Chapter Text
It all begins with a text.
Damian would like to say he doesn’t text often. He didn’t when he had first arrived at the Manor, believing it to be for fools with nothing better to do, and even when he got off his high horse, everyone he loved lived in the Manor.
But he made friends with the Titans. Now his sleep gets interrupted by Wallace texting him about the rates at which squirrels fall. Now he must discretely check his phone during mealtimes because Xiomara and D’jinn profess their love for each other in the groupchat. Damian’s only comfort is that Duke does not fare much better, even though his friends come over every weekend to fill the halls with their chatter.
However, it isn’t one of his friends texting him that sends a chill down his spine.
It’s Mother.
She doesn’t leave her name or any alias, but who else would it be?
I am sorry, reads the text, for everything that had been done to you without me there. I should have stopped it long ago. You seem happy now, and I dare not intrude on that. But I would like to see you, one last time, to apologize for it all. If you would rather not, I’d understand.
His fingers hover over the keyboard. His heart plays ping pong in his chest, thudding in his ears. What can he say? Should he say anything?
His thoughts about Mother are… complicated. He loves her, he thinks. But he cannot forgive her. He barely knows her; she was absent throughout the majority of his childhood.
Damian pockets his phone. He can worry later. He has patrol tonight.
Duke glides across rooftops in highlighter yellow exuberance, but Damian merely blurs. He falls back on his namesake as he runs alongside Duke. His eyes scan the streets for crime, but his mind lingers on the text.
Eventually, Duke comes to a stop, Damian slowing down behind him. “Slow night,” Duke remarks. “Wanna go grab ice cream?” The white lenses of Duke’s domino mask seem to peer through Damian, oddly knowing for the fourteen-year-old who forgot to tell Father that Steph and Cass had gone to patrol together earlier this evening.
(Father had worked himself into a panic wondering where they had gone, and Duke froze when he arrived downstairs, his eyes wide. “Oh, shit,” Damian heard him murmur before revealing he knew where they were and telling Father simply slipped his mind. Damian watched while he suited up, managing to suppress his snorts.)
“Why not?” Damian replies.
They use a fire escape in an apartment to lower themselves to the ground, and they sprint to their favorite ice cream parlor, open twenty-four seven.
Damian orders a cup of rocky road; Duke chooses a cone with novelty Batgirl-themed ube ice cream with dark chocolate chips and small banana chunks.
“So,” says Duke as they sit, “what’s up?”
“Nothing is up,” Damian says a tad quickly. “Unless you mean toxic gas fumes pumped into the air by factories that put their workers through hazardous conditions for little pay.”
Duke nibbles at his ice cream, silently staring at Damian. He gestures with his hand, an open palm one that Damian knows to mean, “No, seriously, go ahead.”
Damian sighs and reaches up to ruffle Duke’s hair. Duke squirms away, but only out of principle as he leans into the touch a moment later. He smiles. Duke may no longer be nine and adorably tiny, but he’s still Damian’s little brother.
“How do you face people you can’t forgive?” he asks.
Duke blinks. “You mean, like, Daryl?” Daryl Gutierrez. The self-proclaimed original Mister Bloom, though until about a year and a half ago, he was also a friend of Duke’s. Teamed up with Riddler eight months ago and held Duke’s parents hostage. Despite this, Duke still visits Daryl once a month, never unaccompanied.
“Yes,” says Damian, spooning some of his ice cream into his mouth.
“Well,” Duke says after a pause, pursing his lips, “I remember who he used to be. And I hope he can be like that again.” (Does Damian have any fond memories of Mother?) “If he wasn’t able to talk to anyone—I know isolation is pretty awful—no one good, how could he want to be good again? And I’m the only one willing to visit him. It’s up to me.”
“I see,” Damian says, running his tongue over his teeth to remove a nut that had gotten stuck. “That is incredibly admirable of you.”
Mother wouldn’t have been winning any mother of the year awards in the past, but… she could be trying to be better. And Damian might not be able to forgive her, but he can at least help her get there. After all, he had his own chance at redemption thanks to Father and Duke.
Duke tilts his head. “So why did you need to know?”
They hear a scream, maybe a few alleyways away. Perfect timing. Damian stands, throwing his empty ice cream cup in the trash.
“Let’s go,” he tells Duke as Duke stuffs the rest of the cone into his mouth. Duke nods, and they’re off.
Damian lifts a cotton swab out of a jar, dousing it with rubbing alcohol. “How are you?” he says idly to Cass.
She sits on a chair, fiddling with her hood as she awaits medical attention for the scrapes she attained while taking down a warehouse full of henchmen, much to her chagrin. She shrugs—her language skills have improved in the months she’s stayed with them, but she prefers to communicate non-verbally. She takes private ASL lessons with Duke and Damian, but often, she’ll use the language she knows best: body language.
He lowers down to her knee and dabs the cotton swab over the wound. She hisses softly.
“Apologies,” Damian hums, “but this needs to be cleaned before I can bandage you.”
Cass crosses her arms and sulks in a stunning approximation of Father.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” he chides gently. “It’s because of this that you are able to risk your life on the field again tomorrow.”
Wound now cleaned, Damian takes a roll of bandages and begins unwrapping. “Do you know of my mother?” he asks her. Cass was League-raised, and perhaps she’ll have her own ideas about what Damian could do.
Cass stills and makes a small nod. She raises her hand and holds her pointer finger and thumb close together. A little. She cocks her head towards the light of the computer through the door. From the files.
Contempt swirls in Damian’s chest for David Cain, who had made the perfect weapon out of Cass—someone who wouldn’t know enough to rebel but enough to attack in the direction he wanted. Pride mixes in as well, for Cass, who was able to escape him. But he thinks the emotion most relevant at the moment would be deflation.
Damian knows what he wants to do. He knows what he hopes will happen. But, no disregard for Duke intended, he didn’t know he was giving advice to Damian about Mother. Father would no doubt be biased if Damian asked, and Steph and Harper only knew bits and pieces.
Perhaps he could try to solve this from another angle.
“How about your mother?”
Cass tentatively brings her hand to her forehead, and it comes back down with her pinky and thumb raised. It’s the sign for “Why?”
“No reason, just curious.” Cass’ eyebrows draw together, unbelieving. “If you would rather not answer, that is completely understandable, don’t worry.”
“That’s not what you want to know,” Cass signs.
“No, it is… not.” What is it with his siblings being able to read him like a book? First Duke, and while Cass is more advantaged in that than others, her as well. “Hypothetically, if your mother wanted to apologize and reconnect, would you say yes?” Lady Shiva, or Sandra Wu-San. Deadliest hand-to-hand combatant on the planet.
Another shrug. Her hands tremble slightly as she signs, “Maybe. I would want to try.”
And there is his answer.
“Thank you,” he tells Cass earnestly, and begins to wrap bandages around her knee.
The green analog clock beside his bed says it is three in the morning. If he sends the text now, he can sleep away his worries and save Mother’s reply for future Damian.
His finger inches closer. He knows he wants to say something, but the specifics are blanking on him.
It doesn’t take Damian long to give in.
I can’t forgive you, Mother, but I’ve decided to give you the benefit of the doubt. I don’t believe I am ready to see you in person yet, but perhaps we can still communicate.
Hope warms his heart, tickling it like tiny rays of sunlight. He wants this, he realizes, and maybe he always had.
This will go well, he’s sure of it.