Chapter Text
06/30/2004.
“Alfred,” Damian hears Father say, as soon as his ears have stopped ringing, “is that. . . a little boy?”
Damian blinks open his eyes. The sun is bright and glaring against his face. His skin feels tight around his eyes, his throat parched and aching. His eyes and ears and nose burn from the light speed travel. His brain feels soft and slow, like mush.
Damian frowns. He doesn't like not being able to think clearly. He tries to blink back the fog.
“I believe it is, master Wayne.” He hears Pennyworth say. “He seems to have run away from the circus, what with the colourful leotard and cape.”
Damian would usually try to object to that statement— his robin suit offers a perfect, cohesive blend of stealth and agility. It is possibly the farthest thing there could be from a circus costume, thank you very much, but upon opening his mouth, he finds that his throat hurts too much to talk. He tries to rub at his eyes instead, trying to wipe away the last of the wispy clouds in his brain. Except his arms ache too much to lift them to his face. The sun glares down on him, unforgiving. He groans.
“Alfred,” Father says, from somewhere above him. “I think he's in pain.”
Damian squints up at him. He can barely see Father, a blurry silhouette against the bright light of the fierce summer sun; his eyes are burning too much. He feels grass under his palms as he struggles to get up. He squints around himself, his vision blurry and myopic. He's in the front lawn of the manor. There's petunias in the flowerbeds by the fountain. Strange. Damian could have sworn this summer that Pennyworth had planted daisies.
He looks back at Father. His silhouette focuses slowly into a solid figure.
Father is staring at him, his eyes holding Damian's. But that's– that's not Father. But it also is.
Damian stares back, suddenly frightened.
“Hey,” Father says, looking blankly at him, no sign of even the slightest trace of recognition on his face at all, “are you alright?”
Very slowly, Damian sits up. Swallows, his dry throat aching. Considers the situation in front of him. Father is staring at him, bending down to see him more clearly, his hand extended forward to help him up. Pennyworth is a few feet away. Pennyworth has hair.
“Kid,” Father says, and startles Damian out of his thoughts, “are you okay?”
Damian wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, even though there's nothing to wipe.
“I–” he starts, and then stops. Father is looking at him expectantly. He swallows again. This is not good. Not good at all.
“May I know what year it is?” He whispers.
Father raises an eyebrow, and looks back at Pennyworth. Pennyworth frowns.
Father turns back to him and tells him what year it is.
Damian feels a rush of cold realisation flush down his spine. His hands fist at his sides. He looks down at them. There's clumps of grass in his palms. He's pulled them out from the ground.
He looks at Father who doesn't really look like Father at all, who looks concerned and leaner and younger, at the flowerbeds that should have daisies, but have petunias instead, at Pennyworth, who still has hair, at his robin suit that neither Father nor Pennyworth recognise.
“How old are you?” Damian croaks.
Father raises both eyebrows now. “Why do you want to know?” he says.
Damian's heart is founding furiously. “Please,” he says.
Father kneels down to Damian's level. Puts a hand to his forehead, and frowns when he realises that his temperature is normal. “You look sick,” he says. “Can you tell me where you parents are? Maybe we can–”
“Please. I need to know how old you are.” Damian whispers. This is very very bad.
Father studies him for a moment. Then, he says, “I turned twenty four this February. But why–”
Damian closes his eyes. The rest of Father's sentence fades over the sound of the blood rushing through Damian's ears.
“Oh, no.” he says.
*
The boy that they found lying on the lawn is trying to look discretely around the manor. He's failing miserably at it.
Bruce looks at him warily from across the long table in the main dining hall that they’re both sitting at. Alfred's making some hot food for the boy, while Bruce is supposed to be asking him some questions. Bruce pauses, uncertain. He's never been very good with children. Especially upset looking children. That's Alfred's field.
He studies him, the little boy with the too-large robe – his robe – over those wiry shoulders, and a grim expression on his pale face. He's studying the crystal chandelier on the ceiling steadfastly, a look of faint confusion on his face. Probably hasn't seen one like it in his entire life. Not many people have.
Bruce exhales. Might as well use it as a conversation starter.
“You like it?” He says, inclining his head towards the chandelier. “My Great grandfather had it made and ordered specially from France, for his wife's fiftieth birthday.”
The look of mild confusion from the boy's face does not wane. “It shouldn't be here.” He says.
“I'm sorry?”
“The chandelier. It shouldn't be here. I've never seen it before.”
Bruce raises an eyebrow. “I wouldn't expect you to. You haven't come here before.”
The boy just furrows his brows. “But Fa–” he stops. Closes his eyes and shakes his head.
Bruce shifts uncomfortably. “My name is Bruce,” he says after a while, remembering introductions. “What's yours?”
The boy doesn't even acknowledge him, still looking up at the chandelier. “It shouldn't be here,” he repeats blankly.
Bruce sighs. He tries another tactic. “How did you come here?” he says.
