Archive of Our Own

The first time Damian considers it—that Timothy Drake just might have a death wish after all—he’s sitting at the breakfast table with Drake and Todd, silently watching the two of them co-exist in the kitchen. 

This alone, he knows, is a bit of a strange thing. They never talk about what happened between the two boys years ago, but they don’t have to—espionage is just one of the many fine-tuned skills that Damian possesses. Damian has pieced most of it together from his observations: the way Drake sometimes gets inexplicably short of breath when Todd enters a room unannounced, the way Todd sometimes can’t bring himself to meet Drake’s eyes. 

Which is why Damian can’t help but feel slightly puzzled by their relationship. After all, it's not like he and Drake have ever pretended to be anything close to friends, knowing the tangled knots in their history. But even more puzzling than Drake and Todd being friendly is Drake willfully antagonizing Todd. 

Today it’s about Father. Father’s arguments with the family always manifest themselves in different ways; certain times, they are more difficult to pick up on. When Grayson fights with Father, the two of them will have made up silently by the end of the day, long before Damian can be sure they ever fought at all. When Drake fights with Father, it’s all ice, the two of them dutifully ignoring each other with passive-aggression that makes Damian’s head spin. 

But when Todd fights with Father, it always becomes everyone else’s business. Unlike his brothers, Todd does not shy away from their family’s watchful eyes. Everyone was in the living room yesterday when Todd and Father had one of their spats. Damian hardly even remembers what the fight concerned, it was so trivial. Something within the usual territory: Todd was reckless, Father was harsh, and both were stubborn. 

Clearly, though, it’s not trivial enough for Todd to have gotten over it. He’s grumbling the entire time Drake cracks eggs into a pan on the stove, and he’s still grumbling by the time the eggs have congealed into a haphazard omelette. “This bullshit is why I moved out in the first place,” Todd complains. “I don’t communicate with him enough? I already spend half my time in this goddamn house, what more does he want from me?”

Drake shrugs. “He’s just worried about you.” 

“Yeah, and I’m worried I’m gonna end up on a very special fratricide episode on Dateline one of these days.” When Drake starts to open his mouth, Todd adds, “That was a joke.”

“Patricide,” Drake corrects casually, unfazed as he turns his omelette over on the pan. “Fratricide is what you tried to do to me.” 

Todd waves a hand. “Semantics, Timberly.” 

“I think you should apologize.”

Todd actually does stop at this. His entire face pinches, eyes crinkling in discomfort. His words come out with difficulty, like knives in a blender. “I already—Tim, you know I wasn’t—”

“Jesus. Not to me,” Drake clarifies with a scoff. He piles his finished omelette onto a plate. “I meant to Bruce, Jay.”

Any guilt in Todd’s face vaporizes on the spot. He barks out a laugh. “Apologize to Bruce? For what?”

“Being ungrateful,” says Drake without missing a beat.

“Excuse me?” Todd snaps. His eyes flash dangerously, his voice a low growl, and Damian thinks with a morbid flutter of excitement that Drake’s really crossed the line now. Damian was not expecting a bloodbath during breakfast, but he certainly wouldn’t mind the entertainment. 

Drake could still back down and escape unscathed. But instead, he holds Todd’s gaze, unflinching. “I don’t think you realize how lucky you are. He’s upset because he cares, Jay.” Jason’s mouth twists into a sneer as he gears up to argue, but then Drake adds, “Not everyone has parents who care that much, you know.” 

Those words yank the plug on Jason, his temper abruptly fizzling out into the silence. He doesn’t say anything for a few moments. Then he grumbles, “Whatever,” and swipes the omelette from Drake’s hands before leaving the kitchen. 

Drake doesn’t seem to mind having his breakfast stolen. He casually ambles over to the dining table and sits down across from Damian, like he didn’t just manage to defuse an inscrutable hair-trigger explosive, like this is just another Sunday morning for him. Damian can’t help but boggle at him a little while he nurses his coffee, prompting Drake to ask, “What?” 

“That wasn’t very wise.” Drake gives him a confused look, so Damian clarifies: “Testing Todd’s temper.”

