Archive of Our Own

Damian Al Ghul-Wayne is nearly seventeen years old, but somehow it feels like he’s ten again, staring up at Batman—at Bruce Wayne—and feeling the crushing weight of his lineage.

On one side, the League of Assassins. Pride and wealth and legacy. His birthright, the thing he’d been created for: Death and murder and more death, all the way until he would eventually be subsumed by the most powerful immortal man on Earth. A weapon and little else, honed and shined and sharp enough to gut. 

On his other… Gotham. A city Batman protects like a mother, or perhaps a child. Filled with people, good and evil, filled with death and murder too, but never by his own hand. Never choosing to walk the paths of Gods. Never questioning the steadfast and, at times, stifling silence of a man who never learned to live outside his vengeance and a family that tries, desperately, to stay whole despite it.

Behind him is nothing but death and ash. Nothing he would go back to, even if he had the chance. Hell, maybe, if his afterlife has been forgotten. Violence. Cruelty.

And in front of him—

Well, that is the question, isn’t it.

In front of him now, though, is Timothy Drake-Wayne’s penthouse apartment door. It isn’t the Nest; lately Cassandra’s taken to living there with Stephanie, and anyway Red Robin has many more safe houses now, in Gotham and Metropolis alike. 

Not that anyone would call this a safe house. There’s a fresh wreath of summer flowers hung on the door—no doubt Conner Kent’s doing, the strange sentimental fool—and inside, Damian knows, are walls lined with pictures and shelves of books and trinkets. 

His brother keeps boxes of holiday decorations in downstairs storage alongside his nightlife tools. Their couches and armchairs and guest rooms are heavy with Conner and Ma Kent’s handmade quilts, and the sewing room sits next to the study. Timothy’s degrees hang here, Damian knows. His patents are stored here. There are dog toys and bowls for Krypto.

This is Tim Drake’s home, or one of them, anyway. Most importantly, it’s the home he’s currently occupying. 

Get it together, Robin.

Under normal circumstances, he would have just broken in. The boundaries of this family continue to be—baffling, in Jon’s words, but Damian at least thinks it’s efficient. No dithering, no missed texts or calls or doorbells. Just a handful of windows and subfloor doors he knows he can enter and leave from easily. But it feels… different, this time. Inappropriate.

Too much Robin, not enough Damian Wayne. Acting on borrowed grace. He stares down at the folder in his hands, too austere to be misleading: deep, elegant vermillion, embossed with gold lettering. He can’t bring himself to frown at it, not truly, but the complicated, sketchy mass in his stomach still flips at the sight of it.

Why is he here?

He knows why he’s here.

Damian rings the bell before he can psyche himself out for the thirtieth time, and then does scowl at his own flinch. What a completely unwarranted—what a ridiculous reaction.

It’s just Tim.

Or, well. Not Timothy exactly, Damian muses as the door swings open. Too-blue eyes blink down at him, deeply familiar if not in the wrong face, as Conner Kent takes in their visitor.

He’s grown since Damian first met him, of course—as has he, and as has Jonathan. As has Timothy, as well. Older and wiser, as Alfred would have said. (Older and better at bullshitting, Jason would refute.) But still familiar, for all that Damian has basically cohabitated with this man for half his life, between Tim and Jon alike.

Jewelry glitters in his ears and against his mouth, but his battle jacket is nowhere to be seen, dressed as he is for lounging. He looks surprised, perhaps, or intrigued; it’s a look Damian recognizes well and receives often from the younger brother who stole it off his face years ago.

“Yo!” The clone grins at him anyway, leaning against the doorframe. If he’s perturbed by the visit, he doesn’t show it. “What’s up, little man? You here for Tim?”

Normally he might rise to that bait—as though it’s his fault all Kryptonians grow into ridiculous boulders of men; he has no use for childish nicknames and affectations from him—but now, he only hums. Shifts his weight, and holds back a wince at the tell.

“Yes,” he says succinctly instead. “Is he home?”

“Yup!” He pops his P and does a poor job of not looking desperately curious for gossip, but Damian ignores that too. “He’s in the study bat-moding over some work reports.” He pauses. “Like, actual work reports, not bat reports. Anywho. C’mon in!”

He beckons to Damian as he steps back into his home, turning to sing, “Oh, sunshine! Your itty-bittiest little bat-bro just came in through the actual front door for you!”

“You’re insufferable,” Damian informs him. Conner just chuckles brightly.

