Archive of Our Own

The R Stands for –

i.

It is late, an unusual time for Hafidh to be called into his grandfather's office.

He knows it will be a brief meeting; Ra’s has not even looked up from the paper he is scratching away at, and there is an impatience in his quick, jerky movements. His grandfather says, "From now on, your name is Damian." He talks as if he is saying, Tomorrow you will work on your kata.

Hafidh is baffled. His gaze slits to his mother, who is standing beside Ra's, her expression blank but her eyes long-suffering. "You mean my," he struggles to find the correct term, his face contorting, "American name?" Some people have those; his art tutor, Sangay Tenzin, calls himself 'David' in front of Westerners. Hafidh thinks the whole concept is stupid; he cannot articulate the absurdity of it.

"No, your name is Damian."

"My name is Hafidh."

"It was Hafidh. The legal changes have already been made, as well as the updates in the computer system." More virulent scratching, like the stripping of skin off flesh. "Your father will be more accepting of 'Damian'."

His mother rolls her eyes; evidently she has argued with Ra's about this. She almost never wins arguments with him – they are more like one-sided pleads or tirades on her part and are met with dismissal, unless they benefit him or do not make a difference to his plans.

Hafidh does not understand how a name could colour Bruce Wayne's – or anyone's – perception of him. "My father lives in Gotham. He doesn't even know I exist. Why should he care if my name is Hafidh or Hassan or Tony the Tiger?"

His grandfather raises his head, pins him with a displeased look – it is not yet waspish, exactly, not yet the look that says, Ten lashes, outside. "You will be living there soon, within a month." It is the finality with which he says it, a door being shut, a gavel being brought down, that sends a hot spike of fear through Hafidh. But with the fear comes numbness, and he finds himself kneeling, as he is supposed to every time before he leaves Ra's' presence, and saying, Is there anything else you require of me?

***

"I can still call you Hafidh," his mother offers, after he has kicked over the desk in his room. His notebooks, standard-issue black things that he fills with his endless notes and doodles, lie strewn all over the floor. "In private."

In secret, she means.

Hafidh takes several shuddery breaths. His toes are going to be bruised. "No." Might as well get used to it. Idiotic name. It has a green tint to it, the colour of Ra's' cape. "Damian," he mutters, resentfully. He turns his gaze to the window, to the frosted mountain peaks. "What does it even mean?" If it's something stupid, he can rail against it even more. He wants to hate it, to grind it into the dirt.

His mother gives a crooked, knowing smile, as though she is certain it is a name he will like. "From Greek, Damianos – 'Tamer'."

Not stupid, then, but the bitterness in his mouth does not dissolve. He's not sure what he is taming, or who. He voices this.

"The world, I think," his mother says, in an ironic sort of way, "according to your grandfather."

Hafidh laughs, startled. "You can't tame the world. Alexander didn't, and Genghis Khan didn't, and no one will." It is proven, in the annals of history. His tutors told him stories of kings and generals, in an apparent effort to inspire him, and he responded with, So all of them died, or lost. He always looked straight at the blackboard when he said this, while his tutors sputtered or sighed.

His mother's gaze softens, and Hafidh wonders if there is something like pride glimmering in her eyes. "That remains to be seen," she says, in that bland, noncommittal way of hers.

Despite the prior warning, he gets a jolt the next day when his maths tutor – the first that morning – greets him as Damian, not Hafidh. He wonders what his name will be in America: Damian Wayne, or Damian al Ghul. They both sound wrong, ill-fitting sweaters.

His tutor snaps his fingers beneath his nose with an irritated expression, and Hafidh sits up, apologising.

He is angry in a detached sort of way. The world around him grinds on. He speaks normally. He does his lessons. In the afternoon, during sparring, he jams his sword into the neck of a man several years his senior, and before he can wipe the blood off his face, his grandfather calls him into his office again. That's twice in as many days. Unheard of.

Ra’s appraises him, not speaking, for nearly half a minute. It is unsettling, but then everything Ra's does is unsettling. Hafidh’s ankle is twisted, yet he stands straight; he has trained himself not to squirm under that heavy gaze. (Squirming means weakness, weakness means punishment.) At length Ra’s grunts and says, “He should be pleased with your training.”