Drake shrugs, dismissive. “I wasn’t testing anything. I know his limits. Sometimes he just needs a little push in the right direction.”

“A push,” Damian echoes incredulously. “Jason Todd needs a push. The Red Hood. The same one who tried to kill you a couple years ago.”

“You’ve also tried to kill me, to be fair.” 

“To be fair, it would not be wise for you to push me, either.”

Drake rolls his eyes. “It was a calculated risk. I’d rather risk him getting pissed at me than have him and Bruce at each other’s throats for the rest of the month. You know how long they can both hold a grudge.” 

Damian does. In the past, particularly bad spats between Todd and Father have resulted in month-long stalemates. During those stretches of time, both Todd and Father are positively insufferable to be around, unable to talk about anything but how disappointed (or in Todd’s case, royally fucking ticked) they are by the other. Damian would not mind avoiding that, if possible. 

Later that night, Todd asks Father if they can speak on the porch. Damian hides in his favorite surveillance spot under the staircase, a dark little nook that only he’s small enough to fit into, where he listens and waits for the fireworks to go off outside. 

But there are no fireworks, there is no yelling, there is no argument. Damian only hears the soft, muffled tenor of their voices passing back and forth. After a few minutes, there’s laughter from behind the door, and Damian leaves after he’s decided that the excitement has settled down for now. 

On his way up the stairs he encounters Drake, who’s wearing an irritatingly self-satisfied smile. Clearly Damian is not the only fly on the wall in this house. 

“See,” Drake says coyly, tapping a finger to his temple, “calculated risks.” 

#

So Drake gets lucky, and Todd doesn’t end up wringing his neck out this time. But, Damian begins to learn, it seems the reason Drake is able to play with fire so easily is because he doesn’t fear getting burned himself. For all his talk about calculations and fastidiousness, Drake is sloppy and careless with his own life. 

Damian has picked up on Drake’s poor habits in the past. Such as the time he went on a high-stakes mission with no backup and refused to use his panic button until he had lost about 30% of his blood volume behind an alleyway dumpster. Or the time he didn’t take his antibiotics and effectively mutated a common cold into an excruciating two-week bout of pneumonia. 

Damian had chalked those instances up to mere stupidity—a valid conjecture to make for a person as idiotic as Drake—but over the next few weeks, Damian observes Drake more closely. He notes that Drake is always the last person to go to sleep in the house, but somehow the first to rise. He begins to speculate Drake is sleeping only a couple hours every night, which then leads to him wondering if Drake is sleeping at all. Drake’s everyday diet consists almost exclusively of granola bars, black coffee, and on occasion, apple slices. The few times Damian sees him drink water, it’s a few sips accompanied by an aspirin. 

There is a pattern here, Damian realizes. All signs point to Drake having the worst survival instincts of anyone Damian has ever met. 

That is difficult for someone like Damian to comprehend, because Damian, conversely, has the finest survival instincts of anyone he has met. He was trained to survive no matter the circumstances, no matter the environment. Through hellfire, through snowstorms, through captivity, through apocalypses. 

This was the first real lesson he ever learned about the world. He learned it once upon a time when he was small, barely old enough to speak, and Ra’s placed two starving rats in an iron crate, having Damian watch while they fought. Damian still remembers the sounds they made, their screeches like nails scraping against metal. He remembers, also, the wet tearing sound of flesh as the victorious rat devoured the other one whole. When he tried to turn away, Ra’s wrapped a firm hand over the back of Damian’s neck and forced him to look straight into the carnage.

All organisms are united by the need to survive, Ra’s told him. We are no different from the rat. We must do whatever it takes to keep our bodies functioning. We are animals who operate on instinct. His eyes were obsidian-cold when he looked at Damian and asked, Do you understand? 

Damian understood—not just about the rats. For the first time his own existence made some sense to him. The endless hours of training, the colorless rooms, the tasteless food, the loveless home. Damian understood it all. He understood his biological needs, and he understood that joy was not one of them. 

You do not eat to enjoy the taste, Ra’s reminded him constantly. You eat to fuel yourself. To give yourself energy in a fight. You do not sleep at night to dream. You sleep to stay alert and sharp during the day. 

You are alive to kill. 

