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Damian wakes up to a dark room.
It takes him a moment to orient himself. The painkillers Pennyworth gave him must still be affecting him.
He’s at the Manor, not his own apartment. He can see the oak tree outside his window in the faint Gotham moonlight, branches swaying softly.
At first, he’s not sure what woke him.
It’s likely just the change in environment, he thinks, after a few moments of nothing but silence. He turns over onto his back, ignoring the pain in his recently-dislocated shoulder. Perhaps it would be worth it to get up and go fetch a heating pad if he wishes to get back to sleep swiftly.
He shuts his eyes again, unwilling to move in spite of the ache.
A floorboard out in the hallway creaks.
In a heartbeat he’s rolled silently upright, slipping a dagger out from the space between the mattress and headboard. He grimaces at the way it sits in his palm, balanced for a smaller hand. But it’s still lethally sharp - acceptable.
He pads silently over to the door, trusting Pennyworth to have kept the hinges oiled as he cracks the door open to look out into the hallway.
Light footsteps, soft rustling of fabric. A thump against one of the other doors in the hall, like a foot or an elbow, followed by a quietly snarled curse.
Damian lets out an irritated sigh.
He jerks the door the rest of the way open, fixing a glare into the dim light of the hall. “It is four in the morning,” he hisses at the small shadow now frozen in the doorway across and one down from his own, wide eyes staring back at him in the moonlight. “You understand that the time after patrol is intended to be for sleep?”
Todd hunches his shoulders. Were he a cat, his back would be puffed up defensively. “Then go to bed,” he hisses. “It’s not my fault you have freaky bat hearing!” His eyes dart nervously towards Father’s door at the end of the hallway.
Damian is tempted to follow his advice and leave Todd to experience the consequences of his own choices when he has to go to school in a few hours - Father certainly will not accept willful sleep deprivation as a valid excuse for failing to attend class.
But his curiosity is piqued now.
He leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms as he takes the boy in. There’s a bundle in his arms that Jason is holding like he doesn’t want Damian to see it. “What are you doing?” he asks, scrunching his nose. “Is that laundry?”
Jason hunches further, angling his body away as though Damian can’t clearly see the Wonder Woman print on what appears to be a bundle of his sheets. “Yes,” he snaps. “I spilled soda on the bed. I’m dealing with it, so fuck off, okay?”
There’s something almost panicked in his expression.
The boy is blatantly lying to him. The familiar mistrust he’d felt when Father had brought the child home without even making an effort to verify that he was the orphan he claimed to be first, a mistrust that had faded over the months when nothing had happened, flares back to life with a vengeance.
Damian scoffs. He darts forward, moving with a swiftness belied by his bulk, until he’s looming directly over the teen. “Do not think that just because you’re a child, you may get away with whatever you please,” he says lowly. “It will take quite a bit more effort to get away with lying like that in my Father’s house. Now what are you hiding?“
He snatches at the bundle of fabric in Todd’s arms. The boy yelps, trying to stop him, but with his arms full there’s not much he can do to defend himself. The bundle of sheets spills to the ground regardless of his desperate clutching.
The scent of urine stains the air.
Damian freezes.
There is very plainly nothing hidden among the sheets, now that they’re not crumpled up - nothing but the shame the boy had been trying to hide.
Todd recovers quickly. He grabs the sheets up hastily, face bright red and eyes shiny in the faint light. He slaps Damian’s hand away when he moves to try and help.
Damian allows it, shock giving way to discomfort and a cool knot of guilt in his throat. He swallows it down, stepping back to give him some space.
Todd looks up at him. His lower lip is quivering, even though he tries to glare. “Satisfied?” he croaks out hatefully. “Now can you leave me the fuck alone?”
Damian raises his hands. The younger boy’s shoulders are still hunched as though expecting a blow. “I didn’t realize you were ill,” he says quietly.
Todd swipes a wrist across his nose angrily. “I’m not sick,” he mumbles wetly. “Can you please get out of my way? You can go back to bed now, I promise I’m not - I’m not gonna mess anything up.”
Damian swallows, his guilt growing. He glances at Father’s door, wondering if he should wake him up and alert him to the situation.
