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“…And this is me with Zitka,” says Dick, pointing to a picture in the old, worn photo album. “The first time we met she picked me up with her trunk and dropped me in the water trough.” He chuckles and Damian rolls his eyes. “But after that we were best friends. You’ll meet her when we visit next week. You’ll love her.”
Damian watches with half-lidded eyes and rests his chin lazily in his hand, looking excruciatingly bored, as Dick flips through page after page of circus memories. Dick is pretty sure the boredom is all feigned, because if Damian truly didn’t care he wouldn’t be sitting here listening to him reminisce. And there’s definitely a glimmer of jealousy in his eyes when he sees the pictures of seven-year-old Dick petting a tiger cub.
“Is that you?” asks Damian, pointing, when Dick turns to a page full of baby photos.
“Yep! All the folks at the circus said I was the happiest baby they’d ever seen. I always got into a lot of trouble, though…”
“You had a disproportionately large head,” Damian comments, lingering on a picture of Dick at about age one and a half. He had clearly just been rolling around in some mud, or possibly animal dung—either way he looks delighted. Damian looks disgusted. “What was my father like as a child?”
“Hmm, you should ask Alfred that. He’ll tell you stories. He really likes to tell the one about two-year-old Bruce and the bag of sugar in the pantry.” Smiling, Dick nudges Damian playfully with his elbow. “What about you, little D? What were you like when you were an even littler D?”
“I was perfect,” Damian states, after shooting a glare at him for that nickname. “Far superior to all other babies.”
“Is that so?” Dick asks with exaggerated skepticism. “I dunno, Damian… I think I’m gonna have to see some proof. Baby photos, maybe.”
“I expect Mother would have destroyed such unnecessary documentation.”
“Too bad. You must’ve been adorable. I can imagine you having the chubbiest face—”
Damian scowls—but it does little to hide the embarrassed pink flush spreading across his face. “Enough, Grayson. I don’t want to hear talk of this again.” With an angry huff, he stands and marches to the door, telling his older brother over his shoulder, “Come. The sun’s going to set any minute now. I want to leave for patrol the instant it does—we have to shut down those animal fighting rings. Tonight.”
Dick puts aside the photo album and follows, smiling to himself. An idea has taken root in his brain, an idea that won’t be leaving him alone anytime soon.
—
“You want us to hack into one of the most secure networks of one of the most dangerous organizations in the world… to get baby pictures?” Taking a deep breath, Barbara pinches the bridge of her nose, just under her glasses. A frustrated habit that Dick feels like he elicits from her a lot (though not as often as Bruce). “Dick, this hardly counts as a ‘mission of critical importance’. I thought you were talking life-or-death.”
“Same,” Tim grumbles, leaning against the computer console with his arms crossed, annoyed. He came straight from WE, still wearing his suit and tie. “I have a quarterly review meeting tomorrow morning I need to prepare for. I don’t have time for this right now.”
“I understand why it’s important,” Barbara tells Dick. “I do. But we can’t even be sure that there are pictures. Or how they might be encrypted. Or where to begin looking for them. Do you have any idea how huge their network is?”
Dick does. He knows it’s a ridiculous thing to ask, too much to hope… but Barbara hasn’t said no yet. Dick doesn’t think she will, not to a challenge like this. She’s getting that focused look in her eyes, glowing with the light of the computer screens. A look that he recognizes. She’s already thinking. Planning.
“But Tim’s familiar with it, isn’t he?” Dick asks. Hopeful, he turns to his younger brother, who’s still frowning at him. “You managed to get a good look and crash it from the inside. If anyone will know where to find the files, it’s you.”
Tim chew his lip for a moment, uncertain. “Well, yeah, I guess… but they’ve been working especially hard to lock me—actually, all of us—out since then. The hidden backdoors I installed haven’t been detected, but that doesn’t guarantee…” He blows his bangs out of his eyes with a huff. He looks tired. “It’s tough, okay? And I don’t know what you’re expecting to see. Damian was probably just an angry, spoiled kid that threw tantrums to get whatever he wanted. You know—not so different than he is now.”
“And you were any better?” asks Barbara, raising an eyebrow.