Damian knows with steely confidence now that he has the necessary skills and tools to survive in any conditions. Timothy Drake, on the other hand, is the first organism Damian has encountered who hardly seems capable of surviving in the conditions of himself. 

#

It starts like one of those insufferable riddles that Todd loves so much: Two Robins walk into patrol, and only one returns back to the Manor… 

It’s a peaceful, quiet night before then, albeit rather boring. Damian spends most of it curled up in the living room attempting to catch up on assignments while Brown and Todd play an obnoxiously loud game of chess. “Damian,” Brown calls after finally taking Todd’s king, “come play a round.”

Damian scowls from his textbook. “That seems highly unproductive.”

“It’s completely productive. Chess makes you smarter. That’s a fact of life.”

Not the way Brown plays it, though. Damian has been baited into playing with her before only to discover that Brown plays chess by her own set of rules, which is to say Brown plays with no rules at all. She moves her pieces wherever she wants on the board, steals back her own pieces after they’ve been taken, sometimes flips over the entire board if she’s tired of playing. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by partaking in such an inane activity. 

So Damian returns his attention to his textbook, and Todd and Brown return to their arguing over where Brown has hid his queen, and just as their shouting match is reaching new highs Father suddenly comes thundering down the stairs, grabbing his coat. Brown and Todd fall quiet when they see the frightened expression on Father’s face. 

“It’s Tim,” is all he says before rushing out the door. 

Drake is rushed immediately to the clinic, which is the first sign that it’s serious; most of the injuries they incur on duty can be treated at the Manor, so Drake must be in considerably poor shape. The second sign is that when Grayson finally steps back into the Manor with Father, his pallor is an unusual shade of gray-green that spells out a state of acute distress. When Father asks him for a report, Grayson catches Damian’s eye and quietly asks if they can go somewhere private. Grayson and Father duck into Father’s office, one of the few locations in the house that they know Damian is unable to spy on from outside, meaning they are deliberately trying to keep Damian away from the conversation. 

Peculiar, to say the least. 

Damian waits by the stairs until Grayson finally re-emerges from the room about fifteen minutes later. His eyes are red-rimmed, and he looks uncharacteristically downtrodden. “What happened to Drake?” Damian asks. 

Grayson startles a little at his voice, seeming to notice Damian for the first time since arriving at the cave. He gives Damian a small, scattered smile, a flimsy charade of his usual easygoing demeanor. 

“Hey, Dames,” Grayson greets. “Tim’s alright. He just broke his leg pretty badly tonight.” 

Damian isn’t interested in whether Timothy is alright; he’s far more concerned with how the patrol went, whether Drake’s injury has created any loose threads that Damian or the others will need to tie up now. “How did he break his leg?”

Grayson is quiet for a moment. “He fell off a roof,” he says shortly. 

Damian bites back a laugh at the mental image. He is almost disappointed he wasn’t there to see it. “How clumsy,” he clucks, trying to keep the amusement from his voice. “Didn’t he think to employ his line?”

Grayson looks far less amused. “He tried. It, uh—didn’t work.”

“Is that why you were talking to Father?”

“Exactly.” Grayson’s face relaxes just slightly. “Gotta make sure it doesn’t happen again.” 

“How did Drake manage a fall like that, anyway?”

“We were fighting. He got pushed, he lost his balance.”

Damian clicks his tongue against his teeth disapprovingly. “Doesn’t he know better than to engage in close combat that close to the edge of a roof?”

“It happened fast. They caught him off guard.”

“Still, he should have—”

“I’m going to make tea,” Grayson announces before Damian can push the topic any further. “Do you want any?” When Damian just scowls in reply, upset that he’s being ignored, Grayson chuckles, ruffles Damian’s hair, and repeats, “He’s going to be alright.”

Damian pushes Grayson off and irritably combs his hair back into place. As he watches Grayson put the kettle on the stove in the kitchen, he wonders when he ever gave off the impression that he cares about Timothy Drake being alright. 

#

When Drake returns home to the Manor, it’s with his leg in a clunky blue cast and his face pinched into a scowl. 

