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Robin hates magic.
That's rather counterintuitive, is what Grayson would probably say if Damian ever voiced such a complaint, but he really can't help it if he despises magic. Robin as a symbol is supposed to be warm and bright, magical in the large hugs and grand acrobatic tricks sort of way.
Unfortunately, magic is less of a fun show and more of a nuisance in a place like Gotham.
"Are you alright?" Father asks quietly, sharing an inconspicuously concerned look at him from the driver's seat of the Batmobile.
Damian frowns, arms crossed and unimpressed as he pointedly looks away and out the tinted windows, "My answer has not changed since the last three times you have asked me, father."
"Yes, well," Bruce starts, unable to mask his ever present paranoia now that their patrol is more or less over, and Batman begins to bleed away with the rising sun across Gotham's skyline, leaving behind a worried father, "You took a rather… heavy hit earlier tonight. From that magic user."
Magic user is perhaps an overstatement, because, really, the magic was less used and instead was being thrown around haphazardly. It's almost embarrassing to call it a successful patrol when that was the most exciting thing to have happened tonight.
"I'm fine," Damian states. Father does not look like he believes him.
The 'magic user' in question didn't even seem to be entirely aware of what sort of spells were erupting from their fingertips when one of them ricocheted off a wall and straight into Damian's back, judging by the way they all but turned themselves in after crying when handcuffed to a lamp post. They had even apologised profusely for losing control.
(They also had no clue what spell might have hit Damian.)
"You don't feel any different?" Father asks not even a minute into the silence, and Damian contemplates throwing himself out of the moving vehicle.
"No," Damian stresses, "I am fine!"
He's telling the truth. He does feel fine.
After all, all his limbs have remained the same length and function. His hair is not on fire or otherwise exploding. He sounds the same and nothing is physically out of the ordinary at all. His father should be more worried about the chances of such an incompetent magic user being set loose in Gotham again.
Damian is almost startlingly okay. Perhaps it was just an empty spell, one that didn't quite take form before it hit him.
Damian takes a deep breath in, looking up into the side of his father's face with purpose, "I am fine, father."
His father doesn't move his eyes from the road, but Damian sees the minute change in how he holds the steering wheel. His hands loosen just a little, the sound of his leather gloves relaxing.
(Damian is fine, as far as he's aware. Though, there is a dull emptiness inside of him if he tries to think about it for too long. It's nothing physical, or else he's sure he would be compromised, but it is heavy and it is all encompassing.
It feels like a tug behind his heart, ducking between the hills of his ribcage in an oddly bouncy rhythm. It is always out of reach.
It feels isolated. Alone in the voiceless pit of what lies inside.
Damian doesn't pay too much mind to this strange melancholic thievery he feels in his chest. It has nothing to do with what happened tonight, because when magic hits, magic hits hard. And he is fine.
There is no need to bring alarm to an already familiar tremor beneath his skin.)
Bruce wakes up to crying.
He hadn't been too deep in sleep regardless, a strange inability to truly let himself get lost in the nothingness. He hardly dreams nowadays, which is much more preferred than when he sees anything behind his closed eyes, so it's not too hard to pull himself up to the surface again.
It's a skill that comes with such little sleep, or an important skill to have for stakeouts and missions that carry on deep into the night. There's a brief moment where Bruce blinks awake, eyes adjusting to the darkness of the room —
The next second, he is up and scrambling for the door.
Someone is crying.
It's not a sound he's used to hearing, because it isn't anyone he could possibly know. The crying is young and devastating, pure anguish in every wail at the highest pitch Bruce is certain has ever echoed down the halls of the manor.
A baby.
There's a moment of panic, right after he slams open his bedroom door and looks out into the still and barren emptiness of the corridor, where he thinks this might be a trap. A grossly personal, overcomplicated and invasive trap, right at the heart of Batman.
This worry about it being a trap, however, is immediately thrown away when Bruce realises the crying is coming two doors down from his. Damian's room, where the door is left open, something never is.
Damian sleeps with his door locked, a habit Bruce has tried to disdain him from due to it being a safety concern. He has a slight suspicion that it's also to prevent anyone from walking into his room to wake him for school.
So a wide open door in the middle of the night, the sound of crying coming from inside, is enough to send a million and one incomprehensible horrors pulsing through Bruce's veins. There's no moment of deliberation, since he goes from standing in front of his door to Damian's before he's even processed what he might find on the other side.
The crying becomes screaming once he's inside the room, and Bruce's eyes immediately turn to the empty bed. The covers are half thrown onto the ground, something small wriggling underneath.