They both hear Tim’s muffled, distracted “What?” from further in the penthouse. 

“Well, at least he heard me that time,” Conner huffs, both hands on his hips. The words themselves are biting, but it’s said with an impossible fondness that still, after all these years, makes him want to grimace. “Go right on in, buddy.”

“… Thank you,” he says, stiff and plastic as he toes off his shoes. Conner lifts a brow at him, and Damian tracks his eyes to the folder still clutched to his chest, but thankfully he seems to think better of prying.

“No worries,” he says breezily instead. “You have great timing actually, I’m about to make lunch. Pull him outta his zone enough he won’t put his eye out with a fork and you can have some.”

No doubt the topic of conversation will be a well enough distraction for that. Still, he eyes Conner warily. “What is it?”

“Chicken alfredo, but I’ll whip and split some tofu for you instead,” he offers.

“Hm.” Conner Kent, in his experience, is one of the few individuals he knows who actually knows how to prepare tofu, so it isn’t a horrid compromise. “Acceptable.” 

The clone shoots double finger guns his way before swooping off to the kitchen, where he’d probably been cooking when Damian interrupted him in the first place. He stares bemusedly after him for a moment before shaking it off, fingers tightening on the folder.

Timothy hasn’t called out again since his initial query. Damian suspects he’d just shrugged it off and gone back to work, so he’s unsurprised when—after a deep, quiet breath at the door—he predictably finds him typing away at his desk. There’s a mess of schematics at his elbow, and a somewhat more concerning stack of incident report forms.

Moron. Damian recognizes a last-minute backlog of required reports when he sees them. Still, he doesn’t comment on that—if Timothy wants to run himself into a brick wall running R&D with all the planning and forethought of a sleep-deprived high schooler, he’s certainly welcome to—and instead just clears his throat.

Nothing. He tries again.

Timothy mutters something to himself, backspacing.

“Timothy.”

Finally he straightens, surprised. His head swivels to blink at him, followed by the chair itself, and for a second they both just stare at each other.

At the very least, he doesn’t look like a sleep-deprived high-schooler. No doubt that’s Conner’s influence, rather than any particular ability on his brother’s end to take care of himself. His hair is tied back in some messy bastardization of a bun, and he looks tired, but he’s dressed and clean and alert.

“… Hey, Dames,” he says eventually. Even tilts his head just so, like Titus does occasionally when confused. “In my house. Hey Damian, in my house. What’s up?”

“You’re a moron.”

“God damn. What’d I do?” His keen eyes catch visibly on the folder, and interest etches itself in the lines of his face. “Here, sit.”

He gestures to the little loveseat sofa against the wall. Richard refers to it fondly as their brother’s shrimp couch, which is to say that it’s where Timothy curls up with his laptop for certain work and no doubt irreversibly damages his spine hunching into a ball.

Damian does as instructed, and distracts himself by staring resolutely at the far wall. He recognizes a few of the tasteful paintings hung there as his own—gifted replicas of some of Timothy’s photography work, done in oils and gouaches and hung proudly side-to-side with his brother’s first patent and his diplomas.

Timothy takes the moment of weakness to save his work before wheeling over with a carefully neutral expression. Clearly, he senses something is amiss, and no doubt he’s already trying to smoke out what the issue could be on visual cues alone.

“So,” he says eventually, after neither of them speak for far too long. “What’s up?”

Damian opens his mouth, and closes it.

He’d rehearsed this over and over again, over the past week. With Timothy, with Richard, with Father, over and over, to get it as close to perfect as possible. But there’s just too many questions. Damian is used to telling, not… asking.

Would you ever want to be Robin again, he wants to ask, but their history would never allow it. Do you think Batman still needs a Robin at all? Does it matter if he does? Does it matter if I do?

Robin is his birthright. So is Batman. So is Bruce Wayne. So is the League, and so is death, and so is violence. He has lied and stolen and hurt to uphold it. Is it arrogant to want so badly to waste it? Is it deplorable to—in front of Timothy Drake-Wayne, especially, who he tore it from, gouged it from, mocked him for; is it—?

“Dames?” Timothy prompts, brows furrowing. He’s concerned. “What’s—?”

“I want to be a doctor,” Damian blurts before he can stop himself. It’s a close, close thing not to smack himself viciously on the mouth in retribution.

“Oh.” Timothy looks a little surprised, but the expression softens. “Really?”