For the first few days, Father and Grayson hover around him like two pesky, persistent fruitflies. They needle him every ten minutes to make sure he’s comfortable, to ask if he needs more pain medication, if he wants them to bring him food or help him down the hallway to relieve himself. Drake bats them away every time, insisting wearily that he’s fine, but his insistence falls on deaf ears. 

It takes him snapping at them over lunch one day for them to finally leave him alone. “Jesus, I’m not geriatric,” Drake says after Grayson tries to pull out his chair for him at the table. “I don’t need you guys coddling me twenty-four hours a day.”

Damian has seen kicked puppies look less admonished than Grayson. “I’m not trying to coddle you, Timmers. I just want to make sure you’re comfortable.”

Drake scoffs darkly at this. “It would make me comfortable,” he growls, “if you and B gave me some goddamn space. I swear to god, you’re both going to suffocate me.”

Grayson looks like he wants to protest, but after a moment, he just presses his lips together, resigned. “Okay,” he says in a small voice. “Alright. Sorry.”

He lets himself out of the kitchen, and Drake turns his attention to belligerently pulling his own chair out without dropping his crutches. It takes him a full minute, and by the end of it he looks utterly spent, collapsing into the chair across from Damian and catching his breath. Damian stares, and he isn’t trying to look judgmental but he must anyway, because Drake turns a glaring eye on him and grits out, “What?” 

“Nothing.”

“Why are you giving me that look?”

“I am not giving you any particular kind of look. I am simply observing your temper tantrum.” 

“I’m not having a temper tantrum,” Drake hisses, which might be more convincing if he didn’t toss one of his crutches to the floor to make his point. He and Damian both watch it clatter to the tile in utter silence.

After a beat Damian says, amused, “You’re just going to have to pick that up now.” 

Drake drags a hand over his face and says, “What the fuck ever.” 

“You’re being ungrateful, and they’re only doing this because they care,” Damian says coolly. “I believe those were your words, Drake.”

Drake’s eyes cut over to him, and for a moment Damian is certain that it’s the beginning of a spectacular bloodbath. No matter; Drake is no match for him on an average day, and will be no challenge holding off while his leg is still broken in two places. 

But to his surprise, Drake backs down, the anger fizzling out just as quickly as it’d bubbled up. “I know,” he sighs. “I’m just… too tired to deal with all of it right now. I’m already getting cabin fever, and I still have to sit out for at least the next two months if I’m lucky. If I’d known I was going to end up with all this free time on my hands, I wouldn’t have fallen off the roof in the first place.” 

Damian squints. “What do you mean?”

Drake seems to catch himself. “I mean—I would’ve been more careful.”

That’s… not quite right, either. “Grayson said that your line malfunctioned.”

“I would’ve been more careful checking my equipment before I went out. That’s what I meant, okay? Jeez.” Drake rolls his eyes. “Nothing gets by you, huh?”

“I dislike discrepancies,” Damian says matter-of-factly. “Perhaps paying more attention to them will make you a more apt detective.” 

“Thanks for the tip,” Drake grumbles. He drapes his arm over his eyes. “At least once the week starts everyone will be out in the day. It’ll be nice to have nobody at the Manor during the week.” 

“I will be at the Manor during the week,” Damian points out. “For my lessons.” 

Drake stares. He and Damian seem to realize what this means at the same time. Drake has never been benched for this long, much less practically bedridden; usually, during the week, Drake will spend most of his time out and about like the others, only returning to the house on nights and weekends. 

But for the next few months, Drake will be glued to the Manor. And that means that, for however long it takes Drake to recover from his injury, he and Damian will be forced to cohabitate. 

“Oh, wonderful,” Drake mutters in a tone of voice that implies he does not, in fact, find this wonderful. “Lucky me.” 

#

For the first couple weeks of Drake’s recuperation, Damian and Drake avoid one another like the plague. They stay mostly in opposite regions of the Manor, they do not speak, and they pretend for the most part that the other does not exist. 

Unfortunately, Damian feels that he has gotten the short end of the stick in that regard; it is a lot more difficult to pretend that Drake does not exist when Drake is as loud as he is. His crutches thunk everywhere he goes. It takes him approximately five million years to get up and down the stairs or from room to room. 