“I didn't come. I already was.” The boy says.
“Stop speaking in riddles. You weren't there on the front lawn one minute and the next, you suddenly were. What happened?”
“If I tried to explain you would think me crazy.” The boy says.
Bruce leans forward. Between the cave in his basement and the villains he's been facing nightly for the last six months or so, he's seen plenty of crazy. “Try me,” he says, a little softer.
But the boy just shakes his head again, rubbing at his temples. The action seems familiar somehow, before he realises that he rubs at his temple like that too.
“Look, if you could just tell me who your parents are–,”
The boy holds a hand up. He appears to be deep in thought. “Concentrating. Wait.”
Feeling a little lost, Bruce waits. He feels mildly irritated. He’s not good at this. At talking to people, at least not when he's being himself, and not Bruce Wayne: airhead millionaire. Nor does he particularly enjoy the entire process of questioning little children that emerge out of nowhere onto his front lawn. If Alfred could just ask the kid questions instead of him, everything would be so much easier.
“You said you were twenty five, yes?” The boy says. His eyes are still closed.
“Twenty four.”
The boy sighs. “Practically a child.” He mutters.
Bruce glares at him. Look who's talking. “I don't see what that has to do with anything.”
“It has a great deal to do with a lot of things. And you have no children as of now?”
“What? No.”
“Have you just returned from your years of studying abroad?” The boy asks.
“I– yes, almost a year ago, but how do you–” He stops himself. He frowns. Subject taking control of the interrogation.
“Stop being defensive. I'm not doing the subject taking control thing that you hate.” the boy says.
Bruce stiffens. “You can't know what I'm thinking.” He says.
“Sometimes, I can. We're very alike, in that manner.”
Bruce looks at the boy. His eyes are still closed, his hands steepled in front of his meditatively, like he's deep in thought.
“Who are you?” Bruce says.
The boy just shakes his head.
Bruce leans back in his seat. He can hear Alfred from the kitchens, his faint footsteps and the clatter of the plates.
“And have you taken back control of the company from your shareholders and appointed Lucius Fox as your interim CEO, yet?” The boy says. He has a way of speaking that reminds Bruce faintly of Alfred. He sounds older than he looks.
Bruce decides to stop evading. What's the point? The kid knows everything about him anyway. “Yes. It's become clear that Lucius is one of the few shareholders that have my best interests in mind. I'm going to appoint him CEO officially next quarter.”
The boy nods. “You're right. He does have your best interests in mind.”
There is a silence. Alfred comes in with sandwiches. He serves them in silence, and then steps back, obviously having decided to stay and listen in.
The boy hasn't opened his eyes yet.
Bruce steeples his fingers together, and then realises that that's exactly what the boy is doing right now, and instead flattens his hands against the table. He frowns at the boy, feeling that ugly, familiar feeling at the back of his throat. That clawing anger. He swallows, trying to tamp it down.
“You're a spy,” Bruce says to him. “you’ve been sent here by someone.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You know things about me that most people don't.”
“Who do you think sent me, then?”
Bruce shrugs, uncomfortable. The boy shouldn't be so calm, so composed. He should be– well, he should just be a boy. Frightened and open and maybe a little hysterical. Bruce knows by now that he's mastered the effect that he has on people. He intimidates them. But the tactic doesn't seem to be working on the boy.
“I don't know,” Bruce says. “Someone who wants to see me fail. Companies that we compete with.” The league of Assassins, more likely, Bruce thinks grimly.
The boy just snorts. “Not everything is about you, Fa–” he stops himself quickly.
“What?” Bruce says.
“What.”
“You almost said something. What were you going to say?”
“Nothing. I– it was nothing.”
Bruce gives Alfred a look. Alfred lifts one shoulder minutely. He steps forward.
“Would you like to take some tea, master–” Alfred pauses. “I'm afraid I don't know your name, young sir.”
For the first time, the boy opens his eyes. Bruce realises that they're a pale, clear shade of blue. An unusual feature, given his complexion. He holds Bruce's eyes for a moment, and Bruce can't help but stare back. Then he looks away, at Alfred, at his plate of sandwiches.
“I'm Damian,” the boy says. “And I'd like a cup of Earl Grey, please. Two sugars, no milk.”
Alfred hums approvingly. “Earl grey. A man of taste.”
Damian smiles a little, and all of a sudden he does look like the young boy that he really is. “I know,” he says.
*
It all starts eight days after Mikey Morales gets put away, when stupid Drake goes and gets himself stupidly shot while trying to stop a drug store robbery during patrol.
What an imbecile.
Damian sighs loudly, dragging Drake's semi-conscious body towards the batmobile, while Father takes care of the rest of the robbers.
“If you could at least try to not get yourself killed at an interval of every two minutes, we would all be much better off.” He mutters.