“I was a good baby, everyone said so,” Tim says defensively. “I was quiet.”
“Nah, I bet you were colicky and clingy,” teases Dick. “A total pain in the butt.”
“All babies are pains in the butt sometimes. It’s expected.” A message pops up on the screen and Barbara taps out a quick reply, still talking. “When I was little I liked to scream until I was red in the face. Drove everyone crazy. And you guys had moments when you were just as frustrating, trust me.”
“You were the cutest baby, Babs. I’ve seen the pictures.” Dick grins at Tim and tells him gleefully, “She had bright red hair. Like, carrot-red.”
Barbara sighs, faintly annoyed. But there’s a hint of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “Dick—”
“And freckles. At least five times as many freckles. And she had these pigtails that made her look just like—”
She shuts him up with a light smack to the shoulder. He keeps grinning.
“Tim and I will see what we can do about the hacking. No promises, though. If there’s even anything to find, it’ll probably take weeks. Talia must have any information about Damian heavily protected and well-hidden. She did manage to keep him a secret from Bruce for ten years.”
“Thanks, Babs.” He dips down and kisses her on the cheek. Then he reaches over and tousles Tim’s hair until it’s a mess, earning a grudging smile from him. “Thanks, both of you. You’re my heroes.”
—
Dick gets the email from Tim a couple weeks later, containing a shortcut to the folder they stashed the stolen files in. He smiles. They never let him down.
Along with the link, Tim’s added two lines:
He was kind of cute, I admit it. Just don’t tell him I said that.
There are hundreds of files, what look like progress reports from Damian’s tutors and caretakers, meant for Talia. Text and videos. Dick clicks on a video at random and gets his first glimpse of Damian as a baby.
He has round blue eyes and feather-soft hair and every bit of him is pudgy—his arms, his legs, and especially his face. He’s smiling, really smiling, and babbling happily as he crawls across the floor.
He’s a fast, determined crawler, like he’s already trying to break his own records. A woman offscreen is encouraging him in what sounds like Arabic. She must be a nanny—that’s not Talia’s voice.
Getting tired, Damian slows and then stops. He sits there, sticking his fingers into his mouth and gurgling as he looks up at the camera. He looks content and innocent and normal, like any other baby in the world, and Dick’s heart breaks a little.
Dick doesn’t look at all the files, that would take days. He watches Damian learning to talk, in several languages. Learning multiplication and fractions and science when most kids are still learning the alphabet. Tinkering with electronics and bits of machinery instead of playing with toys. Practicing with wooden swords and daggers and dozens of other weapons.
Dick is wary about clicking on some of the combat reports because he knows what he might find. He doesn’t want to see Damian take someone else’s life for the first time. Even though it makes no difference to the present, he doesn’t want to see the little kid stain his hands with blood.
Damian, the real Damian, barges in without knocking while Dick is watching a video of him at age five sparring against a tutor, both armed with a bo staff.
“Grayson, inform Drake that—” He stops dead when he sees what’s playing on the laptop screen. He goes speechless for a moment, just a moment, and then his shocked expression is replaced with the darkest of scowls. Whatever Tim had done to annoy him is forgotten. “How did you get that video?” he demands.
"I have my ways," Dick replies cryptically, quirking a smile. “Looks like I was right about the chubby cheeks.”
Damian crosses his arms unhappily. His curiosity seems to get the better of him though, and he moves to watch the screen over Dick’s shoulder. Dick can almost feel Damian glaring daggers at the back of his head every so often.
The boy in the video tries to block a strike, but he can’t put enough strength behind it and his miniature staff is sent clattering away. The next blow comes swiftly, too fast for him to dodge, and knocks him to the ground as well.
The real Damian lets out an unimpressed tt.
A helpful hand is extended to the younger Damian by his tutor. He’s a man with a badly scarred face, younger and more cheerful than the other teachers Dick’s seen. But Dick doesn’t trust him at all—like the other combat experts, he’s a member of the League of Assassins. The man smiles as Damian reaches up to take his hand—
Thwack.
Dick nearly cries out as the unsuspecting younger Damian is smacked hard across the face with a staff and sent tumbling to the ground for a second time. Beside him, the real Damian doesn’t even flinch.