Damian only willingly interacts with Drake once, when Drake drops a coffee pod on the kitchen floor and can’t bend down to reach it. In a rare display of mercy, Damian goes over and picks it up for him, more for his own sake than Drake’s, because otherwise he knows he’d have to listen to Drake’s crutches squeaking against the floor for the next ten minutes while Drake attempted to do it himself. 

“Thanks,” Drake says, although he doesn’t look very grateful. He holds his hand out for the coffee pod, but Damian doesn’t give it to him. 

“I’ll make your coffee,” Damian says. “You should be sitting down. You should not even be walking this much, at this stage.” 

“It’s fine,” Drake insists. “I’ll make the coffee, then I’ll sit.”

“You’re only going to aggravate your injury this way.” 

“Oh, that’s hilarious,” Drake says, in a tone of voice that implies he does not, in fact, find this hilarious. “Since when do you care about my pain?”

Blood rushes to Damian’s face. “I don’t,” he snaps. He throws the coffee pod at Drake before storming out of the kitchen. Drake can make his own coffee. As a matter of fact, Drake can do everything on his own, since he’s so insistent on it, for all Damian cares. 

“I do not understand him,” Damian tells Todd over a game of chess (proper chess, Not-Brown’s-style chess) after they’ve watched Drake laboriously climb up the stairs on his crutches. “He’s expending unnecessary time and energy by doing everything by himself. Does he not realize that he could get up the staircase twice as quickly with assistance?”

Todd snorts at this. “Yeah, well, that’s not the way Timberly rolls. He’s weird like that. Tries to do everything on his own.”

“Not unlike you,” Damian suggests, and Todd puts a hand over his heart like he’s been wounded. 

“You take that back,” Todd threatens. He takes Damian's bishop as revenge. “I’m nothing like that freak.” 

Damian arches a brow at him. “‘The Red Hood works alone,’” he says, parroting Todd’s own words back to him. 

“Jesus, I forgot we have a fucking tape recorder in this family,” Todd groans. “Look, it’s just—different. Obviously everyone in this family has an obnoxious hero complex that, honestly, we should all be seeking psychiatric help for, but with Tim it’s not just about that. It’s…”

“Pride,” Damian suggests as he moves his knight. But Todd shakes his head. 

“The opposite, I think,” he says shortly. Then, without elaborating, he points to the chess board. “Your move, demon.” 

Later, while passing through the hallway, Damian hears a pronounced Fuck! from beyond Drake’s door. It sounds urgent, wounded. 

Damian reminds himself coolly that it’s none of his business. If Drake wants to run himself into the ground over the next few months, that is his own choice. If Drake is curled up dying on the other side of the door, then it’ll be his own fault for pushing Damian away in the first place. 

But Damian considers what might happen next in that particular chain of events. Father and Grayson already looked agonized the night Drake broke his leg; if anything else happened to him now, they would fly off the handle, and that would be a tremendous headache for Damian to deal with. 

This, Damian tells himself firmly, is the only reason he opens the door. For the sake of his own peace, not because he’s worried about Timothy Drake. 

When he opens the door, Drake is alive, sitting up and holding a gaming console in hand. The way he’s sitting can only be described as unholy—his broken leg laid over the side of the chair, the other one pulled up to his chest. He hardly even acknowledges Damian when he walks in, too preoccupied with the game onscreen. Damian starts to wonder if Drake is even aware of his presence until Drake says suddenly, “Damian, you’re blocking the screen.” 

Damian clicks his tongue in irritation, but he steps aside. “I heard you shouting,” he says irritably. “I thought you were dying.” Hoped, he thinks snidely but does not say. 

“I am dying,” Drake groans. “I’m getting my ass kicked by these stupid online sweats.”

He may as well be speaking in tongues. Damian points. “Why are you sitting on the chair like that?” 

“I’m down a leg,” Drake reasons defensively. Then thinks. “And bisexual.” Damian is unsure how the two are related, but before he can ask, Drake holds the remote out to him. “Do you want in?”

Drake has never invited Damian to play video games with him before. He must be even more bored than Damian thought. 