“Shut— up,” Drake mumbles, gasping. Damian looks at Drake. He's starting to bleed from his arm again, despite the pressure that Father had applied on it, and the gauze bandage. He can see Drake's suit sleeve going dark with blood. He swears.
“Walk faster, you dolt. If you bleed out Father is going to blame me, as always.”
“How nice of you to be concerned,” Drake chokes out, and then cries out in pain when Damian shoves him into the passenger seat of the batmobile.
“Goddamnit! Be a little fucking gentler!” He yells.
“Sorry.” Damian says. “You're not exactly easy to carry, you know. Perhaps easing up on the whole milk in your coffee would be a good idea.”
Drake glares at him, clutching at his arm. “I can't believe– I drink my coffee black.”
“Oh, like your soul?”
Drake attempts to lunge at him despite the bleeding arm, and Damian ducks easily.
“Ha,” he crows, leaning casually against the car door. “Is that all you can do?”
“Damian.” Comes a stern voice. “Enough.”
Damian looks up. Father is walking swiftly towards the batmobile. There's blood on the gloves of his gauntlets. He's taken care of the drug store robbers, that's for sure. He comes up to the passenger seat door, kneeling beside Damian to be on eye-level with Drake. He surveys the damage, looking at Drake's arm.
“Tim,” he says softly. “Are you alright?”
Drake sucks in a harsh breath, closing his eyes. “I think so,” he mumbles. “'s just a flesh wound.”
“Symptoms?” Father says.
Another deep breath. “Dizziness. Nausea. Rapid heart beat. I can't– I can't breathe very well.”
Father nods. “Blood loss. We need to get you to the cave.”
He rises again, going over to the other side of the batmobile. “Patrol is over,” he says to Damian. “We’re going home. Get in the car.”
Damian frowns. “Unacceptable. Just because Drake got himself hurt doesn't mean I have to suffer for it.”
Father sighs. “Damian. I'm not letting you patrol alone.”
“That would be unwise. We still have more than half of our patrol route to go, and Penguin's thugs have been acting up lately.” There's a power vacuum in the cocaine business, now that Mikey Morales is out of the game.
“It doesn't matter. Spoiler and Red Hood can handle things if it comes to it.”
“But they're not even in our patrol zone!”
“I'm not letting you patrol alone. Especially not when the Morales’ people have you on their hitlist.” Father's voice is like steel. “End of discussion.”
Damian glares at him. He can feel his shoulders stiffen, something that always happens before he gets in a fight. “I'm not a child. I can handle this myself.”
“You are a child, Robin. I expect you to listen to me when I say–”
Drake mumbles something intelligible, his brow furrowed with the pain. Father cuts himself off, looking at Drake. He looks back up at Damian, his eyes remote behind the flat white lenses of the cowl.
“I need to take him to the cave now. Are you coming or are you not?”
Damian stays where he is, outside the car. Stubborn.
Father's jaw works. “Fine.” He says finally. “Do what you want.” He gets in the car, strapping Drake in, and with the flick of a dial and a whoosh of steam, the automated doors of the batmobile start to close.
“Drake slows us down.” Damian tells him, looking at Father as the doors start to descend.
Father's mouth goes hard. “He's saved both our lives plenty of times. And he's your brother. We always take care of our own.”
Damian shrugs with one shoulder. “I could take him in a fight.”
Father gives him a look. “I highly doubt that.” He says.
Before Damian can open his mouth to speak, outraged, Father says, “Besides, life doesn't boil down to who could beat you in a fight. There's more to people than that. There's more to you than that.”
Damian rolls his eyes. “Spare me the sentimental talk, Father. I have work to do.”
But Father just gives him a sad look. “One day, Damian,” he says, “you're going to have to learn empathy. To care about people. To put their needs before yours. I hope that day comes soon. I really do.”
The doors shut, sealed. The batmobile glides off down the road, and into the night.
Damian stands there for a second, feeling a little stung. Learn empathy. What does that mean? Of course he has empathy. He cares for Father, and Grayson, and all his pets, doesn't he? And Pennyworth is fine too. And he distinctly remembers giving five dollars to a homeless man on the street outside the WE building three months ago, even though he was getting late for his violin lessons all the way across town.
He does have empathy.
He huffs out an annoyed breath, sweeping his cape out from behind him, and shoots out some grappling rope to a building overhead. Stupid Drake, and Stupid Father.
Two hours, a foiled robbery and a botched arson attempt later, and Damian is still thinking about what Father said.
Empathy. Just because he thinks Drake isn't fit for the field doesn't mean he doesn't have empathy. He may not like Drake, or Todd, or Kent– some of the people that Father works with, but that doesn't mean– doesn't mean he doesn't have feelings. He can tolerate Drake. He can be nice.
Damian frowns, and sits down on the side of the curb. He sounds defensive. Even in his own head.