But he thinks of the terrified way he’d glanced at the door earlier, the look of humiliation on his face right now, and decides such a thing would be too cruel.
It would seem this is his responsibility.
“Allow me to help you,” he says instead, gentling his voice to the tone he usually reserves for victims and frightened animals on patrol.
Much like the frightened animals Damian so often sees at the shelter he volunteers at, Todd bares his teeth. “I don’t need your help!” he snarls.
Damian raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “You know how to operate the washing machine by yourself?” he asks.
Todd’s face, already hot, grows redder. He looks down at the sheets, silent.
“Come on,” Damian murmurs. “Not to worry. It is a very good washing machine. No one will know the difference.”
He starts down the hallways, giving time for Todd to follow him. And after a moment, he does.
Neither of them says a word until they’ve passed Father’s door and started down the stairs. One flight down, Todd asks quietly, “Are you gonna tell Bruce?”
Damian doesn’t answer for a few more steps. “You swear that you are not ill?” he finally says.
“I swear,” Jason says quickly. He doesn’t sound like he’s lying.
“Then no, I will not inform Father.”
It’s difficult to see his body language in the dark stairwell. Damian thinks he can hear his stride relax a bit anyway.
The laundry room is directly beneath the family wing, several floors down. By the time they reach it, they’ve dropped the stealth in their movements, comfortable in the knowledge that they could probably yell at the top of their lungs and it would still be difficult for Father and Pennyworth to be able to hear them.
Still, he takes care to shut the door behind them.
He wasn’t lying. The washing machine is an industrial sized beast, befitting the number of bedrooms in the house but not the number of people.
Todd is too short to be able to load the bundle of sheets into the top without stretching.
Damian opens it for him, reaches to take the bundle with a carefully controlled grimace.
But Todd jerks it away, scowling. “I can do it,” he says, clearly embarrassed. He manages, standing up on his tip toes. Damian silently grabs the bottle of detergent off the upper shelf and pours some in.
“Is this a regular occurrence for you?” he asks Todd. “Since you say you are not ill.”
“No!” he says hastily, shooting Damian a scowl. “I’m not a baby.”
Damian bites back the instinctive jab, that he certainly puts on an accurate imitation of one, and instead calmly replies “I did not say you were. If an event occurs one time, it makes sense to question whether it is a pattern, does it not?”
The scowl doesn’t go away. “Quit it with the detective bullshit, I’m not a case.”
“I’ve certainly seen murder victims put up less of a defense than you do,” Damian responds, beginning to lose his patience. “It was a simple question.”
“And look at who hasn’t gotten murdered,” Todd fires back.
Damian does a double take, fingers stuttering over the many buttons on the machine. He looks down at Todd, his brow creasing. “I would not harm you,” he says.
Todd blinks up at him, looking just as taken aback. “I know,” he says.
Damian is learning tonight that Todd is not a capable liar.
He lets out a slow breath through his nose, and turns his attention back to the washing machine. He reaches out and confidently presses a button for hot water.
“What are you doing?” Todd sounds disgusted. “You’re s’posed to use cold water. Hot’s not good for fabric.”
He pushes up beside Damian to press up against the machine, reaching for the other button and slapping it with all the judgement someone can put into pressing a button. “I thought you knew how to use this thing.”
“It’s a washing machine, how difficult can it be?” Damian snaps back.
Todd looks up at him, disbelieving. Then, he cackles.
“Oh, that’s rich,” he chortles, no doubt delighted to have found a distraction from his own embarrassment. “I bet you’ve never touched a washing machine in your life. I bet you’ve never even been in this room before.”
Damian clicks his tongue, leaning his hip against the machine and crossing his arms in exasperation as Jason pokes at buttons in a way that seems at least mostly purposeful. “Of course I’ve been in here. I have lived here before. I’ve simply allowed Pennyworth to handle most such mundanities.”
“Don’t you literally have your own apartment? What do you do when you need to do laundry there?”
Damian remains silent.
“Oh my god,” Jason says, wide-eyed. “Do you bring it back with you when you come by for patrol?”