Defensiveness still flares in him, for all it’s undeserved. “Yes, really,” he snaps. “I would be—more than capable, I would—I would like to help, I am—capable of—”

“Whoa, Damian.” He lifts both hands in entreaty, settling back cross-legged in his chair. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just always kinda thought you’d be a vet, not a people doctor.”

And that—that brings him up short. “What?”

“I mean, you aren’t the biggest fan of people, baby bat,” his brother says with a good-natured snort. “And you’ve been a mini doctor Doolittle since you were, like, an infant, so. Lost that bet with Steph. Don’t worry about it.”

A bet with Stephanie? On whether or not he’d be a veterinarian? In any other situation, he might have smacked him for the offense. In. In this one, though.

“I… no,” Damian manages. Drat. Timothy has, as he often does, caught him flat-footed like a fool. “Veterinary medicine is of course a noble occupation, but—no. I would like to—be a surgeon. For humans,” he adds, unnecessarily.

“Damian,” Timothy starts, and Damian tenses to hide the coil of fear and reactive rage and beneath it, the disappointment, the resignation. Waits for the Bruce needs you, waits for the what about the company, waits for judgement. But Tim just crooks a lopsided smile and says, “That’s cool, dude.”

“What,” Damian asks again, a broken, skipping record on its track. He must sound like an idiot, but he can’t help himself.

“What, what?” Timothy echoes, amused. “Did you think I was gonna rag on you? I mean, that’d be more impressive than my shit, anyway.”

As though many individuals on this planet could have managed getting two bachelors degrees and five technical certificates before turning twenty-three. Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering—Politicial Sciences and Business and analytics and forensics—by rights, Damian going to medical school would be on par with Wayne intelligence, nothing more.

“Gotham University has no premed program,” Damian hedges. “And half the pre-graduate classes would not be able to be attended online, let alone post-graduate education.”

“You do not need to go to Goth U,” Timothy says, and rolls his eyes. “With your scores? You can go anywhere. I’d say Ivy, but I’m biased, and anyway, I don’t think they do Med school there either.”

Perhaps he hasn’t realized it yet. Or maybe he’s already thinking ahead—to zeta tubes and patrol renegotiation of patrol schedules. If Timothy can be trusted with anything, he supposes, it’s respect for education, accredited or otherwise. 

Wordlessly, he holds out the folder. Timothy takes it curiously, but it only takes a moment for him to recognize the school crest.

“You got accepted to Harvard.” He blinks at it without even opening it, which is honestly just ridiculous. Damian could be giving him a branded folder with a brochure in it for all he knows. “Damian, that’s—”

So far away. Impossible to maintain. Too heavy a workload.

“—kickass.”

It’s his turn to blink, now, startled. “Is it?”

“Is it, he says.” Timothy rolls his eyes at him, but he’s grinning now. “Way to make everyone else feel stupid. Sixteen and already accepted into—” He flicks the folder open enough to find the acceptance letter, printed on creamy white paper and embossed with the school crest. “—Harvard Pre-Med. Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty baller. Are you graduating high school early?”

“Yes,” Damian answers on instinct, because it’s true. This has been in the works for months—forged signatures, evasive half-truths and outright lies. But his stomach is twisting too far in knots to say anything else intelligent.

“That’s awesome,” Timothy says, and it’s painfully earnest. He’s starting to rifle through the folder now, peeking at the stickers and certificate and other useless baubles. “Did Dick freak out or what?”

“… Richard doesn’t know yet,” Damian mutters, finally giving in to the urge to lift his feet up on the cushions and hug his knees.

“What? Damian, am I—” Contents forgotten, Timothy snaps the folder shut. “Am I the first one you told?”

His throat suddenly feels tight and suffocating, so he just nods.

A beat. “I mean, not that I don’t appreciate it, because I do,” Timothy says, amused. “And I’m going to hold this over Dick forever, but. Why?”

“I wanted,” Damian starts, and stops.

He wanted truth. Honesty, from someone who would always tell him if he was acting a complete and utter fool. Not Richard, who can’t be trusted with it, and certainly not Father, who cannot know the full extent of his weakness yet. Jason wouldn’t give a shit, and his sister wouldn’t understand.

Will Timothy understand, he wonders, and brushes the thought aside. 

“Richard will support my every endeavor,” he admits, socked feet curling against the couch. “And would not… discourage me, even if my endeavors are—unreasonable.”