Damian eyes the controller warily, like it’s a wild, rabies-infested animal. Drake makes the decision for him, dropping it into Damian’s lap before grabbing another controller off of his bed. Damian picks it up and experimentally brushes his finger over the clunky plastic buttons, peering over at the game on the TV. “What is this?”

“Smash.” At Damian’s vacant look, Tim boggles. “You’ve never played Super Smash Bros before?”

Damian clicks his tongue irritably. “I do not see video games as a productive use of time that could otherwise be spent improving on—”

“Pick your character,” Tim says, ignoring him. 

Vexed, Damian grudgingly turns his attention to the screen. He’s not sure what makes him stay—pity or morbid curiosity—but he humors Drake just this once, fumbling with the controller until his coin lands on the yellow dog named Isabelle. Tim grins and says, “Good choice.” 

“Can we play already?” Damian asks impatiently. 

Tim selects a stage for them. He’s generous enough to spend a few minutes giving Damian a tutorial on what all of the buttons do, but the moment that tutorial finishes, the fight ends rather quickly. Tim’s character kicks Isabelle off of the platform three times in rapid succession before the announcer calls it a game. 

Damian squints at the screen while Tim’s character does an infuriating victory lap. “I do not see the point of this game.”

“There’s no point, really. It’s just a fighting game.” 

“But you can simply fight me in real life.”

“Not to the death,” Tim points out. “Not with bombs and lasers and shit.”

Well. Damian does like the idea of fighting Drake to the death.

“Let me play one more round,” Damian says resolutely. “I was still learning the functions of my controller last time. This time I will be more formidable.” 

Drake laughs, and it takes this for Damian to realize that he hasn’t heard that sound in a long while. 

#

It becomes a strange, unspoken routine for the two of them. Whenever Damian passes by Drake’s room and hears the sound of the announcer’s voice inside, he lets himself inside without knocking on the door. He perches beside Drake’s bed and Drake wordlessly hands over a controller. 

It is a mindless, pointless activity, and Damian is certain that it is harmful for the development of his cerebral cortex: all those bright colors and loud noises, the flashing lights, the cartoonish sound effects. Drake insists that it’s good reflex training, but Damian suspects that’s just to help them both feel better about wasting hours on end mashing buttons and swearing at pixels. 

Drake shows Damian other games as well. Animal Crossing, which is apparently Isabelle the dog’s native franchise. Breath Of The Wild, Ace Attorney, Fire Emblem, Hollow Knight. Damian is amazed by how quickly a day can elapse when they have controllers in hand. Throughout all of these hours, there is a persistent voice in the back of his head hissing that this is a complete and utter waste of time, that this is a desecration of all the training Damian has ever received in his life. He is alive to kill, not to catch imaginary fish on an imaginary island for imaginary currency. 

But every time Damian works up the nerve to put down his controller and inform Drake that his games are stupid, thank you very much, Drake will crack a dumb joke or teach Damian a new maneuver, and Damian forgets that he’s an assassin and feels, instead, like a younger brother. 

It’s… an unexpected development. But more unexpected than anything is that it is not entirely an unwelcome one. Antagonizing Drake had been getting dull and unfulfilling for a while, and now Damian discovers that getting along with him is far more pleasant. 

And Drake, to his credit, is not bad company at all. He is thoughtful and theoretical, a good listener, relentlessly curious. Every bit as watchful and shrewd as Damian is. Two detectives walk into a room, Damian thinks, and observe one another closer than most people can. 

Drake is also amusingly hyperactive, which Damian assumes is only exacerbated by the excruciating amount of free time he has in his recovery. He takes on all sorts of odd hobbies, including but not limited to bird-watching, assembling and disassembling jigsaw puzzles, journaling, podcast-listening, taking photos with his needlessly intricate camera. And cooking—specifically, French omelettes. 

“I saw it on Food Network,” Drake explains while Damian is watching him by the kitchen island. “It looks easy, but it’s like, weirdly complicated.” 

“It’s only eggs,” Damian points out. “How complicated can it be?”

In reply, Drake holds the pan and spatula out to Damian. Damian, always prepared for a challenge, takes them. Drake pours in the egg mixture for him and Damian cooks it the way Drake instructs him to—butter, low heat, keeping the egg moving—but within minutes it’s already becoming clumpy. By the time Damian folds it, the underside is crusty and brown from being left on for too long. 