Hafidh blinks, before he realises Ra's means his father. He bites down on a surge of anger again. It irks him, this idea that a man he does not even know should be pleased with any part of him. Bruce Wayne's existence thus far has been inconsequential, like the faint background skree of insects at night in Fairy Meadows.

Ra's begins to type something out on his desktop computer. “You need not worry about the earlier brats he took in. Blood is thicker than water; it is your birthright, to stand by your father, to train with him.” He pauses, grunts, as though correcting himself. “Be wary of the circus boy," he says. "He is not your father's son, but he is well instructed, and...protective, of him."

Hafidh waits for him to get to the point. His ankle is starting to itch.  

Ra's pins him with a cool look. "Do not let any of those pretenders usurp your position. I trust you will succeed, Damian."

Hafidh salutes, bends at the knee. His ankle burns. "Yes, Grandfather."

And, you remember, Ra's adds, as Hafidh turns to leave. You continue to exist at my sufferance.

Code for: Fail and die. Noted.

That evening, his mother comes to his room carrying a big bowl of steaming suji halwa, and Hafidh usually groans, but today he is grateful, more for the gesture, familiar as the whisper of snow beneath his boots, than the actual dessert. He feels as though his legs have been kicked out from underneath him, and he's landed so hard on his back he's stunned and can't get up.

His grandfather likes to say, Food is only fuel, and so Hafidh had grown up eating only as much as was necessary, when it was necessary. Mostly bland, nutritious stuff, like baked chicken and boiled vegetables and baked chicken and steamed fish. His mother has a different outlook. Whenever she returns from trips, within Pakistan or abroad, she sneaks him plates of golden ma'amoul, sticky baklava from Istanbul that has him licking the syrup off his fingers, those Dairy Milk chocolates he had taken a liking to. Once she got him red-bean mochi from Kyoto and he decided it was the best thing he had ever eaten.

He keeps saying he does not like halwa, and he doesn't, but his mother never believes him. She always says, How can anyone not like halwa? and presses a bowl of it into his hands. Invariably, he picks out the golden sultanas so he doesn't feel too guilty about not eating it, and gives the rest to Ravi, who happily scarfs it down.

He does not like halwa, but he eats it now anyway, spooning it into his mouth mindlessly as he rolls the name Damian around his head, feels out the contours of it – sword-like, a long thin stiletto. It has the glitter of metal. He thinks of nasally American accents and 7-11s and people drinking coffee on the go. Maybe that's just a New York thing. He wouldn't know. His life is nestled in Nanda Parbat, sometimes branching into Islamabad. He's been to a lot of places: the majority of the Gulf countries, Morocco, England, and a smattering of South-East Asian nations. But he has never set foot in America.

It is only when his stomach roils that he realises, with horror, he's eaten nearly the entire bowl, and claps a hand over his mouth to stop the nausea.

ii.

Everything about Drake is irritating. The wooden bo staff. The R on his tunic. The 'Wayne' tacked onto his surname, as if it means anything.

But mostly, what's irritating about him is the way Damian's father looks at him, like he is –

(Precious is a word Damian knows, but his mother never spoke it in front of others, and Damian learned to see it as a word you didn't use, even in your mind, a word that meant trouble.)

– valuable. The kind of asset you don't send on the most dangerous missions unless you have to, not because he can't handle it, but because you cannot afford to lose him in case things go pear-shaped. He looks at Drake the way Talia would look at Damian when Ra's was not watching.

Damian pretends to focus on lacing up his boots as his father tugs Drake to his side, plants a gruff, casual kiss in his hair. Drake's lips curl into a pleased smile, and Damian yanks the strings so hard his palms burn. When Damian's father walks past him, he gives him a small nod, his lips pressing together as though he's had a spoon of curdled milk. After his initial (failed) attempts at indoctrinating Damian, he has regarded him with wariness, like a dog sniffing at something it hasn't seen before.