“And I’ll call you a little bitch to your face, okay,” Timothy agrees before frowning as the full meaning registers. “Wait. Why would I discourage you from being a surgeon? That’s stupid. It’s not like it’ll be hard for you.”

Faintly and inappropriately, the praise nestles itself warm and effusive somewhere deep and cautious in his sternum. Damian, as with many things, ignores that too. 

“Of course not. But.” Damian hesitates, and wants to bite his own tongue off for the weakness. He still takes another sharp breath. “Robin.”

Timothy’s face goes… eerily still, smile slipping off his face. Damian knows this look: Calm waters, a deception to the dangers beneath them.

“Did Bruce say something,” he demands. Barely even a question. “Don’t listen to Bruce, he’s a fucking idiot. You should be a doctor if you want to be a doctor, Damian. End sentence.”

“But Robin,” Damian says again, chest crumpling over itself. Suddenly it feels like he might puke the worms that had taken residence in his stomach and grown there, fed and watered by the terror until they could snake through every empty space inside him. “I—I wouldn’t be able to—not for years, Timothy.”

“Don’t worry about Robin,” his brother says, and that sounds so absurd coming from his mouth. From Timothy Drake-Wayne’s mouth. From Red Robin’s mouth. “Don’t worry about B, either. There’s enough of us now. It’s not the same as it was when I…”

He trails off, mouth set in a tense line, then shakes his head. “It’s not the same.”

“I wanted to…” Damian trails off before steeling himself. “You did the same, after all. College, and work, and Red Robin. I wanted to… have your opinion.”

“My opinion,” Timothy tells him, “Is that you should do whatever the hell you want.”

“I—That is not an answer,” Damian protests, irritation sparking in his chest. “I have other responsibilities, Timothy. Robin, and my upcoming internship at the company, and to Gotham!”

His brother sighs and scrubs his face with both hands. It’s enough to accidentally loose his stupid bun as he pushes back too far into his hair, and it sags over his shoulder, not that he pays it any mind. 

But he does give the moment its attention. Damian can see his mind working, brows pinching, turning over what to say and how to say it. It’s something he can appreciate, even if he feels he may be sick on the hardwood floor.

“I don’t know how to say this without sounding like an asshole,” he admits, and Damian can’t help but scoff.

“That’s never stopped you before.” 

Timothy laughs quietly. “No, but actually. It’ll sound shitty coming from me.”

Damian frowns. “From you, specifically?”

“From me, specifically,” Timothy confirms. “Just don’t, like, stab me.”

He can’t help but roll his eyes. “Dramatic, much? Just get on with it.”

“Okay.” A beat. Timothy takes a careful breath, then exhales. “You should never have been Robin.”

That sends a blade of agony through his chest. It’s enough to make him audibly suck in a hitch of air, and it feels like an injury for all it makes his chest throb. Being stabbed to death may possibly have hurt less. He deserves it, of course; Timothy has no way of knowing how right he is, but—

But Timothy isn’t done speaking. He sees the clear hurt in his face and hurriedly leans fully out of his chair to squeeze Damian’s shoulders, already shaking his head, already apologizing. 

“Not like that,” he insists. “You’re an amazing Robin. You’re our best Robin. Damian, you’re so fucking smart, and you work harder than anyone else I’ve ever met. If you wanted to be Batman, someday, you’d be so much better than Bruce and he knows it too.”

He can’t help his own wounded tone. “Then why would you—?”

“For all your training, and all your crazy confidence, and all your skill, Damian, and it is skill,” Timothy insists. His eyes are flinty, rounded with dark circles and nonetheless earnest. “You’re just a kid. You were just a kid. Dames, you were ten. You died as a preteen. You’re sixteen. The whole thing looks insane now when I think about it. It’s not that—Damian, you don’t need Robin.”

And Damian just—

Gapes at him.

Timothy is, perhaps, the biggest believer in Robin in the city. He’d idolized Robin even before becoming him—still idolizes Richard, and Jason, too, even if he wouldn’t ever say that aloud. Damian has seen it in the way he walks and talks and fights, had seen it even as a small, arrogant child. Had burned with jealousy at how easily it came to him.

Damian had seen what Robin was. What it could be. What it had been, when Timothy still wore the colors. He’s all black and red, now, matching back-and-forth with his once-dead life partner, but he still wears the R. He still knows what it means. 

