Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The water churned around them and maybe Damian could have told them what a mistake they were making here and now because he was right, they were. It was a stupid mistake that they would trust him like this. He thinks this to himself of course never daring to speak openly about how badly of an idea they might think this. It was his first time stepping foot on land since he arrived on the ship in months, He had been freed from the brig merely a few days after. Danny insisted he work to gain his place on the ship even if it was scrubbing the poop decks or keeping watch over things. 

He tried to ignore how much he had grown calmer as the ocean would settle around them and they would have fun or get some cleaning done during the no wind days. The card games they eventually began to play and the card games Damian was promptly banned from playing because he was so good at them. The weird thing about it all was that Damian still didn’t trust them even if he slowly began to find out more and more about the crew. All of them hunted because of something that made them different. Something that almost made them mythical. They had stocked up for tortuga but even getting close to land they had to renavigate to be where they needed to go. Stopping to stock up once more before tortuga which also meant unfortunately for the rest of the crew that they were in Naval waters. Good thing for him as a naval captain. He hadn’t heard much of what was happening but he was sure that they might think him dead but he didn’t know. 

The crew had grown close to him and maybe it was his mistake and maybe it was theirs and he didn’t know. He knew in the beginning it was always Ember who would always enforce the punishment but Danny who always calmed her down. He took to the kid. The kid more so clinging to him even if he wanted to punt the kid off the ship most days. He was annoying at times talking about wanting to be a captain one day, how he would be taking over the Phantom menace when Danny eventually fell, and how it was a risk he was willing to take. No matter what knowing that even if he fell he would win in the end. Not that it made much sense to himself or to anyone else but he was a kid and kids did a lot to just talk even if what they said made little sense to no one but themselves. 

Damian had been playing shipmate with them, biding his time. Sam always kept an eye on him with magic with her eyes that seemingly could stare through him but he kept his snarky remarks to himself or mumbled under his breath for the other crew mates to comment upon. The laughs and giggles rippled through the crew and eventually he would be forced to say what he wanted to say out loud as Phantom demanded it. 

He saw how much of a family they were, though. The captain found the quiet moments so they all could eat together within the dining hall itself. The way Phantom would keep a close eye on everyone. The way Phantom would always give Damian a smile from his spot from the wheel. Checking with him on the strategies for navigating rough waters. 

The way Phantom licked his lips when he was deep in his thoughts. 

The way Phantom’s eyes seemingly always lingered over Damian’s body when he would climb the mast to the bird nest. 

The way Phantom would steal glances he was sure the other didn’t know he saw. The bright laughter and teasing. The quiet moments along the railing staring out over open waters when neither of them could sleep. 

And yet Damian still couldn’t bring himself to trust him. Even as Damian was fixing the rigging at the top of the mast. Even as he was precariously balanced as he fixed and tied the ropes sitting over the water below him. 

“You look like a little bird from all the way down there,”Phantom surprised him from the crow’s nest, causing him to jump. So few people could sneak up on him, yet Phantom always could, he always did. 

“Really?”He raises an eyebrow glancing back at him, and he would never admit how much the other had just scared him(but the other likely knew).

“Yeah, You look so free up here like you could just up and fly away.”He grins the little fangs now in full view, his white hair tied back with faded ribbon and he playful stared at the other. “We’ll be making land soon to restock anyways. Glad you finally came around then Demon Boy.” Damian could merely scoff. 

“Come around?” He shakes his head. “I hardly call spending 5 months on a ship with you all unable to leave it ‘coming around’.” He admits but makes his way across the post back to the main mast and climbs over the railing a large wave hitting them and even the Damian Wayne can’t get his grip in time as he falls on top of Phantom the two hitting the wooden and narrow space of the nest in a painfully twisted mess of limbs and arms and Damian propping himself on top of Phantom trying to ignore how close they are. 

How pretty his green eyes are.

“Wow gunna keep staring there, bird boy?”He purrs out and maybe Damian does want to kiss his somehow almost perfect lips. His pale skin despite the sun bearing down on all of them. Even Damian could admit how toned he’d felt over the last few months doing nothing but working out and buying time amongst the ships rocking back and forth. 

Damian finds heat on his cheeks but pulls himself off of the other sitting across from him as he pushes himself back a little bit more as the mast now separates them. 

“Apologies,’He finally manages out and a silence slowly settles between them sitting there. 

“Don’t apologize I should have helped you down,”Phantom chuckles. “I still respect you if that means anything… you’re a brilliant captain and if anyone was going to have captured me I’m glad it had been you.” 