“You might as well stop acting so close to my father," Damian hisses to Drake, as soon as his father is gone. "I’m his real son.”

Drake's smile has become a rictus, and there is a gleam in his eyes that sings of violence. For the first time, Damian wonders if he underestimated him. “Oh, you’re his real son?” Drake throws back his head and howls, and there is a touch of a snapped wire in his laugh. He bends his knees so he is at eye level with Damian, still sneering, and says, “He chose us, demon spawn. He had no reason to accept us but the fact that we were extraordinary, that we were suited to each other, that he wanted us. You, he was just saddled with. An unlucky burden.”

A year ago, on a January morning, Damian had been taken to the courtyard, tied to a wooden pillar, and whipped till he couldn't scream, till his back was an endless sea of fire and thought ceased to exist. He had looked at a boy in his chemistry class, and kept looking, at his sombre expression, at the way the sunlight melted the hazel of his eyes. Khalid had been sold to the League as a toddler, and had almost bested Damian in wrestling the week before. The tutor informed Ra's of Damian's misdemeanour. Attachments within the League were – are – forbidden, punishable by death. Ra's told him he would show mercy.

When he woke, with heavy, crusted eyelids, snow was drifting silently to the ground and the sky was the colour of slate. His wrists were still secured to the pillar and his back burned despite the stinging cold. He was shaking, his legs would not move, and his only wish in life was to fall unconscious again. A hand grasped his chin, and he dimly recognised Ra's' voice as it said: More? Damian had whispered, No. He tasted blood. Please. Please.

He feels, now, that same lull after an indescribable amount of pain, the greyness that shrouds everything. That need to lie there and come down from the shock.

For once, he has no retort for Drake, who straightens and marches out of the cave, tense with something dark and prickly.

iii.

The room swims in and out of focus when he opens his eyes. It takes him a moment to realise he's hooked up to a nasal cannula. A cool hand brushes the hair from his forehead. "Damian."

“Mother?” he rasps. His throat is cotton-dry.

His mother holds a glass of water near his mouth and he struggles to raise his head, taking delicate sips. There are stitches criss-crossing over his torso like he's a doll. Organ transplant.

The memories pummel into him: his grandfather had set off an explosion, after the British PM's wife had been rescued. Ra's' grip on his wrist had been bruising, holding him in place; Damian couldn't have escaped even if he'd wanted to. They could have died. Damian nearly did die, and there is the Lazarus Pit, but he's seen what that does to a man and he doesn't want it. His father – his father had only stood there, watching. Damian lies in the sterile white bed, the ceiling fan whining lowly, thinking, He just stood there. He just stood there.

His mother's face is impassive, but there is something like guilt in her eyes, and her shoulders are ever-so-slightly hiked.

"You," he says, the pieces falling together in his head, "you convinced Grandfather to send me there. To Gotham." The words taste acrid on his tongue. His father had told him, It's clear your grandfather sent you here to disrupt my work, as if Damian was a pest, and Damian had wanted to retort, Your work? What about my life? but he'd been so stunned, so heavy with grief, he couldn't get it out, all he could say was, It's not like that.

His mother does not move, does not even dip her head in acknowledgement. "To protect you."

"From what?" Damian spits, though he knows. His mother does not respond, only looks at him, narrowing her eyes. "Was 'Damian' your idea too?" he says.

"No, that was your grandfather's."

Something he has held in check for a long time snaps, a tight wire abruptly cut. "He wouldn't have changed it," he says fiercely. To his shame, tears are stinging his eyes. He does not know why he is so upset. It is only a name. "He wouldn't have changed it if you hadn't made me go." He scrabbles for his pillow and throws it at her, but his limbs have turned to lead and the pillow falls a foot short of where she stands.

A kind of directionless desperation is rising within him, and he wants to scream till he's hoarse but he's exhausted, he's weak, he can't even hold a glass of water. He clutches his hair, tearing it from the roots, half aware that he is making broken little sounds, rocking himself. Then there are soft arms around him, and the powdery smell of his mother's perfume, and she holds him as the world cracks at the edges.

iv.