He sighs, pulling back the hood that usually hangs over his head. The usual enthusiasm and vigour he feels for patrol is gone today, for some reason. Perhaps he is just tired. That's all. He's just a little tired. Maybe he'll feel better if he just cuts patrol short and returns to the manor, and asks Alfred to make him some warm–
A zap of lightning suddenly hits him square on the chest, knocking the wind out of him. He falls flat on the pavement behind him, his head taking the worst of the impact. A zing of pain goes through his skull. Instinct takes over and he makes himself get up into a defensive stance, hands automatically raised up to chest level, palms curled into fists. Years of training drilled into him to protect himself.
He looks around himself warily. There's only darkness. Darkness, and an empty street.
“Who's there?” He calls out.
He is answered by yet more silence. The faint howling of the wind.
He turns around, trying to looks through the darkness, trying to make out indistinguishable shapes in the night that the dim street lights do little to illuminate.
“Who's there?” He says again, feeling impatient. He doesn't have time for games. “I'm going to find you eventually.”
A voice to his right laughs suddenly and derisively. “Hardly likely.”
Damian whips around, his hand going up to the belt around his waist, holding onto a batarang that feels cool and reassuring in his palm.
“Where are you?” He demands. “Stop hiding and show yourself, coward.”
“Says the little boy in the colourful outfit, clutching a piece of metal to make him feel better.” The voice is on his left now. Damian turns again. He can smell it in the air. Almost taste it. That sharp, metallic thrum of electricity. Thousands of watts of power. Concentrated, focused into one point. Into one man.
No, not electricity.
Lightning.
“Flash,” Damian says, relaxing, feeling annoyed at the whole charade. He's probably just here to talk with Father.
“Close, but no cigar.” The voice says, from right behind him this time, and he has no time to react before he's shot with another sharp zing of electricity through his chest. He gasps, clutching at his chest, his arms fisting at his suit. He scrambles away, crawling back towards the curb, but the Reverse-Flash is faster, too fast, and he shoots electricity through Damian's body again, an arc of light and heat and power so strong that it makes Damian's spine arch helplessly, makes him convulse with pain. He can smell burning hair and flesh.
The Reverse Flash is laughing quietly, walking towards him leisurely.
Damian tries to get up. The electric shocks make his brain feel soft. Like soup. He stumbles, and falls. Gets up again.
“Why are you here?” He rasps. “Why in Gotham?”
Reverse-Flash is still walking towards him. Every step forward he takes is too loud, in Damian's ears. It sounds like thunder. Damian scrambles backwards, still half on the ground, the asphalt of the empty street scraping on his elbows and palms.
“On business,” Reverse Flash says. He's coming closer and closer still. Damian knows he won't be able to outrun him. Perhaps, if he could call Father, or inform the others. . .
“What business?” Damian says, stalling. He slips his hand discreetly into his belt, trying to feel for the communicator he keeps in his belt there.
“I’ve been paid an obscene amount of money by one Pedro Morales. Do you know who that is?”
Damian’s face falls. “I got his son locked up.” He says.
Reverse Flash smiles. “Gold star for the student in the front row.”
He finds the communicator in his belt, feeling through the darkness so he can find the button that will call the cave. But all of a sudden there's a whirlwind of movement, and he's knocked down on the road again. He looks up, and the communicator has been neatly crushed underfoot, sparking erratically, near Reverse-Flash’s boots.
Reverse Flash makes a noise in disaproval. “Little Robin,” he says chastisingly. “did you really think getting away would be quite that simple?”
Damian takes a deep calming breath. He can handle this. He can handle this. “So you're a contract killer now.” he says, sounding more confident than he feels. “How the mighty have fallen.”
Reverse Flash laughs, a sharp, acidic noise. “Oh, I'm not going to kill you.”
Damian stands up. “No?”
“No. Mr. Morales had very specific instructions for me.”
“Really. And what were they?”
Reverse-Flash smiles again, and in another blur of speed and lightning, he lunges at him. Damian claws back at him, the batarang in hand, but he's too slow. He's disarmed before he can blink, and suddenly they're hurtling across the city, across the river, the water spraying across Damian's face, across the boutiques near Bell tower, to its outskirts, to the manor.
Reverse Flash stops suddenly, and Damian's neck almost breaks with the whiplash. He's dropped unceremoniously to the front lawn, where he proceeds to vomit out the entire contents of his stomach. He clutches at the grass involuntarily, pulling away clumps of it.
The Reverse-Flash bends down the his level, sitting back on the heels of his still smoking boots. He chuckles sympathetically. “Your first time experiencing Speed, huh?”
“Get away from me,” Damian hisses, trying to crawl away.
“Real Speed, I mean. Not the so-called super speed that your friend Wally claims to have. Or his uncle, Barry. I'm faster than all of them, you know.” Reverse-Flash says, walking after him. He puts a foot down on Damian's back, increasing the pressure slowly until Damian cries out.