He could only raise his eyebrow at the other. “I was going to take you to stand trial where you would have been hung from your neck until dead under the punishment of piracy?”

“Others would have done it off the sides of their ships,”He laughs with an almost too bright look in his eyes and Damian doesn’t miss the hand going to his neck. 

“You know I’ve been on this ship for a while and for months and yet you all are known to be a mix of cursed souls. How’d you end up cursed?” 

“I made a deal with the devil, Davy Jones himself.”

“Even I know he doesn’t exist,”Damian shakes his head standing up getting ready to descend. 

“Even old sailors know better than to question what does and doesn’t on the sea,”He counters. And all Damian can manage is a quiet “touche.” 

When reaching the land and having been given strict instructions on what they could and couldn’t do, Damian had never been happier to meet dry land. Damian still had whatever was on him which had included a few coins in his jacket pocket that apparently Phantom had hung onto. The other. He couldn’t go on land himself due to his white hair and too familiar look, so instead he sent a landing party and he insisted on watching the ship as it was docked on the side of the island in a small grove out of immediate sight to any passing Naval ships.

The group consisted of Tucker, him, Helen(the cook), and Sam. The rest of the crew were on another dinghy and had their own tasks to perform or were just sent to spend some of the coin they’d earned. He was mostly there to help Helen bring back in the supplies for the rest of the trip but of course they could always restock more at the next port and since they were on land and across the ocean it was a more confident thing he could do. He missed it though and even as they made their way through the crowds Tucker and Sam split off. Sam whispered something to Tucker, the two immediately splitting off. He was so surprised by the sheer trust they had in him. 

And he was surprised in himself at the sheer distrust he held in them in turn. 

“Come now we need to place our orders and they’ll be sent to the docks and we can split up the different packaging on the ships.” She hurries and motions him. “Now I know you’ve done a lot of sailing. You’re here to be my muscle for me.” 

“I presumed.”Damian nods. He kept an eye on the boards and the soldiers. There was not much of a Naval force here which was likely why they wanted to make a stop here over everywhere else. She led him through the streets to the markets where she began to haggle for various things. Damian looked through all of the stalls, stopping in surprise at seeing something not really familiar but… it was a scarf that had to be imported from his home. The place where his mother raised him alongside his Grandfather before he ended up in the hands of his father. 

“Do you like that?”She comments looking at what he was looking at. The scarf was beautiful and a deep maroon red with intricate dark green and gold designs swirling across it. 

“It is of a similar style to my home,”He admits almost too quietly. 

“Your home?”She asks he nods. 

“Yes. I am from the Ottoman Empire.” 

“You are quite a ways away from home.” 

“Thus be the price to pay for serving a new country,”he nods but moves past her towards more of the food stalls. She pauses behind and he looks back and Helen just has an innocent smile across her face and he furrows his eyebrows looking at her. 

“So let’s go get this food,”She begins in a chipper voice. 

Damian keeps an eye out for the pubs or the Naval base. There likely wasn’t a full base here but being so close to a pirate based town there were bound to be some Naval people in close proximity that he could talk to. He felt mildly bad but it didn’t change the fact that Phantom had killed people. They continue on with the shopping for the ship with the money Phantom had given them. Given Helen specifically, and placed their orders of what they would need including fresh water, some fresh produce among other things. Helen got chatting around with a few merchants and it left Damian the perfect opportunity to sneak away finding a small two story building with the symbol across it. Phantom had taken his insignia from him so he couldn’t even bear it. 

He walks in seeing two officers talking. 

“Yes? How can we help you?”One of them begins smoking from a pipe as he looks at him, brows raised. 

“I have information on the pirate known as Phantom. I am Captain Damian Wayne of the Wayne family. He has kidnapped me and kept me aboard his ship as he sailed across the ocean in search of something, anything.” He immediately begins hand finding the edge of the desk leaning over. 

“The demon’s spawn?”One of them begins and the two share a look. “Give us one moment. Any information on Phantom will be taken seriously…”The men get up whispering and even with his keen ears he misses it as they get up walking up the stairs and he could have almost growled because they did not believe him. Of course they did not believe him. He turns to stare at the room more, finding the notice board and walking up to it and pausing. 

“ The Demon's Son dies at the hands of the King of Pirates. ”

“The King calls for War against the pirates. The Bat takes charge of the fleet.”  

Hand reaching up to hold the paper and ripping it from the wall trying to read the information across it in a mild panic settling across his body across his skin. The anxiety welling in his chest as he realized something. What attacking him was for. 

All hell is raised when a good man goes to war… when a good man is forced to take revenge. 