Damian had expected to be Robin, but not to a different Batman. He had especially not expected this different Batman to not only best him in sparring, but actually – to borrow a useful phrase – wipe the floor with him.

Grayson is an iron pillar in a hurricane. Sometimes he is curt and not-warm. ("Get in the car.") Sometimes his grief, and frustration borne of that grief, filter through the gaping hole in his chest. ("Get in the fucking car, Damian.") Sometimes he's funny enough to make Damian unintentionally snort. ("You can drive when you can see over the dashboard.") Often, he is tender. His words send a shock of undiluted joy through Damian, so bright it almost hurts. ("It's okay, we'll figure it out," or, "Great work, I'm proud of you." Said with a smile, with those warm brown eyes holding Damian's gaze, his honesty a comet in a dark sky.)

It is as if colour has blotted its way into his monochrome life.

The day Damian starts to trust him blindly in battle is the day Grayson saves his life. Damian reels from the shock, that Grayson had no reason to save him – shouldn't have been able to, considering how deeply Damian was in trouble – but did it anyway.

The rest of it starts with a cough. A dry one, scratchy and painful, so he keeps a flask of hot water with honey and basil on his bedside table. He wakes up with the sheets damp with sweat, and when he takes his temperature the thermometer reads 99.5. Sighing, he takes an ibuprofen and rolls out of bed. A light fever is no excuse for laziness.

At the Cave, when he comes to stand by the car, Grayson hunkers down and stares straight at him, like a lemur. Damian resists the urge to stumble back. "What?" he snaps, flustered.

"You look a little flushed," Grayson says, and raises his hand as if to place it on Damian's forehead.

Damian smacks it away. "Don't touch me."

"If you're not feeling well, you should tell me."

"I'm fine." Damian brushes past him and hops into the car.

The stakeout on the roof on the fringes of the city is long and drawn-out, and Grayson does not pepper the air with his usual quips or inane small talk. They're waiting to catch traffickers of Vietnamese people forced to work in the illegal cannabis trade, and anger crawls beneath Damian's skin. He doesn't know when he started feeling angry about such things, but now that he's aware of it, he can't stop.

They squat for three hours, the rain like needles against Damian's face, before a light switches on behind the newspaper-covered windows.

Damian reaches for his grapple, but Grayson shakes his head, and he would argue, but his throat is raw and his body is heavy and he decides it's not worth the effort. It is only when they hear a thump and a faint cry that Grayson says, "Now," and they smash through one of the windows.

"Sorry, did we crash the party?" says Grayson to a flabbergasted, limp-haired man who had evidently hit the worker, who is still cupping his reddened cheek. Grayson is smiling, but it is a tight, acid thing. (Damian has seen him smile that way before, right before he broke a wanted rapist's elbow and kicked him off a second-storey balcony. "He'll live," Grayson had told him coolly, while Damian's eyebrows climbed up into his fringe.)

Damian takes a step towards the worker and the room tilts to one side. He wobbles, then straightens, and puts his hands up to show he is not going to hurt the man. "We are going to help you," he says, and he sounds like he is underwater, his own voice distant and tinny to his ears. "Okay?" And then his vision blurs and someone calls his name, and he tumbles into darkness.

When he wakes he is in his bed at the manor and his head feels as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. Grayson is placing a glass of water on his bedside table. "Damian," he says, turning to him, when he hears the sheets rustle. "You have a fever. 102. You were out for the whole night. Well done, glad to know your idea of intelligence is standing in freezing rain when you're sick." He sounds peeved.

Damian's brain seems to have turned into plodding syrup. He rifles through the languages in his head like he is picking and discarding clothes. Arabic. Urdu. Mandarin. French. English, there it is. But once he settles on it he finds he has nothing to say. He knows Grayson will not punish him – it is not his way, or the way of his father's house – but he won't understand. He shrinks into the bed, closing his eyes and hoping Grayson will give up and go away.

To his dismay, the mattress sinks and rough knuckles brush against his cheek. "Oh, Dami," Grayson says, and he doesn't sound vexed anymore but he still sounds upset. "Why would you do that? I told you to let me know if you were feeling unwell."