“The signal to your communicator led here. Any reason why?” Reverse-Flash looks around. “Bruce Wayne's manor? What could that man possibly have to do with you?”
Damian remains stubbornly silent. The foot on his back presses down heavier still. He grits his teeth.
“No matter.” Reverse Flash says lightly. “I don't particularly care.” He hauls Damian up again. Damian stays limp in his arms. He knows he can’t win. Maybe this is it. This is the day he'll die. He closes his eyes.
“What are you going to do with me?” He says.
“Well. Mr. Morales acknowledges that while you didn't kill his son, you did put him in jail. Life without parole, and Mikey Morales is only 21. That's harsh. Now, Pedro Morales, he doesn't kill children, he won't stoop that far, but he does want you to face the same punishment.”
Damian frowns. “He wants to put me in a cell?”
Reverse-Flash smiles. “He wants to imprison you in a place where you are unloved and unknown. A place where no one cares about you. A place you won't ever be able to get out of.” Reverse-Flash starts to break into a run, still carrying him. Damian struggles to wriggle out of his grip. “A prison in the walls of Time.”
Damian opens his mouth to speak, but Reverse-Flash drags him up viciously by his cape, and they're hurtling again, not through space, but Time. The bottom promptly drops out of Damian's mind.They're going fast, so fast that Damian can't speak, can't think, can't breathe. He can't see through the void, the tunnel of viscous air and heat and dark that they're speeding – or are they falling? It feels like they're falling – through. He gasps for breath but there's nothing to breath but liquid light and pure heat and his lungs feel as if they might explode. He blinks open his eyes and he realises he can see everything. The past and the present and the future and the rippling fabric of space-time itself and it's too much so he squeezes his eyes shut closed again but everything is sudden and loud and now now now.
A loud pop.
And then, just as quick as it happened, it is all gone.
When he blinks open his eyes again, and he finds himself on a lawn, it's daylight. The clumps of grass in his hand are still there. He looks up.
“Alfred,” says a voice, “is that. . . a little boy?”
*
Bruce looks at the kid in the robe that's too big for him from the doorway. He sighs.
“He's not giving me anything, Alfred. Except his name. He won't tell me who his parents are, where he lives, nothing.”
Alfred doesn't look up from the tea he's brewing. They're in the kitchen. Bruce tells himself he's not here because he's avoiding the boy. He can smell cinnamon in the air. Alfred must be making cookies.
Alfred looks up now from the kettle, and at Bruce.
“Perhaps you should be more worried about how he suddenly teleported into the petunias, Master Wayne.”
Bruce frowns. “And his clothes, Al. He looks like he's in a Halloween costume.”
“I'd expect you to be the last person to comment on one's clothing choices,” Alfred says in an undertone, no doubt referring to Bruce's. . . nightly activities.
He frowns again. Nightly activities. That just makes him sound creepy.
“Maybe we should call Social Services.” He says. “They could help, right?”
“Maybe.” Alfred says.
Bruce leans against the counter, his shoulders slumping. “What?”
Alfred just shakes his head, and hands him a cup of coffee that he was making alongside the tea. “Pardon my language, sir, but you're bloody terrible at conducting normal conversations with people.”
Bruce takes it, (both the coffee and Alfred's insult,) scrubbing at his face. “Thanks Al.” He says, and looks back at the boy sitting in the dining hall wearily. “I'm just– I'm no good with kids. You'll have to talk to him.”
A raised eyebrow from Alfred sends Bruce back out of the kitchen and into the dining hall, fast. Sometimes it's easy to forget who's in charge.
“Hi, again,” he says, sitting down in the chair next to Damian’s.
Damian just raises a derisive eyebrow.
“Look,” he says to Damian, running a hand through his hair tiredly, “I can call someone from social services if you–”
“No,” Damian says with such intensity that Bruce is momentarily surprised.
Bruce blinks. He finds a lot of children from bad situations during patrol that don't let him take them to the police station, or call social services. Children he finds in abandoned buildings and shacks under highways. Damian’s looking at him the way they look at him. Shifty eyes and tense shoulders. He is terrified, Bruce realises. He's just not showing it in the way that most people do.
Bruce pauses, trying to figure out the best way to handle this. He finds that often the most effective thing to do with those scared children living under highways that say they don't want help is to just ask why. Children are inherently honest. This one shouldn't be any different.
“Alright,” Bruce says. “Why?”
“You can't do anything differently now. Or it may change the future. The future that I'm from.”
Bruce quickly reconsiders his 'children are inherently honest’ theory.
“Uh. Okay.” He says, after a while. “Okay. I'm just going to go call Alfred now. He'll talk to you. Alright?”
Damian sighs. “Sit down. . .Bruce. You need to listen to this.” He says Bruce's name oddly, and with hesitation, almost.
Bruce frowns, but he sits.