It's training that comes with ducking into collapsing buildings in search of screaming children that forces Bruce to not try and decode the situation first, and to simply move to action. He rushes forward, gently but quickly moving the sheets to unearth the screaming child trapped underneath and —
"Oh," Bruce sighs, once he pulls back the covers, taking an involuntary step back.
It is indeed a baby. Bruce guesses barely even a year old, with an impressive head of thick black hair that curls around his ears. Bruce's feet are routed to the ground and he can do nothing but stare at the warm brown skin of the baby, cheeks flushed and wet from the tears streaming down the side of their face.
The baby's eyes are screwed shut, tiny fists balled up and fighting the air in front of them. It looks like they're trying to kick their legs up too, but can't due to large clothes weighing them down.
Bruce's heart twists when he realises he recognises the shirt more than the baby's face, "Damian…"
The baby doesn't hear him, or if he does, is not comforted by his call at all. If anything, the screaming somehow grows in volume, reaching unimaginable levels of deafening. Bruce winces, and while he knows he should step forward, help the child, the thick fear of something lodged in his throat grows heavy enough to keep him still.
"Damian," he calls again, and when the crying wavers for a moment before starting up again, he tries louder, "Damian."
Finally, the baby stops, but it's an unnaturally abrupt pause. The small frame shudders entirely, and the baby seems almost frozen like a deer in headlights.
This reaction does nothing to ease the heaviness on Bruce, but it does make him want to move.
So, with slow and deliberate movements, Bruce tentatively approaches the spot on the ground where the baby was lying still. From the looks of it, it seems Damian could tell something was happening before it did, and woke up to get Bruce.
He was too late however, and Bruce's chest burns with worry when he tries to see if he can see any injuries on the baby from the fall when he's finally close enough.
"Damian," Bruce says again, and this time the baby looks back at him, big round eyes a wonderfully bright emerald green as they hold the stare with something fierce.
As Bruce kneels down onto the ground, he marvels at the way he starts to recognise the small inklings of Damian. The baby's nose is a dead giveaway, but so are his high cheekbones (no doubt from Talia), even if they are hidden under the baby fat.
Damian doesn't respond, or look particularly excited or scared to see him. Bruce isn't sure what he was expecting the baby to react with, but this strange and uncanny nonchalance is somehow more unsettling.
After a moment, Bruce takes a deep breath in, slowly reaching down to pick him up, gathering up Damian's large oversized shirt along with the baby. It fits almost like a dress, reaching far after the baby's feet.
"Hi there," Bruce says with a sudden and unexpected wave of emotion clawing at his heart as he holds the baby outstretched before him, "I wonder how much of this you can understand."
The baby doesn't respond, obviously, but the indifference is slowly replaced with curiosity. Bruce feels the way the baby relaxes in his hands, melting into soft skin and even softer baby fat around the arms.
Bruce clears his throat in an effort to get some sort of control over the situation, "I'll take you down to the cave just to check on you."
He's not entirely sure why he's explaining himself, since there's no telling how much of Damian has remained the same. This has magic written all over it, but that just means it's unpredictable.
The reminder of that fact makes Bruce more urgent to get down to the cave to give Damian a quick scan, and hopefully get someone on the line who might be able to help him reverse the spell. Given how late it is, he's not expecting an immediate call to action, but just anything would suffice.
He clears his throat again, wondering if it'll be him or Damian who breaks eye contact first, "Okay, come on then. I've got you."
It's strangely hard to look away from Damian's face in favour of holding him properly, tucking his head into the crook of his neck and an arm across his back and under his knees. But this isn't the first time Batman's held a baby, and he knows this position is the most comfortable for a baby.
(This is, however, the first time Bruce has held one of his own babies.)
Damian is stiff against his chest, unsurprisingly, but also incredibly silent. He doesn't put up a fuss about being handled by, what might be to him, a complete stranger.
Bruce groans a little as he stands up, grimacing at the way his back strains in protest, but he doesn't waver at all. He can't afford to lose balance when holding something so precious.
Slowly, he rubs a gentle hand up and down Damian's back, gently rocking back and forth on his heels. It might help, it might not, and Bruce isn't sure if he's doing it to calm himself down or make Damian less tense.
To his surprise, it works. Damian slowly starts to unwind, letting a barely audible sigh in content when he rests his cheek against Bruce's shoulder. One of his tiny fists absently grabbing hold of Bruce's shirt sleeve.
Bruce's heart feels heavy all over again when he gently tightens his hold over the impossibly small body.
It becomes clear that caring for a baby, even one as weirdly well behaved and reserved as Damian, is a task that requires more than what Bruce was expecting.
The trip down to the cave was by far the most exciting part, watching the way Damian's still frame suddenly bounced to life with childish amazement at the sudden change in environment. It tells Bruce that Damian doesn't seem to have any recollection of his present memories.