“You shouldn’t have been out with Bruce or Dick or anyone,” he continues, and then he crouches, hands still on Damian’s arms. Lets Damian look down on him, kneeling on his own study floor. “When you died, that’s what I thought. That’s what I think. If I could make you do anything I’d have made you stop years ago, not that I could talk you inside when it’s raining out.”

“Made me…” Damian blinks, hard. It feels a little like a stun grenade had exploded on the floor between them. “Stop?”

“Being Robin,” he clarifies uselessly. He pulls away, though, just enough to sit back on his haunches. His eyes are careful, cautious, but there’s no hint of a lie in his expression. “Being, like, anything dangerous, actually. But you were happy, and I didn’t want to…” 

He sighs, and doesn’t say anything else.

Damian doesn’t mean to do it. Had thought it would be—too much. Had come here planning for little true resistance, sure, but for plans, for contingencies; how to schedule around his life like Red Robin had, or how to grow with it like Richard. 

But Timothy is staring at him with a sad, soft slant to his mouth, and he just can’t help himself.

He says, quiet, “I thought about quitting.”

Timothy’s eyes widen. “Really?”

“Yes. I—I tried to—I almost told Father,” he confesses, and fights the childish desire to shove his face in his knees and stay there. “A few weeks ago, I—he found out that I’ve been volunteering at Sacred Heart. The dean told him I’d been skipping classes. We haven’t spoken, and I—then I got this, and…”

He trails off. And he couldn’t. Couldn’t even feel the pride over the all-consuming dread in him. He remembers the sheer split-second of excitement on opening that first acceptance email, and then he remembers throwing up everything in his stomach.

What is he without Robin? What is he without Bruce Wayne? He’d abandoned everything he knew for both. Can he do that again? Can he stand to?

Timothy’s face darkens. “What happened? What did he say?”

“Nothing, really.” It’s true. Damian hadn’t given him much of a chance to speak with the whirlwind in his skull. He picks at the hem of his jeans. “He asked what was bringing it on. That I only cared about fighting before, so why was I…”

“What’s bringing it on?” Timothy echoes, nose wrinkling. “What’s bringing what on? You like taking care of things and you like a challenge. Dames, there’s a turkey in the manor garden. Only cared about fighting—He’s on something, I swear to God.”

“He asked why I didn’t talk to him,” Damian spits. True frustration wells like a flood against his teeth. “But I had to spend the whole patrol convincing him to talk at all, and when he finally answered me, he made us stop, did his whole—We don’t have super powers, Damian, remember your Serbian, Damian, since you’d rather talk than train, Damian—”

Timothy groans. He flops back from his heels to sprawl out on the rug, shoving his chair off to one corner and scowling at the ceiling. “Our minds and bodies are all we have, Tim! No jokes on the field, Tim!”

“He’s so annoying!” Damian snaps, and then really does smack a hand over his mouth. It’d slipped out without his permission.

Timothy just barks out a tired laugh from the floor, head tilting to grin at him. 

“God, yeah,” his brother agrees, impish to the last. “It’s been worse since Alfred, but he’s… he’s a big believer in do as I say, not as I do. And also do as I say except when I don’t actually want you to. And just generally, like. Hypocrisy.”

The mention of Alfred plummets the temperature in the room. Damian just hums, unwilling to sigh like a moody teenager on Timothy’s couch. 

“He means well,” Damian mutters. It’s half-hearted at best. “He just doesn’t… know how to listen.”

“Yeah, who’d you get that line off? Dick?”

Damian’s silence must be telling enough, because Timothy just huffs. His hair comes further undone, bunching under his neck as he stretches his arms out over his head.

“It’s funny, isn’t it,” he muses. “When Dick’s home too long, they fight like dogs. When they’re not fighting, he wants us all to get along.”

“Tt.”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong.” Timothy shrugs wryly. “I could probably give you, like, a whole breakdown of why B acts the way he does, but it’s buried under sixteen different mental illnesses and a repression bog. Never says what he means, barely means what he says. Five kids and he barely knows how to say ‘I’m proud of you’ without putting himself in a Prince Zuko coma.”

Damian can’t help it: he snorts at the reference. “Really, Drake?”

“Oh, don’t you Drake me. It’s apt.”

They stay in companionable silence for a few minutes, but it doesn’t prickle. Timothy is good at companionable silences. 

