are bad things,” Tim says simply. “They’re files about things that happen to us— the Robins, the Batgirls, Signal—all of us. Sometimes as heroes, sometimes as civilians. Bruce keeps records. It’s like regular cases—there’s mask recordings, first-person accounts, photos…I think it’s a cathartic thing, for him. Something he needs to compartmentalize all the shitty things that happen to us…” Tim blinks hard. “Because there’s a lot of shitty things that happen to us.”
Damian looks at the JX3, seeing the bold, sharp letters and numbers a little differently. “But you’ve seen them.”
Tim swallows. “He never told me what they were,” Tim explains. “Just that I shouldn’t go into them. I…I got curious. I broke through his security protocols and watched a couple one night. Not all of them. They were…there’s a reason Bruce said not to look at them.”
Tim blinks hard, hands squeezing together.
Damian nods slowly, because Tim’s explanation hasn’t included anything about not trusting Damian. “You didn’t want me to see because…”
“You’re eleven,” Tim repeats, when Damian trails off. “There’s some things I just…I don’t think you should see.”
“I’m not a child,” Damian says, on instinct. “I’ve killed, I’ve tortured, I've—I’m not innocent, Timothy.”
Tim shrugs. “You’re not innocent,” he agrees, sadly. “But there’s things in those files, about our family, that hurt. I don’t want you to know about them if you don’t have to, okay?”
Damian thinks about it. Part of him wants to take the mouse anyway, to dive into the files. Because Damian’s ruined, in a way. He’s not someone to be protected from the ugly, dark side of things. There’s no point. But Tim is here, preventing him from seeing the files anyway. Not because he doesn’t trust Damian, but because he wants to protect him.
“Okay?” Tim asks again.
Damian trails his toe against the cave’s floor, gaze rolling there too. Finally, he nods. “…Okay.”
Tim sighs again, but this time, it’s one of relief. When he speaks again, his voice has dipped closer to the familiar, groggy tone Damian’s come to expect when working with him on cases.
“Alright,” Tim says, reaching out with a hair ruffle that Damian does not allow. “I think you had the dates about right anyway—what about this case?”
The case, Damian has to admit, appears correct.
His feet trail the floor, Tim navigates to a new screen, and together they go back to work.
For now, Damian puts the JX3 file out of his head.