It wasn't allowed, Damian wants to say, exhausted. You finished the day, regardless of how you felt. It's how it works, it's how I operate. It's what I know.

"This isn't the League," Grayson says softly, and Damian opens his eyes, lips pursing. Sunlight plays over the ceiling. With Grayson's words, simple as they are, a weight that he had not been aware of lifts off his chest. He is embarrassed that Grayson has deduced a slice of his past so easily, but also oddly grateful. Grayson continues, "And we may be a bunch of emotionally constipated workaholics, but we are never required to work through illness. It can jeopardise the mission, but more importantly, you could get hurt."

"You're not," Damian takes a raspy breath, "angry?"

Grayson's face is blank; Damian cannot read him. It is disquieting – he considers himself good at reading people. "I am apoplectic," states Grayson, "but not at you." There's that edge in his voice again, as if he wants to electrocute someone into paralysis with his escrima sticks – 'someone' being the entirety of the LoA.

Damian doesn't know how to respond to that, so he doesn't, listening to the faint birdsong floating in from the gardens.

"Now," Grayson says, abruptly cheerful, slapping his hands on his thighs, "you are going to take it easy until the fever is entirely gone. You can work the computer if you're feeling restless, but no physical activity."

Damian wheezes. His chest rattles. "I can't get up and use the bathroom?" he says dryly.

"No strenuous physical activity," Grayson amends, with a smile. "I'll tell Alfred to get you some food. Is toast and cheese okay?"

"Nnh."

"Excellent. I'm heading to the store, what kind of chocolate do you like? Can't get well without chocolate. And don't tell me you don't like it, that's just tragic on multiple levels."

Damian pauses, not unwilling, but cautious all the same. They've seen each other naked in the communal showers with no shame – they've even chucked soap bars at each other, Grayson shrieking with laughter all the while. But it seems strangely intimate, telling Grayson about his taste in food. The only person who knows about it is his mother. "I like Cadbury," he admits quietly, at length. It doesn't matter how many expensive chocolates he eats, Cadbury will always be his favourite. Then he adds with some force, "Don't you dare get me Hershey, it tastes like ear wax." His mother had dropped a pile of Hershey's Kisses on his lap after a trip to Boston, and after biting one he'd thought passing them off to Ravi would count as cruelty. (Ravi ate them anyway.)

Grayson seems amused. "You've tasted ear wax?"

"You know what I mean."

"Well, tough shit, Hershey owns Cadbury in the US."

"Don't joke."  

Grayson laughs, a bright sound, the flash of sunlight on steel. When he returns an hour later, he drops a stack of Cadbury chocolates (fastened with a red ribbon – a touching if unnecessary gesture) on Damian's bedside table, along with a notebook. With cartoon cats all over the plastic cover. And a matching pen. They're so tacky and so utterly Grayson that Damian rolls his eyes.

"I'm not a child," he says.

Grayson shrugs. "I noticed you prefer writing down your notes for cases rather than typing  them out, but if you don't like it, I can take it ba – "

"No, it's mine."

v.

His mother used to love a certain shade of lipstick, some matte burgundy that she wore with nearly everything. When she was without it, she seemed bare-faced and undone.

He spends a Saturday afternoon at the mall searching for the colour, his pockets bulging with the crisp notes he had saved up from his weekly allowance. He never paid attention to the brand, but he has a good eye, and purchases a tube he thinks is near identical to it. The cashier gives him an odd look, which he ignores.

Damian tucks the lipstick away in his room; he only takes it out on occasion to uncap and look at it. He is anxious that someone will find out and he will be subjected to a long and embarrassing Q & A session, but nothing happens. In the mornings Grayson sips his coffee and reads the newspaper and Alfred makes breakfast and no one asks about an absurdly expensive lipstick in a ten-year-old boy's bedside drawer.

Damian had been instructed to not contact his mother, and he hasn't. He wonders when he will see her next, if her hair will be dyed light brown or not, if her lips will be painted a different shade.  

vi.