“Look,” Damian says, “I'm aware of how this will sound. If someone told me all of these things before I even knew that someone with the abilities to manipulate the speed force existed, before I even knew the speed force existed, I would have laughed them off. You would be well within your rights to do the same. But I'm asking you to please listen. I don't have any other options, and I’m afraid that only you can help me.”
Bruce opens his mouth to speak, but Damian cuts him off. “I was kidnapped and sent thirteen years to the past against my will. Reverse Flash did it, but you don't know him yet, because he doesn't exist yet, because the Flash doesn't exist yet. Well. I'm sure the Flash exists, so to speak, but according to my calculations he cannot be more than sixteen years old right now, and has not been struck by lightning yet, and definitely does not possess the ability to manipulate the time stream. So when it comes to trying to figure out how to return to my own time, you are perhaps, at the risk of sounding slightly histrionic, my only hope.”
He says all of this in a decidedly casual and very un-histrionic manner.
Bruce blinks. Damian is staring at him expectantly, obviously waiting for him to react in some manner.
So Bruce blinks again. “Right. I’m going to call Alfred now. My butler.” He says finally. “He's made, uh, cookies.”
Damian sighs, rubbing at his temples again. “You do that.” He says.
*
Damian glumly bites into one of the cookies from the plate in front of him.
“It's chocolate and cinnamon.” Pennyworth tells him kindly. “Made with a secret ingredient handed down through generations in my family. Fiercely guarded.”
Damian realises that Pennyworth is trying to make small talk to make him feel more comfortable. It's not really working. Damian is currently trying very hard not to scream. Or hyperventilate. Or possibly both. He's never getting back home.
Damian takes another doleful bite. “It's Mayonnaise.” he says dully.
“Beg pardon?”
“The secret ingredient. It's mayonnaise. You don't use eggs. Makes it taste creamier or something.” He considers the plate of cookies in front of him. They're cookies from the past. Perhaps by eating them he's causing some kind of elephantine paradox that will vaporize him in a matter of seconds.
Besides, they were probably meant for someone else. Most likely for Fath- Bruce. For Bruce. He can't keep calling him Father anymore. It might slip out, and then he won't have to wait for a plate of cookies to alter the course of time, it just will, all by itself. And he'll be vaporized. Again.
He sighs, taking another bite. “Mayonnaise.” He says again. “It works.”
Pennyworth narrows his eyes. “And how would you possibly know that?”
“I told you, I'm from the future.”
“Yes, but I would assume that not everyone from the future would know my secret ingredient. Or is it going to be displayed on holo-billboards everywhere in the year 2030, and you see it while you're cruising down the road in your flying car?”
Damian sighs. “You don't believe me.”
“You're not making your case very convincing, unfortunately.”
“I don't live in the year 2030. Well. One day I will. Hopefully. But not right now. It's not so far ahead as that. And no, not everyone from the future knows your chocolate and cinnamon cookies recipe. But I do, because we're. . . close.”
“Oh?” Pennyworth says, and it's clear enough from his tone that he's only humouring him, “I see. Are you my grandson then?” He says, chuckling dryly.
Damian swallows. It's almost dangerously close to the truth.
Pennyworth raises an eyebrow.
Damian clears his throat. “No. No, I'm not. But I– I work with Bruce.”
The eyebrow inches steadily up Pennyworth's forehead.
“I help him with Patrol,” Damian explains, “with his Batman work.” He says, looking meaningfully at Pennyworth. Maybe the fact that he knows Father's biggest secret will convince him that he's really telling the truth.
“I don't know what a bat-man is,” Pennyworth says blandly, ever the expert actor.
“Look, we don't have time for this–”
“Time for what, master Damian?”
Damian gets up from his seat, pushing the plate of cookies away from him. “Fine.” He glares. “Fine. I've tried to explain things, I've tried to be nice, I’ve eaten about a thousand cookies, I've even said please. I'm done with all that now. Follow me.” He says, and walks out of the dining room, and into the hallway.
“Master Damian?” He hears Alfred call out from behind him, jogging slightly to catch up with him. “This is private property, really, you can't–”
“That,” Damian points to the corner of one of the hall tables. It's slightly chipped. “Bruce cut himself on that table when he was running down the hall one day when he was five. He still has the scar. It's on his forearm.”
He walks further, quickening his pace. He can hear Alfred's swift footsteps behind him, struggling to keep up.
“There,” he points to a smallish watercolour painting of the manor on the hallway wall. “Bruce's mother made that when she was twenty six. A year after he was born. She made it for his father.”
He strides ahead, to an innocuous grandfather clock. Or however innocuous a grandfather clock can be, even if it's in a manor. He levels a look at Pennyworth. “I know what's behind there.”
“The wall?” Pennyworth says, still looking convincingly blank.
Damian shakes his head. “A natural cave under the foundations of the building. Bruce uses it as his base, for conduction vigilante work. He calls it the batcave.” He reaches up, turning the hands of the clock to 10:48.