“I’m busy,” Damian snaps, as the boy cackles again. “You’ll understand when you’re old enough to have real responsibilities.”
In spite of his apparent exasperation, he can feel his lips twitching up in relief at Todd’s amusement. Damian will accept mockery at his own expense over the panic and humiliation at the start of this entire painful experience.
The machine hums to life, churning away the evidence that anything was wrong in a mass of soapy suds and flashes of Wonder Woman’s insignia.
Todd steps back, his small smile fading away, though his scowl doesn’t return. He glances sideways at Damian, awkward and almost shy. “Thanks,” he mutters. “I mean, you didn’t really do anything. But, thanks for not telling B.”
Damian can hear the wary question in it, looking for confirmation that he hasn’t changed his mind. He hums. “I see no reason to involve Father, provided there is no risk to your health. And you say there isn’t, so. I will trust you.”
It’s an apology, more or less. Damian can’t quite bring himself to say he’s sorry for being suspicious, not when there is so much on the line in their lives, but he can acknowledge that his mistrust was undeserved if not unwarranted.
Todd shuffles back against the wall of the laundry room, facing the washing machine as he slides down the wall to sit on the floor with his knees tucked against his chest. “You can go back to bed now,” he says. “Sorry I woke you up. I really wasn’t trying to.”
Damian snorts quietly. “I gathered that.”
He joins Todd against the wall, lowering himself to sit beside him, grateful for Pennyworth’s mystical ability to keep nearly every inch of lived-in floor in this house clean enough to sit on comfortably. “I shall wait with you,” he declares, at Todd’s bewildered look. And, when Todd looks no less confused, he gives a slight, one-shouldered shrug. “I was having difficulty sleeping anyway,” he adds quietly.
Todd’s expression drops, and he looks away quickly. Damian has the sinking feeling he’s given the wrong explanation.
“Is, um. Is your shoulder doing okay?” he asks.
“Tt,” Damian responds. “Merely a dislocation, as I told you. It will heal.”
Todd chews his lip, hunching his knees in closer. “I’m still sorry. It was… stupid. You shouldn’t have had to jump in like that.”
Damian bites his tongue. He finds he is grateful that Father had sent Bluejay off to radio the police as he’d examined Damian. Had he been close by in the immediate aftermath, when the adrenaline and pain was at its peak, Damian knows he would have given in to his instinct to lambaste the teenager for the many minor errors that led to his close call that could have ended far worse, had Damian not stepped in.
What would have felt justified in the moment now feels like old habits refusing to die.
“Errors happen,” he says, measuring his words carefully. “I, too, have needed assistance from Father before when we were still partners. That is why we work in teams sometimes - so that we have backup.”
“Still,” Todd mumbles bitterly. “I shouldn’t’ve screamed. I could’ve gotten out of that myself, I just…panicked.”
“No,” Damian whips back, the hardness of his voice startling him almost as much as Todd. “No,” he repeats, and this time he leans into it, keeping just as firm. “When you are in trouble, you do not try and battle it out by yourself. Not when Father or I are there to help. Do you understand?” He ducks his head until he can capture Todd’s alarmed gaze. “Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Todd blurts out hastily.
Damian doesn’t fully believe him. But he leans back, accepting the promise for now. There will be time enough to reinforce it.
Beside him, Todd begins to fidget after a few seconds.
There will also be time to teach him how to be less of an open book for the world to read, Damian thinks wryly.
After another few moments of this, Damian sighs through his nose. “Out with it,” he commands, short but not harsh.
Todd huffs. “Were you and Shadow… close?” he finally asks uncertainly.
Damian settles back against the wall, back straight. He should have expected a question along these lines. He’s still caught off guard by the teen’s perceptiveness.
It takes him a long time to decide how to respond. Todd waits patiently. “Timothy… did not trust me,” he answers quietly. “I did not give him reason to. In fact, I gave him every reason for the opposite.”
He turns his head towards Todd, gaze distant. “I never particularly wanted siblings,” he admits, so quietly he’s nearly drowned out by the hum of the washing machine. “And because of that, I was unkind to him. I was… cruel.”