At the charity gala, most people are excessively nice when they pry and Damian tells them where he's from. These ones annoy him. It is like they are patting themselves on the back for their open-mindedness. They can't even get beyond comments like, "Oh, it's so co-lourful," as if everything in Pakistan and South Asia at large can be compared to a lopsided finger-painting. Their tone is the one you use on toddlers.

Grayson stops introducing him to the guests half an hour in.

"Sorry," he says, with a shamefaced smile, as Damian rubs his cheek after it's been pinched for the fourth time. "They...mean well. I know it's tiring, but try to be nice anyway, we're depending on them for their contributions."

Damian is tired and cranky. He hasn't slept in two days, helping with a weapons trafficking case. "You can't stand anyone here."

"I wouldn't go that far." Knowing Grayson, he means it. He probably even likes some of them.

Nonetheless he does not leave Damian's side. They thread through the crowd, Grayson charming everyone he grins and nods at (Damian can almost see the hearts in their eyes, and it only has a little to do with Grayson's bone structure) and Damian trying not to scowl. Eventually an older couple nabs them by the buffet, a Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, and the cycle of interrogation begins anew.

"Do you miss your country?" Mr. Campbell asks Damian, simpering, and it is an innocent question, if a fraught one, not easy to answer without a balancing act. He's not sure he belongs to any country at all; he was raised in Pakistan, but he was born in Alexandria, his mother in Tunis, his grandfather in Nizwa.

Mrs. Campbell says benevolently, gesturing with her glass like she is raising a toast, "Well, at least he's not living in the third world anymore."

Damian's stomach lurches, and his fingers clench beneath his sleeves. It's not that simple, he wants to say. He wants to say a lot of things.

•     He doesn't want to go back home now, but that is because "home" was days filled with training till he cried, till he was trained out of crying. It was being pushed into the snow at night and told, Survive.
•     He was dragged to America, to a father who hadn't wanted him, and as much as Damian has broken and re-broken himself into a partner worthy of his legacy, he cannot consider America home.
•     Ergo, he has no home.

Do you miss your country? is a complicated question. A possible answer is, I want to, but you don't say things like that in polite company.

"No," he says.

When they get away, Grayson propels him to the gardens and asks if he is feeling all right. "Of course," Damian grinds out. Grayson sits on a creaking bench and scoops Damian onto his lap. He smells of that old-fashioned cologne he said Alfred got him, and not even a little bit of alcohol, and Damian realises he probably only just pretends to drink. His knee-jerk reaction is to want to say, Unhand me, but he clings to him. Grayson doesn't talk, just rubs circles into his back and drops a kiss into his hair.

Damian must fall asleep, because when he comes to consciousness he is in his bed and his shoes are off. The digital clock reads 1.03 am. He drags himself up, thinking he should change into his nightclothes and brush his teeth. Instead he finds himself trundling his way across the hall, as if in a dream, to Grayson's room.

When he enters, Grayson is combing his hair in the bathroom with the door open, in a ratty old t-shirt and sweatpants. "Damian?" he says, turning to him with a puzzled frown. "What did I tell you about knocking?"

Damian is vaguely aware he should apologise. He's not even sure why he's here. He just wanted to see Grayson, to assure himself of this anchor in his life.

Grayson puts his comb on the counter and walks over, crouching down, his forehead creased with worry. He holds Damian firmly by the shoulders. "Hey, kiddo," he says gently, "are you okay?" He cups Damian's cheek. "Talk to me."

In that moment Damian realises, though he has known it for a while, that he would die for him.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'll leave."

vii.

He misses the mess of Grayson's old room: the clothes dropped on the ground, the files strewn everywhere, the faint smell of his cologne. If not for the Flying Graysons poster and photographs on the desk, it would be as if no one had ever lived here at all; Pennyworth cleans that well. The result is sterile and without personality, like a hotel room.

Damian had thought being shipped off to Gotham would be the last time he felt displaced.

He has not put down roots in this city, but he has put down roots in the groundwork he and Grayson laid as Batman and Robin. In the past few months he'd been shot in the spine, stabbed, waterboarded, and subjected to general unpleasantness, and yet he had never felt more stable. He hadn't wanted it to change. 