“He fell into one of the cave's under the manor when he was a child. You know why I know all these things? He told me. Or he will tell me. In the future.” Damian says. There's a grinding sound of metal against stone, and a series of locks and gears clicking open one by one, and then the false facade of the grandfather clock opens outward, like a door. There are metal stairs heading to a level below.
Damian looks at Pennyworth. “Now, do you believe me?”
A pause.
“Halfway, perhaps.” Pennyworth says.
“Good.” Damian says. “Where's Bruce?”
Pennyworth nods at the stairs going down to the cave. “You were on the right track so far.”
Damian smiles a little, realisation striking him. “He's in the gym, making a punching bag’s life miserable, because he can't understand something and he's trying to figure it out. Some things don't change.”
“No,” Pennyworth says looking fondly down the stairs, as if he can somehow see Bruce down there, “Maybe not.”
Midway through his descent down the steps, and into the cave, Damian pauses, turning back to look at Alfred. “There aren't any flying cars in the future,” he says. “But Bruce owns a 2017 Lotus Elise, and if he was here now he'd say it was more or less the same thing.”
Pennyworth smiles, wry. “That does sound like him.” he says.
The batcave is the same. . . and also different. The wide array of screens, monitors and panels he's used to seeing at the computer console are all absent. There's one large flat screen monitor. A keyboard and a modem. A printer. That's it. It would almost be funny if it wasn't also a little scary.
Damian looks around some more, at the med bay – which looks more or less the same –, at the parking spaces near the tunnel exit, which have only one batmobile, and a single sleek, black motorcycle. At the armoury, where all the batarangs look larger and heavier than he's used to, and the grapple guns look clunkier.
It's like being in an alternate universe.
It's almost similar to the Batcave he knows, but it's different enough to put him on edge. Like the uncanny valley, locationally speaking.
Damian frowns, looking around. Something though, something important is missing. He can't quite figure out what it is.
He looks at an empty spot near the console, and that's when it strikes him. He feels stupid for not realising it earlier. The glass case with the Todd's old Robin suit. Of course it wouldn't be here yet.
Damian looks at the curiously empty spot, something like a mixture of dread and excitement curling up in his stomach. Jason Todd is not dead yet. He would be hardly seven or eight now. No more than that. He could so easily just tell Father, just tell him not to let him go to Ethiopia when the time comes, or not to leave the Batmobile parked in crime alley at all that day, and maybe then Todd would never become Robin, and never have to die, never go through all that he had to. . .
Damian closes his eyes, scrubbing at his face. “Of course you can't, you idiot.” He whispers to himself. Without Todd's death, Father would never meet Drake, and as much as he loathes Drake, even he has to admit that he's an essential part of the future.
So now, he's just going to have to let Todd die. Damian sighs. He just wants to go back home, to his room in the manor, press his cheek against Titus's warm muzzle, talk to his Father – his actual Father, and not this stranger – about Patrol routes and play video games with Grayson.
He frowns again. Playing video games with Grayson? A childish thought to have. He should be focusing more on solving the problems ahead, and less on sentimental nonsense.
He strides with renewed purpose towards the gym area, looking for Bruce.
As he nears the gym, he can hear the familiar rhythmic sound of fists on a punching bag. Damian rounds up to the corner, and leans against one the stone walls of the cave, and watches Batman do what he does best.
He's running through a standard Muay Thai heavy bag drill, Damian knows because he's seen Father do it a thousand times before, but this isn't like those drills at all. This is something different.
Bruce trains like he has a personal vendetta against the air around him. There's none of that calm, centred energy he usually channels into training. His form is perfect, of course, but it still somehow looks wrong. He's sticking to every rule in the book, his technique is exemplary, but he somehow looks like a drunk brawler in the midst of a throwdown at a bar in the late hours of night.
He fights like he hates doing it.
Still, it's perfectly effective, as far as Damian can tell, and he makes sure he tells Bruce so.
Bruce braces stops the wildly swinging punching bag with a hand, looking at Damian. “I’m glad you like it,” he says, panting. Doesn’t ask how Damian got here. Doesn't ask how he knew about the cave.He smiles instead – the kind of smile that gets people locked away in rooms with soft walls – pushing some of his sweat-damp hair away from his eyes.
“I'm going to figure you out.” He says.
Damian says nothing.
“You can't possibly have known all of this. The cave, the Batman, all this talk about the future. Someone told you to come here and do it.” He looks back at the punching bag.
“I can spar with you, if you'd like.” Damian says.
“Is someone forcing you to do this?” Bruce says. “Threatening to hurt you?”
“I was trained, from a very small age. I could swing a sword when I was two. I could spar with you.” Damian says again.
Bruce presses his palm flat against a button on the stone wall, and the punching bag is hauled up by a mechanism and retracts into a hatch in the ceiling. He starts to undo the tape around his knuckles. “A year ago, I defected from an. . . organisation, for the lack of a better word. They taught me a lot, but I came to recognise that they were not good people. Are you understanding what I'm trying to say to you?”