Todd’s looking up at him now, eyes wide. Damian’s not surprised - he suspects this is the most anyone has ever told him about what life in the Manor was like before Timothy -
Before.
It’s a little unfair, really. The way all this history has just been pushed under the rug because it’s too painful to talk about. That’s all Timothy’s been reduced to - a memory no one likes to look at.
“Had he spoken to me, I could have helped.” He tucks the emotion down underneath, steamrolls his voice into flatness. “But because of me, he chose to go into battle on his own, and he was the one who paid the price.”
He looks down at Todd, gaze intense. “Let him be a lesson to both of us. You come to me when there is danger. You call out to me, and I will assist you. I would much prefer you realize after the fact that you could have handled it on your own than realize too late that you require help.”
Todd looks up at him, studying him in an uncannily familiar way. He doesn’t nod in agreement, but he doesn’t break his gaze either.
Damian considers pushing. But the energy between them feels tentative, fragile.
He doesn’t have much true experience being a good big sibling. But he thinks perhaps this is just the kind of thing he’ll need to prove.
He releases Todd’s gaze. He rests his head against the wall, watching the washing machine churn.
In spite of what he told the teenager, tiredness weighs on him. He blinks slowly to ward off the burning in his eyes.
“I had a nightmare.”
He looks down at Todd, but he’s not looking back, staring ahead with his chin on his knees. He stays quiet, waiting.
Inevitably, Todd fills the silence. “Tonight. That’s, um. That’s why I had an accident.”
Damian hums, nonjudgmental. “While I have never faced… this, issue,” he says haltingly, “I have certainly had… nightmares of my own.”
Now, Todd looks up at him. “Really?”
Damian nods slowly. “Really.”
There’s a lot he could tell add. He could tell him the dreams he still has about his childhood, about the way he sometimes sees Timothy’s blood-stained face lingering in the corner of his room for a few moments after he wakes up, the way he sometimes has to touch his scars to check that they’re still healed or lies in the dark feeling a pain in his spine that’s entirely founded in memory over nerves.
Somehow, he feels like this would be too much.
“I dream about cases that have gone wrong sometimes,” he settles on, a half-truth. “It’s… not a pleasant experience.”
“Oh,” Todd says. He looks like he’s never even considered the idea that Damian might have bad dreams too. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Damian says shortly. “Believe me, whatever irritation you incite has yet to be severe enough to trigger nightmares.”
He’s relieved to see the attempt at humor is taken kindly. Todd cracks a smile, his body language easing slightly from the tight ball he’s tucked himself into.
For a minute, they return to silence, though it’s a surprisingly comfortable one.
Todd again is the one to break it. “When that guy was on top of me, pinning me down,” he says, and his voice is very, very quiet. “It, uh. It brought up some bad memories, I think. That’s why - that’s why I got so rattled and couldn’t push ‘im off.”
Damian looks at him. He doesn’t say anything.
There’s a cool, slithering anger sliding its way through his chest like a dagger.
In that moment, he thinks, as he only has a small handful of times since he was a child, that if whoever it was that hurt his brother was in front of him he would be able to kill them and suffer no guilt for breaking his father’s law.
Jason shrugs - more of a hunch than anything else. “So. Yeah,” he says, even more quietly than before. Damian has to read his lips to understand him over the sound of the washing machine, now in its final spin cycle. “Just. Figured you deserved to know. I wasn’t - I didn’t mean to be stupid.”
“You’re not,” Damian says, for lack of anything better to say. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need your pity,” Jason says, waspish.
“Good, because you don’t have it,” Damian returns, failing to match his sharp edge. “I am, nonetheless, sorry that it happened.”
Jason bites his lip hard enough that Damian fears he’ll draw blood. He doesn’t reply to that.
The washing machine buzzes, and Jason is up and on his feet immediately. Damian takes the moment as Jason moves the laundry over to the dryer to try and settle himself, clenching and unclenching his fists and breathing in, deep and steady until he feels the rage cool and harden into something he can keep contained.
When Jason comes back, he says quietly, “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me that.”
After a moment, Jason mumbles, “You’re kind of a dick, but you’re not so bad.”
The half-hearted praise makes Damian feel oddly warm.