The young boy drags himself to his feet—on his own, this time—his face red from shame and from the swelling of his face where he was struck, swelling that will undoubtedly lead to a nasty bruise.
Dick stares, horrified by what he’s just seen. And part of him knows that’s just the tip of the iceberg. He glances at his younger brother sadly. “Damian…”
Damian shrugs. “I deserved it,” he says unconcernedly, watching his younger self with contempt. “I shouldn’t have fallen for a trick that obvious. I was weak and foolish.”
He looks mildly amused to see Dick glowering at the teacher, who’s currently laughing in a way that sounds mocking and tousling the younger Damian’s hair before they go back to sparring.
"Don’t waste your time hating him," Damian says, nodding at the man onscreen. "There’s no point. He is long dead. Most of them are." He says it so simply, so matter-of-factly.
Even though Damian is only a few years older than the boy in the video, they seem a lifetime apart. All Dick wants is to tell Damian a thousand times over that he didn’t deserve that, that he never deserved any of that. But Damian won’t believe him. Can’t believe him. Maybe one day he’ll understand, but not right now.
Dick doesn’t even think—he just reaches out and hugs Damian tightly, trying to ignore how the boy flinches instinctively at the contact, and he hopes that somehow it will help.
“Grayson!” Damian grouses. “I’m warning you—I have a knife and I will use it!” He complains but he doesn’t actually make any move to free himself, although he easily could, so Dick hugs him closer, close enough that Damian’s next protests come out muffled and unintelligible against his shoulder.
—
“What is this?” Damian asks, raising an eyebrow at the gift Dick has just put in his hands. He starts to peel off a corner of the wrapping paper, but Dick stops him.
“No, you can’t open it! It’s for Bruce,” Dick explains. “You need to go give it to him so he can open it.”
Damian frowns. “Find someone else to do your deliveries, Grayson.”
“It’s not…” Dick takes a deep breath and runs a hand through his hair in frustration, then tells Damian patiently, “It’s from you.”
“How can it be a gift from me if I don’t know what it is?”
“Just trust me, Damian.” Dick starts to herd his little brother down the hallway. “Let’s go find him.”
Like Dick expected, Bruce is in his study, utterly focused on the computer. He hasn’t budged for hours. Dick gives Damian an encouraging push inside. The boy shoots a glare back over his shoulder and grudgingly approaches the desk, gift in hand.
Dick lurks by the doorframe, watching and listening.
“Grayson is forcing me to give this to you,” Damian informs his father, shoving the present onto Bruce’s desk before he can say so much as a greeting.
Bruce’s gaze flicks from Damian to where Dick’s hiding by the doorway, and back. “What is it?”
“Something ridiculous, no doubt. You’re supposed to open it.”
Being the world’s greatest detective that he is, Bruce only needs to pick up the gift to know it’s a picture frame. He tears off the wrapping paper and, whatever picture he’s expecting to see, he had clearly guessed wrong. Dick doesn’t think he’s ever seen the man so surprised by a present before.
For a moment Bruce seems to forget to breathe, as he sees his infant son for the first time.
The photo is a still taken from one of the videos. Damian is less than a month old in it, wearing a pure white onesie. He’s just woken up, his blue eyes already bright and alert, one small hand curled into a fist by his head. He’s free of scars and scowls, impossibly tiny and unmistakably Damian.
Bruce stares silently at the photo long enough for Damian to start fidgeting impatiently. He places the picture frame gently on his desk, then leans down and pulls his startled son into a hug.
“Thank you, Damian.”
Bruce looks up and meets Dick’s eyes for a split second, and Dick thinks there’s a thank you being said there, too. Bruce lets go of Damian, and what was a sweet moment becomes awkward because neither of them knows what to say. Smiling and patting Damian once on the shoulder, Bruce goes back to his work. Dick resists the urge to sigh in exasperation.
Damian retreats from the study, looking confused and stunned. Dick understands—unexpected Bruce hugs tend to do that.
“C’mon,” says Dick, pulling Damian along with him. He gives one more glance into the room and sees Bruce adjusting the new picture frame fondly. “I have one for you to give Alfred, too.”