It also tells Bruce that despite Damian's claims that the cave is not that interesting and that he's seen better — baby Damian is absolutely blown away by the large dinosaur.
The dinosaur in question proved a great distraction while Bruce gave Damian a quick scan for any injuries. Aside from a small bruise on his elbow, from what Bruce assumes was the fall from the bed, the baby is completely unharmed.
The introduction to the cave must have sparked something in Damian, because when Bruce tries to pick him up again, the baby wiggles his way out of his grasp, demanding to be put down on the ground.
Bruce spends a few moments looking at the cold concrete ground and Damian's soft bare feet in reservation. Although he doesn't cry or whine about it, Damian's tiny fingers are dangerously sharp as they poke and prod at his ribs to be put down.
They come to a consensus when Bruce places him in the centre of the training mats. For a moment, Damian looks stunned, and much to Bruce's amusement, offended.
Then he stands up with a wobble, looking annoyed at his predicament. Damian's oversized shirt is too long for him, and his feet are caught beneath it when he tries to take a step forward.
Bruce just blinks. He's not entirely surprised to see Damain walking at barely a year old. It just seems like something the boy would have achieved through nothing if not sheer will and determination. It makes the corners of his mouth twitch in amusement at Damian's growing annoyance for the restricting clothes.
"Just stay there," Bruce instructs once Damian tumbles down after tripping on the bottom of the shirt, "I'll go find you something else to wear."
He had his back turned for one, if not, at most, two minutes. Batman finding abandoned or lost children is an unfortunate common occurrence, and so the Batmobile comes equipped with its own baby bag in the trunk, hidden between the snow-storm emergency kit and diving gear.
It's been a while since Bruce had searched through it for anything that wasn't a blanket or a pacifier (to which he puts aside both for Damian), but eventually his fingers brush against a pile of neatly folded baby clothes.
It startles a short laugh out of him when he notices almost everything is Batman-themed, and immediately, he knows this is definitely Alfred's doing. Bruce would never willingly buy anything with his symbol on it, no matter how cute little bat ears on baby summer hats look.
He picks out a black sleepsuit in the end, with a yellow bat across the front. As Bruce holds it in his hands, marvelling at just how tiny a piece of clothing could be, he sobers up at the thought of Alfred. He would have taken great enjoyment in seeing Damian so young.
It's with a dull ache in his heart that Bruce collects the sleepsuit, blanket and unopened pacifier from the trunk, turning to show Damian his findings. If Damian had any memory of his grown up self, he's sure to be displeased with the clothing design.
Except, when Bruce turns to the training mats, there's no sign of Damian.
"Damian?" He calls out, running over to the spot he'd left him in not two minutes ago, before looking around the general vicinity for any sign of the baby. The training area is huge, spanning for several metres, but nowhere does Bruce see a little tuft of wavy hair toddling around.
It's pure instinct that Bruce feels some sort of movement behind him, and he spins around, armed with baby supplies, to see Damian on the Batcomputer.
The baby had, somehow, managed to crawl right past Bruce, onto the chair, over the chair and onto the desk. He's sitting on the keyboard, pudgy little hands poking at the holographic screens in pure amazement. Without meaning to, Bruce watches in pure astonishment as Damian starts to destroy a casefile Stephanie had sent him earlier that week, moving the pictures and texts around messily.
Once the surprise of how Damian did that washes over him, the panic Bruce felt crashes against him, adrenaline coming to a painful halt in the tips of fingers at the thought of losing his son that easily. "Damian, how did you get up there?"
Bruce hadn't raised his voice, he doesn't think, but Damian does a similar thing to what he had done earlier in his bedroom, locking up his entire body like he's a deer in headlights. Bruce barely has time to try and figure out why he keeps doing that, since there is no time, as to his absolute horror, Damian starts to tip backwards.
It all happens so quickly. Bruce drops everything he was holding immediately and races across the training mats for the computer, from which Damian is falling from like he's nothing but a doll.
There's a crash when Bruce knocks the chair out of the way to grab hold of Damian, rolling onto his side and hitting the back of the desk hard in an attempt to slow the fall. An empty mug of coffee and pens clatter to the ground from the impact, but Bruce barely notices.
He's clutching Damian close to his chest, bracing his head and back and practically folding over him.
"Are you —" he gently pulls Damian away, holding him out to inspect him, "Are you hurt? What were you thinking —"
The questions die on the tip of his tongue, because the more he speaks, the more noticeable the fearful shivering of the baby in his hands becomes. Damian's face has closed off, back to the previous indifference and stoney expression, but his eyes are wide with trembling pupils.
He doesn't cry. Bruce finds he needs Damian to cry. Any other child would have.