Sometimes he dreams of having killed him. Of having to struggle through being Robin and being a grade schooler and having Bruce Wayne as a father without Timothy, the only of their brothers close enough in age to understand any of it. Of being satisfied by the blood on his hands, and being rejected by Father, and being welcomed lovingly to the League as a brother-killer.

He doesn’t like those dreams. He doesn’t like most of his dreams, but that’s far beyond his control. 

“So,” Timothy says eventually, after an indeterminate amount of time. It can’t have been long, though, if Conner Kent still hasn’t interrupted them for lunch. “Harvard, huh?”

“Harvard,” Damian agrees. “Should I go?”

“Yes,” Timothy answers without a second’s hesitation. “You should.”

“I just want to…” He trails off. Rests his chin properly on his knees, and feels closer to a child than he has in years. “I don’t know. More than not kill.”

“Help,” Tim suggests. “Heal.”

“I suppose.” Damian exhales as quietly as he can manage. “I don’t want to kill, and I.”

“You?”

“I don’t want to hurt,” he confesses finally. Tim rolls his head a bit to glance at him. “I—I enjoy fighting, and patrol, but all we do—all the Batman can do—is fight to save. Not just… save.”

Blood on his hands. Bodies on the floor.

“There are people I can help,” he mumbles to his paintings on the wall. “Things I can do that help the people we can’t. And I don’t…” He squeezes his fingers against his ankles, for lack of anything better to do with them. It’s tight enough to hurt. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt because of me, either.”

Like Alfred did, they both think without speaking, but it’s more than that, too. All of his family has gotten hurt for Damian, by now, countless times over—for him and because of him. Much of it he’d inflicted with his own hands. The Titans have, too, and what after that? Young Justice? The Justice League?

Failure as Robin—as Batman—no matter how small—can lead to the death of thousands. It puts any and everyone and everything he loves in danger, every time he dons the suit.

He can’t help but wonder how tired he’ll be in ten years time.

“You’re a good kid,” Timothy tells him. It’s far enough out of the blue that Damian blinks. “Alfred would be proud of you. I know I am.”

Fuck, that hurts. It falls over his neck with enough force to bruise. 

There’s a hoarse note to his voice as he croaks, “But I’d be letting everyone down.”

“It’s your future, Dames. Not mine or Dick’s or Bruce’s or anyone else’s.” He laughs, suddenly, like he’s just heard a stupid joke. “If you’re letting us down by wanting to be a doctor, I think we might as well toss the whole planet.”

“Father, Richard—I was—I am their Robin,” Damian tries, desperate for some lack of give. He hadn’t expected this from Timothy, of all people. “I stole it from you. We stole it from Richard. Can I—Is it right for me to end that?”

“It’s your Robin,” Timothy points out. “Hell, I’m still a Robin. Dick was the one who gave you Robin. If Robin is supposed to be done, then Robin can be… done, Dames. Pretty good one to end on. I think, anyway.”

Damian stares at him, eyes so wide it’s nearly painful. 

“Gotham will be—”

“Gotham will be fine.” Now Timothy finally sits back up, groaning as he does, but he still pierces him with a sharp look. It reminds him more of Father than anything he’s managed to do. “Batman will be fine, Dick will be fine. We’ll be fine, Day. Hey, think about it this way—you can help people who aren’t from Gotham.”

Eerie. That’s exactly what Jon had said, when he first floated the idea after meeting Dr. Bashar. 

“What about the company?”

“What about the company?” Timothy frowns at him. “Wayne Industries definitely doesn’t need a Robin.”

“Don’t be obtuse,” Damian snaps at him. “You know what I’m referring to. I’m meant to take over the company as CEO someday.”

“Okay,” Timothy says easily. “Do you want to do that?”

An absurd question. He must have misheard. “What?”

“Do you want to be the CEO of Wayne Industries,” Timothy repeats, bizarrely. “I mean, B’s dad was a doctor, too. You can still be the CEO if you want to. We can manage without you a few extra years.”

He senses a trap. “But?”

And his brother just smiles at him again. This is maybe the longest they’ve gone without Timothy swearing at him in some capacity, or Damian calling him atrocious names for pathetic slights he forgets within the hour. 

Maybe it’s nice. 

“Nobody’s making you take over the company, baby bat.” Timothy leans back on his hands as he regards him. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take it. Or we’ll find someone else. Lucius is still going strong, anyway.”

If you don’t want it, I’ll take it. Like Wayne Industries are some leftover slices of pizza left out overnight. “You don’t like being CEO,” Damian points out irritably. “You like research and development.”