Damian stills. Bruce is talking about the league of Assassins, he realises. This is not good. If he learned how intimately connected he once was with the League, he might figure out who he was, and that would. . . not be good.
“I learned how to fight before I learnt to speak,” Damian says, instead of answering his question. Maybe he can divert his attention. “We practice together all the time, you know. I work with you. We make a good team.”
Bruce steps closed to him, looking at him earnestly. “The leader of the organisation though, he had very high hopes for me. He was. . . disappointed when he learned that I wanted to return home. He wouldn't let me leave. I had to go through a great number of his men before I could escape. His daughter and I, we were – close. Did he set you up to do this?”
“Krav Maga,” Damian says desperately, trying to change the subject, “I was taught Krav Maga at the age of four. I could–”
Bruce bends down to Damian’s level, his eyes sharp and knowing, and Damian worries that he's seeing right through him. “His name was Ra’s Al Ghul. He wanted me to join him, be immortal with him, a never ending reign of terror with me by his side. He was furious when I refused. Who made you do this? Was it him?”
“I can help you. I really can. I'm skilled enough. I was made to scale cliffs when I was six. Some were so high I almost passed out because of the thin air, I–”
“Who made you do it?” Bruce interrupts. “Talia Al Ghul?”
A beat. Damian swallows. He can't possibly know. He can't.
“W-who made me climb the cliffs?”
Bruce furrows his brow. “No. Who sent you here. Was it Talia?”
“Oh,” Damian says. A wave of relief washes over him. “No. No, no one sent me. I told you. Someone kidnapped me and sent me back in time.”
Bruce closes his eyes, sighing. “Look. You can't keep–”
“Wait,” Damian says, and takes something out from the pocket of the robe Bruce had given him. He's still wearing his Robin costume underneath; he's not risking taking it off and losing the only other proof of who he is.
Bruce frowns at the contents of Damian's extended hand. “That's just some grass.” he says.
“If you cross-analyze it with some of the grass in your lawns, you'll see that it's the same, but it's thirteen years older.” He looks down at the grass clumps. “It's a good thing I pulled it out from the roots."
Bruce takes the clump of mud and grass from his hand, looking at it.
“That was in my robe, all this time.” He says.
Damian smirks. “Sorry.”
Bruce just shakes his head. “I'll – I'll take a look at this under a microscope.” He sighs. “Of all the strangest things to happen.”
“Perfect.” Damian says. “I'm assuming you'd like me to find a different place to sleep until then. Just tell Pennyworth that I'm going to sleep in one of the safehouses tonight.”
Bruce frowns. “No. No, you can sleep in one of the guest rooms. Even if you are an assassin that's been sent to kill me in my sleep, Alfred would never let me turn a child away from my home. And I'm really not in the mood to get yelled at.”
Damian looks at him, bemused. “You. . . get yelled at.”
Bruce picks up his gym bag, heading back to the stairs. Damian follows after him.
“Have you seen Alfred?” Bruce says, “It's a miracle that you haven't been yelled at yet. He can make inanimate objects feel bad for disobeying him.”
It occurs to Damian that Bruce is actually complaining about authority figures. And being told what to do. The irony of that is almost too good to be true. He grins.
Bruce looks at him sharply. “What.”
Damian shakes his head. “Nothing.” He says. He smiles.
Bruce is still looking at him. Wary, this time. They make their way up the stairs, and down the hallway, back towards the dining room. “Look,” he says. “Don't make me regret this. I'll test your grass samples in the morning, but if tonight I find you over my bed with a knife in your hand, I'm warning you, I'm trained in a hundred and twenty-seven forms of martial arts and I won't hesitate to cut you down, child or not.”
“I know,” Damian says. “You're still as dramatic as ever, you know. I'm rather hungry. Is there any dinner?”
Bruce gives him another sharp look. A pause. “You should be more scared of me.”
“And yet I'm not,” Damian says, sounding not a little bit smug. “Isn't that wild.”
Bruce just sighs. “We have lasagna. And chicken sandwiches, I think.”
“I'm a vegetarian.” Damian says.
Bruce just sighs again.
*
That night, Damian lies in bed, in one of the guest rooms of the manor. The Robin suit has been neatly cleaned and folded by Pennyworth, and Damian's keeping it under his pillow. It's not something he can risk losing.
The room is unfamiliar and dark, blending in his mind with the rest of the spare rooms in the manor. His usual room, the big loft next to Father's on the the third floor, is far away, in the other wing.
He misses it. He misses Titus, and Grayson and the video games. He sniffles a little, wiping at his face with the corner of his borrowed pajamas’ sleeve. He misses Father, even though he's just a wing away, sleeping in his bed. He misses Pennyworth, and his cat. He misses Drake.
He wipes at his face again, and he turns over, closing his eyes and trying to get some sleep.