Damian walks to the desk and gingerly picks up one of the photographs – he feels like an outsider, snooping where he shouldn't, intruding on a family's happy private life. In the photo, his father and Grayson are both clad in black suits; it looks like a celebration, perhaps a graduation party or engagement. They are grinning at each other, Grayson seeming delighted to just be there, his father proud and terribly fond. Damian wonders what it would take to make his father look at him that way – if anything ever would.

He puts the photo back and pushes his hands into his hoodie pockets. He intends to go to his room, but then his stomach growls and he realises it's late evening and he's hungry, so he heads to the kitchen instead. He stops at the entrance, blinking.

Alfred is stirring the contents of a steaming pan on the stove. His father is sitting at the island, reading a newspaper and sipping from a mug. It is a strangely domestic scene for Damian to witness – he had never seen his father so...relaxed, before. It had felt to Damian that his father was always keeping a wary eye on him. The worst part is that he had reason to.

Pennyworth turns and smiles at Damian, and it is expertly kind. "I made halwa," he says, and Damian wonders if he's dreaming. "It's," Pennyworth checks a sticky note on the counter, "gram flour."

It takes a solid five seconds for Damian to realise he means besan. Pennyworth's pronunciation makes Damian want to stab something, but that is overridden by the part of his brain short-fusing. "Huh?" He is standing in his father's kitchen in America and the English butler is making halwa. Clearly neither of them has had it before. It's in the somewhat uncertain look on Pennyworth's face, the one all home cooks get when they make something new.

"It was Master Bruce's idea," Pennyworth says.

His father shifts, awkwardly, in his seat, a giant trying at once to make himself small and not appear nervous. "I believe it's...common to make, at home. Over there. I could be wrong. I don't know. I just," he gestures helplessly between himself and Damian, "thought you could use a bit of home. Especially now that Dick's returned to Blüdhaven. I know it must be...difficult for you."

Damian wonders if this is a trick, or some kind of test. But rationality tells him that is not their style. Perhaps Grayson had given his father a humiliatingly earnest talk before he left. He has no time to respond either way, because Pennyworth says, shoving a spoon of the stuff at him, "Perhaps you could try some and let me know what you think – so I can make it better next time?"

He accepts it out of surprise and puts it in his mouth. It's still too hot, and too sweet. The texture is off. Yet there is something oddly nice about Pennyworth trying his hand at a dish he knows nothing about, about his fumbling but earnest attempt, that is more touching than if he'd made it perfectly, like a crack that lends character to an otherwise faultless vase. Even if it is the exact thing Damian turns his nose up at.

"A little less sugar next time," he says, "but I appreciate it all the same. Thank you."

Pennyworth's smile is so broad his entire face wrinkles. His father is looking at them, still clutching his mug, and he's smiling too, unconfident, but warm. "You will have dinner with us?" he says, hopeful.

Damian had been taking his meals in his room since Grayson had hugged him tight, kissed his cheek, and left, two days ago. He nods.

"Excellent," says Pennyworth, clapping his hands. "Please be at the table in half an hour. There will be soup and sandwiches."

"Sandwiches for dinner?" his father says, with a slight grimace. He glances at Damian and his eyes are not wary, but mischievous and a little embarrassed. Damian's heart stutters.

Pennyworth sniffs. "If you hadn't broken the oven trying to operate it earlier – I'm sorry, Master Damian, he was trying to make something for you – I might have been able to give you the shepherd's pie I had ready."

His father ducks his head, blushing and rubbing the back of his neck. Damian sees, for the first time, why his mother had been so besotted with him.

Pennyworth is making shooing motions with his hands.  

They scramble to obey. His father is still smiling crookedly, grey rings beneath his eyes; he seems in that moment just another man, soft with tiredness, but content. The hand that rests on Damian's back is large and warm. "Can't wait to taste some of that pudding later," his father says. "Who knows, maybe it will become a weekly thing. Dick could come join us next month." He continues in this vein, while Damian pads along by his side, silent and thoughtful.

Damian does not like halwa.

But he will not tell Pennyworth that.

-end-