“Counterpoint,” Tim says lazily. “I’m not seventeen this time, and the world isn’t blowing up. I’ll manage, I’m sure. Also, if you don’t like it either, you’ve got a strawman at best. Checkmate.”

Smug bastard. “You’re the most annoying brother I have.”

Tim bursts out laughing at that and finally sits up properly, crossing his legs and tucking his hands between them. “Now that cannot be true. You told me first. You’re gonna make Dick cry.”

Damian—winces. “That was not my intention.”

“Don’t feel bad. He cries all the time.” Timothy studies him for a long moment before reaching back for the folder, abandoned on the seat of his desk chair. “Here.”

He takes it, more on instinct than anything. It’s still heavier than it has any right to be. “Thank you,” he says. There’s absolutely no power to it.

“Sure,” Timothy says agreeably. “Tell me if B gives you trouble about it. He’s an idiot. He does mean well, but I’ll destroy him for you, so don’t worry about it.”

“‘Destroy him for me’?” Damian echoes, incredulous. “What on Earth does that mean?”

“It means don’t worry about it and you should accept the Harvard offer if you haven’t already,” Timothy says, evasive as ever. There’s a foreign glitter in his eyes, though. “Anyway, it’s about time we got a doctor in the family. Maybe you can do the surgery next time I bust an organ.”

Damian makes a face. “Do not lose any more organs.”

“Didn’t have any say in it the first time or the second time, doubt I’ll have any for the third,” he sings back, and Damian rolls his eyes, but something just… depressurizes, in his chest. Hisses and steams, and then quiets.

He opens his mouth—probably to give some instinctive scathing review of his brother’s non-existent self-preservation abilities—but whatever he might’ve said flies to the wind when Conner knocks gently on the frame of the door.

“Food’s up,” he announces. “Chicken Alfredo for me n’ the honey and silk tofu Alfredo for the little bat.”

Timothy smiles at him, beatific, and lifts his hands up to the clone. “Thanks, Kon. Help me up?”

“What, were you having floor time without me?” Conner jokes, but reached to haul him up. Strange, considering he could’ve just used his telekinesis, but he always has seemed just as tactile as Jon. “Good talk?”

“I think so,” Timothy agrees, heaving to his feet with a grunt. “I’m taking a break from the stupid report. Bruce can eat my dick.” He glances to Damian, still fond. “You coming?”

“Oh. Yes, I suppose.”

As he stands, brushing off his pants and trying not to feel flayed like a market fish, he catches some glance between his brother and the clone, there and gone in an instant, and Conner disappears back down the hall like he’d been shooed.

“Don’t punch me,” Timothy jokes, and Damian doesn’t get a chance to ask why before Timothy is tucking him into his neck, strong arms holding him fast in place. 

He tenses and hisses, “Timothy—”

“I’m proud of you,” his brother says again, and Damian feels the flush that crawls unbidden over his face. “We’ve got enough heroes. You should try just being Damian for a while. He might be a kickass surgeon, you know.”

“Of course I will be,” Damian mutters, but only puts up a token resistance to the hug. After a moment, he pats a grudging hand to Timothy’s back to appease him. “I already keep your all’s guts where they belong half the time, don’t I?”

“Yeah,” Timothy says, a little too wistfully considering it isn’t actually a joke. “You totally do. Hey, do you think you can say Jason is your first open cavity? Because—”

Eugh, Damian doesn’t want to remember that. Impromptu arterial sutures in the fucking backstreets is an experience he never wants to have again. 

His brother allows himself to be shoved off in retaliation and laughs again, says okay, okay, jeez, and then he rubs his fingers through Damian’s hair like a cretin.

“What are you doing,” Damian complains, smacking the offending hand away. “I swear, every day you act more like Richard. Is that what you want?”

“I should take that as a compliment, but I’m not gonna,” Timothy says cheerfully. “Anyway. Lunchtime. You can tell me all about Sacred Heart over some Ma Kent pasta.”

And strangely—though he’d come here hoping for the middle ground; to justify himself between Richard and Bruce and his past and his future—Damian thinks that sounds like it’ll be his best afternoon all week.

But he’s learned over the years to inflate Timothy Drake-Wayne’s ego at your own peril, so he just huffs, “Fine,” and shrugs him off.

His stupid detective brother already no doubt feels the smile at his back the whole way to the dinner table, anyway.