But this baby doesn't. Damian simply shakes in poorly suppressed fear from the sudden fall and no doubt Bruce's infectious panic, eyes glossy but not enough to fill up with tears.
Bruce's heart aches, and perhaps a little too forcefully, he pulls Damian back into his chest, burying his nose into the crown of his head, "It's okay. You're okay. You're fine, Damian."
The baby's heart beats as fast as a hummingbird against Bruce's, so he tries to make his own a little slower, willing the terror away. The fall wasn't that far, technically speaking, and while it would have definitely hurt, Damian would have been fine.
But the mere thought of not having been fast enough, of having to watch Damian fall, strikes Bruce with another wave of panic. The baby's small pudgy hands dig into the front of his shirt, latched on and unmoving in delayed shock.
"Oh honey," Bruce whispers into Damian's hair, short curly wisps tickling his nose, "You're alright. I have you. You're okay."
Damian doesn't make a single sound, but Bruce feels the way he starts to relax again, slotting perfectly into the dip of Bruce's chest. So they stay like that for many moments, crouched underneath the computer desk, calming their erratic hearts.
When Tim walks into the cave to see Bruce lying flat on the ground in the middle of the training mats, he almost has a heart attack.
It's not even six in the morning, so no one should be here. He's only here because there's a case he's working on that he can not sleep without solving, and it requires the Batcomputer archive's that he wasn't able to transfer to his own computer back at the Marina.
Usually Bruce and Damian are asleep at this time. Duke might be the only person down here this early, for similar reasons as to Tim's own, but now that he's moved out for college, the manor is exceptionally empty at this hour.
So, there's only one reason Bruce would be lying here at this hour and that is —
"A baby?" Tim mutters in disbelief, chest heaving from sprinting from the entrance to the training area in a short burst of energy. He feels light headed looking down, only to be met with a wide awake Bruce lying completely still with a baby on his chest.
"Shh," Bruce says with bloodshot eyes, "I just got him to sleep."
Tim gapes. He can't believe what he's seeing. He knew it had been many hours since he'd slept, but really, having nightmare hallucinations about Bruce adopting another kid is a bit much.
When he finally finds his voice stuck at the back of his throat, realising this is nothing but an unfortunate reality, Tim smacks a hand over his face, "Bruce, no." He sighs.
The man frowns, "It's Damian," he whispers in defence.
Tim feels his blood pressure skyrocket from that statement alone, "Like that's any better. How did this even happen?"
"Magic," Bruce answers the exact same moment baby Damain burps in his sleep, and really, Tim's not sure what else he expected.
"Of course," he groans. Now that he's closer, Tim takes a moment to take in his surroundings, looking over the countless opened baby supplies littered around Bruce. Damian's even wearing a Batman onesie. Tim hates how cute it looks.
Then, because the universe must really be enjoying this, there's suddenly an alert chiming from the computer. Bruce tenses, looking like he's about to jump up to check it before remembering the baby happily snoring away on his chest.
"It's probably Zatanna," Bruce informs painfully, before Tim makes the misfortune of locking eyes with him, "Quick. Lay down."
Tim gawks, "I am not —"
"Tim."
"Oh my god," Tim complains, but dutifully lowers himself until he's laying down in a similar position to Bruce, arms locked straight against his sides. He knows what's coming before it happens, but even then, his entire body freezes when Bruce gently transfers Damian from him onto Tim.
"Don't let him slip off," Bruce tells him sternly, and then to Tim's growing mortification, reaches down to press a kiss to the side of Damian's face and a strange fond caress against Tim's (which just ends up slapping him across the forehead) before he's staggering up and over to the computer.
It's obvious that Bruce is exhausted, which is even more terrifying than the prospect of a Damian who's potentially not potty-trained and laying on top of him.
Slowly, Tim raises his hands to make sure the baby doesn't fall off, gently patting him on the back, "There's a good baby… please don't throw up on me."
Just then, Damian stirs a little, and Tim pauses with his hand half in the air.
But instead of throwing up all over him like Tim had expected, Damian rubs his face deeper into Tim's chest, small baby hands holding onto his sweater tightly. The baby lets out a soft and happy exhale at the apparent approval of his new bed, before returning to his gentle snoring.
Tim stares up at the ceiling, unblinking, "Oh. Okay. That was kind of adorable."
He goes back to gently patting Damian on the back, not trusting himself to move anywhere else and risk waking the peaceful baby. Faintly, Tim hopes, for both their sake, that Damian doesn't remember much about being a babe when he turns back to normal.
That being said, there's a suspiciously familiar sound of a phone camera clicking somewhere beside him, and Tim sighs.
There's no escaping his fate now.