Jason narrows his eyes at him sideways, catching the small smile he lets slip. He snorts. tucking his cheek in against his knees. “Even though you talk so weird sometimes. You sound like you’re, like, a hundred and fifty years old. Or a robot.”
Damian shoots him a narrow-eyed look, lips quirking up. “Perhaps your English tutor simply isn’t doing quality work with you,” he muses, and then dodges as Jason throws a balled-up sock from the laundry basket at him.
“My English grade is perfect!” he squawks.
Damian just grins, baring his teeth.
Jason finally stretches his legs out in front of him, and they wait in companionable silence until the dryer is finished.
This time, Damian insists on carrying the bundle himself, if for no other reason than he needs to do something to justify his presence on this entire expedition. When Jason tries to argue, he merely holds the sheets above his head, which is not difficult.
“That move is more effective when wearing shoes,” Damian deadpans when Jason tries to stomp on his foot. “And preferably when weighing more than fifty pounds soaking wet.”
It’s… pleasant, dodging Jason’s playful attempts to tackle him as they make their way up the stairs, his attacks getting ever weaker as they get closer to the family wing and have to move quieter.
At Jason’s room, Damian comes inside to help him redress the bed, and the teenager doesn’t fight with him. Damian suspects more than anything, he’s just tired and eager for this night to be over. He catches him hiding a yawn in his elbow as Damian tosses the bottom sheet over the mattress, but he still helps him get everything settled as it should be. Damian does his best to mimic the way Alfred tucks the sheets in.
As he does, he asks quietly, “Does Father know what you told me?”
He expects defensiveness, a fight.
Instead, he gets a shrug, and Jason violently fluffs a pillow. “Dunno,” he mumbles. “I didn’t tell him, but I kinda think he might’ve guessed. I kind of, um. I said some stuff when he caught me and I was trying to get away. I dunno.”
Damian’s hands stutter over smoothing out the quilt. Abruptly, several things click into place.
The last bit of anger he’d held towards his father for bringing another child into the flock after Timothy disintegrates.
If Jason had - Damian presumes, using exceptionally coarse language - propositioned Father in such circumstances, small and hungry and terrified…
Well. Damian really can’t hold it against him for being unable to abandon the boy to the streets or the system.
In fact, he finds he’s glad he didn’t.
“I will not say a word to him without your permission,” he vows, tucking the last pillow into place and turning to face Jason. “But know that if you ever do decide to speak to him, he will listen.”
Jason scoffs softly, turning away, and Damian understands that he doesn’t believe him. He doesn’t begrudge him his doubt - had Damian not caught him in the literal act of trying to hide his trauma, he suspects Jason would never have spoken of it to him either.
Still. Choices. At least Jason knows he has a choice.
“Get some sleep,” he orders, nodding towards the clean bed. “It’s nearly sunrise.”
“Yeah,” Jason says, scrubbing at his eye with a fist and yawning with no effort to hide it this time. “You too. Thanks, again.”
Damian closes the door silently behind him on his way out, glancing at Father’s door and relieved to see and hear no signs of life as he returns to his own room.
Sure enough, there’s the faintest glow of dawnlight creeping in through his window, the branches of the tree a little more defined than they were when he left.
He lowers himself to the bed instead of flopping the way he’d like to. After so long lying against the laundry room wall, the pain in his arm is significantly more demanding, a heart-beat pulse of pain rolling slowly under his shoulder blade.
At the same time, he doesn’t particularly want to sleep anymore, mind staticky and humming.
Still, he knows he’ll regret it if he doesn’t at least try.
He lies on his back, eyes half-lidded and watching the light softly illuminate the watercolor portrait of Ace on the Western wall.
He’s almost succeeded in reaching a doze when there’s a soft knock at the door.
He brushes aside the brief flash of annoyance. He gets up immediately, concerned that it’s possible that Jason has already had another nightmare.
Jason is on the other side of the door. As soon as Damian opens it, he holds out a heating pack.
“For your shoulder,” he mumbles, pushing it into Damian’s hands before turning around and vanishing back to his room.
Damian closes his fingers around it. It’s already warm.