He barely has time to dodge the butt of the sword aimed for his head ducking underneath it kicking him away as he is quickly met with a loaded rifle. The soldier holds it to his chest and Damian’s hands go up holding the paper in hand. 

“Now you’ll follow me nice and slow won’tcha?”Damian could feel the growl in the back of his throat as they shackled and threw him in a small cell. Arms finding the wall as he fights their grip. They added another lock to keep his arms to the wall and forcefully grab his face close to theirs. 

“What if he is the Admiral’s brat?” One muses. 

“Who cares he’s already presumed dead. War is already declared. Doesn’t matter now. We’ll get the information out of him anyways.” Damian spits in his face and the back of the guard's hand hits his face. 

“If you think you’re going to make me talk you have another thing coming,”he hissed out. 

“Bold of you to assume that I won’t make you scream instead,”a low cackle that crawled across his skin as a shadow appeared from the corner of the room. A scarred face going from the corner of his mouth and up his cheek pulling his face into a mildly horrifying scarred and permanent smile. Damian tensed up. The man towers over him. Damian was not a short man but when he was chained up and having no time to pick the locks there was little he could do even as he kicked his body forwards to knock the man off balance trying to kick the keys off the others belt and missing with a hiss. The man laughed, slow and sickening. One that broke into a rough wet cackle. 

“A feisty one, I like you. Maybe you are the Demon’s Son…”He watches with a sadistic gleam in his eye as the man pounce to shackle his legs to the ground too and the man’s name finally comes to his mind as he pulls a knife from his sheath. 

“Privateer Jack Napier,”He breathed out. “The Joker. The captain of the Last Laugh.” 

“Keen one aren’t you.., so about the information on Phantom. Let’s start small shall we?” His body looms closer and his resolve settles in his gut. He wasn’t going to tell them anything. He fucked up and now he would be living with the consequences. 

“Do your worst.”He hisses out. 

Maybe he could see those green eyes again before he died. 

Chapter Text

Explosions rocked the building and maybe he should have expected that even as he hung breathing heavily in his chains eyes going in and out of focus trying to get his thoughts together because of course all he was staring at was his own blood dropping from his lips and could feel the warm liquid running down his face and dripping onto the stone below him. He wasn’t excessively bleeding but it wasn’t exactly a small amount either and he was sure of the one things going on in his mind was that he wasn’t about to rat out Phantom now. He was too late for himself. He messed up. He knew that and now he was facing the consequences for his own actions and he understood that. 

The building shook again and the growing noise of panic could be heard outside the door and the man all stared at each other for a moment. 

“What are you two doing?!? Go find out what is going on!”The Joker yelled at his subordinates yanking the chains binding him to the wall and pulling Damian towards him. The other had given him a nasty gash across his forehead which is likely why he felt just so lightheaded for the moment as he grins staring at him. “Maybe I didn’t even have to do anything to you at all. Maybe I could have just waited it out until he came for you. His little prize.” 

The memory of him arriving on his ship flashed through his mind at being called Phantom’s prize and he wondered what sort of correlation it had but it wasn't exactly his favorite thing to figure out before banging echoed the chambers and Joker shoved him back into the wall again and left him there. 

“Too bad, so sad. I have a pirate to catch,”he cackles out with a dangerous grin as he goes to the stairs likely heading for the door. Fighting resounding upstairs as he hears calling for him. Pittering of feet. 

“Down here,”he calls out a little too weakly for even his own opinion. He was fighting how the shackles dug into his wrist unsure of the time of day or how long the man had been at it because to Damian there was no change in scenery except the dimly burning gas lanterns lit around the room far away from him and his reach. He would have gladly lit this place up if he could have even if it gave him a nasty wound or even would have taken his life he would have suffered it to make sure the other escaped. 

A familiar face found the doorway as he stared up. Eyes not all there just trying to get some sort of focus on who was in front of him feeling hands fiddling with chains. The fingers were small and adept. 

“Youngblood?”He whispers out as his hands are released from the wall and he practically falls on top of the kid. The man struggled to catch his full weight. 

“Fuck fuck fuck Fuck, Danny’s gunna be so pissed,”He whispers out frantically. 

“Ember!!! I found him!”He calls desperately. A hand pushing hair out of his face. He feels the kid before he realizes his head was in his lap. Silence between them feeling the other's hand feeling something around his throat. The man's entire demeanor changed. The kid who was supposed to have been simply the deck hand immediately administered first aid from the assistance of certain items on his belt. He could feel something poured into his mouth. “I need you to swallow for me, Demon.” Damian barely obliges as he tries so hard to focus. 

He feels heat around him as he begins to drift in and out of consciousness to those around him. He doesn’t really understand much. Bits and pieces of things so desperate to wake up to force himself into consciousness. 

“How long is he going to be out?” A far too familiar voice asks. 

“Hard to say Little Badger. Lucky I came across you when I did.” 

“Nothing is ever accidental with you.” 

“Maybe it is maybe it is not… are you going to be honest with yourself?” 

“About what?”

“Your feelings for him. Sam and Tucker caught me up.” He only hears a scoff before the pittering of feet walking away. The familiar feeling of waves crashing against the hull of the ship. The welcome embrace of when he was younger and on the ships watching his father work. Joining the Navy young as a deckhand just so he could serve under his father and Dick. Just to see how they operated in their silence and wordless conversations. Damian had wanted to be his Father’s first mate but quickly found his independence more viable in making a name for himself. 

It didn’t make the missing of all his siblings crowded in a bed looking over things together or talking and laughing at Galas the joys they had together before the war against piracy stole Jason from them and even worse than that made any of them being ashore at the same time nigh impossible. He missed when he was sick head sitting in Dick’s arms and the other messing with his hair and singing him a song, and maybe that was why he had found such quiet comfort when Youngblood so desperately tried to treat him. 

His head was pounding that’s for sure even as he heard quiet humming and fingers in his hair as if someone had read his mind. 

“The king and his men stole the queen from her bed,”the slow voice hit his ears. “And bound her in her bones.” Crashing waves and men calling out to tie lines. The fingers never leave his hair. Just now realizing how long it had gotten. 

“The seas be ours and by the powers where we will we roam,”His voice was dark and soothing and haunting. Like he was reflecting on something he lost. Someone he lost. 

“Yo ho, all hands,”Thunder crashing around him. “Hoist the colors high.” 

“I said tie the riggings! We’re not going to let a stupid fucking storm take us! We make landfall or we drown!” 

“Heave, ho,”his voice softens just slightly and around him despite the way he couldn’t force himself to open his eyes yet. Despite the way he fought his body to let him desperately wake up. “Thieves and beggars. Never shall we die.” 

He didn’t understand, not really, but maybe part of him did now sitting in his own trapped mindset wanting to wake up and scream and fight and tell everyone he was awake and it was suffocating him. They had wrongfully taken him and capture him and that was that and he had messed up, he knew that. The ocean would claim him if he wasn’t careful because he was meant to die. 

Anyone underneath Phantom though would have died and now he understood why. 

Why Phantom was feared. Why Phantom was the King of Pirates, why he had waltzed up to Damian from the beginning and let himself be taken. Everyone who served under Phantom would die at some point, but they would never stay dead. A crew of shifting people cursed and alive and dead and running on magic on willpower. 

“Now some have died and some are alive and others sail on the sea.” 

The ship lurched a desperate cry of someone almost being thrown overboard being heard from outside the cabin. 

Damian tried to move again. 

“With the keys to the cage and a devil to pay,” nails gently scratch on his scalp. 

Was this what it meant to serve the pirate king? 

“We lay to Fiddler’s Green. Yo ho, all hands, hoist the colors high.” 

“SECURE THE CANNONS AGAIN DAMMIT. I DON’T CARE HOW MANY TIMES THE ROPE BREAKS.” 

“MAN OVERBOARD.”

“Heave ho thieves and beggars never shall we die.” 

Damian was clawing, gasping, feeling the song work its way into his soul. His heart. The familiarity the desperation. The song Dick had sang to him. The song Jason repeated underneath his breath when he was lost in thought and didn’t think anyone  was listening. The disheartened song of the pirates. The cadence to be called while scrubbing the decks, the call and reply. 

“The bell has been raised from its watery grave…

Do you hear its sepulchral tone?” 

Ringing filling his ears. Did all of his siblings face the Phantom? Was this hatred or something else towards the captain that saved his life. The comment about being a prize sitting heavy in his stomach. 

“We call to all, pay heed the squall and turn your sail toward home.”

The crew joined in the storm. The overwhelming singing consuming his thoughts. 

“YO HO, All Hands. Hoist the colors high.

Heave ho, theives and beggars, never shall we die.

Yo ho all together, hoist the colors high 

Heave ho thieves and beggars.” 

Danny’s voice filled his head with a quiet resounding and gentle kiss placed to his forehead in a whisper. 

“Never shall you die.”

Damian knew why he should be afraid to be considered Phantom’s prize. He knew the costs. Yet part of him couldn’t care.