“About that complicated,” says Drake, grinning. He laughs at Damian’s surly expression. “Don’t worry. I haven’t gotten it right yet either. I’ve already messed up dozens of them.”

Damian frowns down at the pan. “But now somebody has to eat a subpar omelette.” 

“You wanna feed it to Jay?” 

Damian’s mood improves significantly. 

#

“I’ve got your dog,” Drake announces after he nearly busts down Damian’s door. 

That much is evident. Drake is leaning against his crutch with one arm, while the other arm is wrapped around Titus, who is wiggling to break free. Drake looks wild, his expression scattered and startled, his hair and clothes rumpled, like he’s just taken a tumble outdoors. 

“I can see that,” Damian says slowly. “Put him down, Drake, you’re causing him stress.” 

Drake looks more than grateful to oblige, settling Titus down on Damian’s bedroom floor, where he immediately starts digging in the carpet with his front paws. “He was trying to run away,” Drake explains, struggling for breath. “He ran out when I opened the front door.”

Damian arches an eyebrow. “He lets himself out sometimes. He likes to roam around outside.”

“He—” Drake frowns. He repeats, “I thought he was going to run away.”

“He knows better.”

“Or get attacked by coyotes.”

The very thought of Titus being trounced by a mere coyote makes Damian’s lips curl up into a sneer. “Unlikely. Titus is a trained attack dog. He can take care of—”

“Okay, got it, noted,” Tim huffs, exasperated. He sets Titus down on the carpet, then braces his own hand against the wall for support as he catches his breath. His breathing still hasn’t returned to normal, and his face looks waxy and pale. 

“Sit down, Drake,” Damian orders. “I will not be responsible for dragging your unconscious body out of my bedroom if you pass out.” 

“How thoughtful of you,” Tim mutters, in a tone of voice that implies he does not, in fact, think this is thoughtful. But he sits down on the edge of the bed anyway. Instantly some color returns to his face, and he exhales in relief as he takes the pressure off his leg. 

Titus strolls over to Tim, sniffing inquisitively at his hand. Tim watches Titus for a beat before cautiously running his fingers over his ears. 

“He’s soft,” Tim says, sounding surprised by this. 

“Did you not think he would be?”

“I don’t know. I guess not. He’s very…” Tim gestures vaguely with his other hand. “Sharp-looking. Like you.”

Damian wrinkles his nose, but doesn’t bother arguing. He watches in silence as Titus gratefully laps at Tim’s palm, tail wagging contentedly. It surprises Damian. Titus usually isn’t so forthcoming with his affection. He still growls whenever Todd enters a room. Just last week, he nearly tore Grayson’s fingers off for getting too close to his kibble bowl. 

“Would you like to give him a treat?” Damian asks. 

Tim looks up, wide-eyed. “Uh. Sure.”

Damian goes over to his dresser and returns with a container of soft biscuits. He presses one into Tim’s palm, and Tim carefully holds it out for Titus. Titus accepts it with one swipe of his long tongue. 

“Good boy,” Tim laughs, scratching behind Titus’s ears again. Then he casts a smile at Damian. “I always wanted a dog when I was younger. I got pretty lonely sometimes.” 

“Why didn’t you get one?”

“My parents wouldn’t let me. They said it was too high maintenance.” Tim shrugs, then chuffs out a laugh. “I get it. I was too high maintenance for them, most of the time.”

Damian frowns. “How so?”

“Y’know. Just, constantly needing to be fed, and driven places, taken to the doctor…” Tim hums idly as he runs a hand over Titus’s black coat. “They didn’t always have the time for it.”

“That is a normal level of maintenance for a human.”

“Well, that’s easy for you to say. You weren’t the one actually having to take after me. I’m not exactly the most convenient person to have around.” Tim considers for a moment. “Even less convenient, now.” 

“What do you mean?”

Tim seems to catch himself, pursing his lips before he can say anything else. When he finally speaks again, “I just… don’t blame them for not being around. They did the best they could.”

Damian isn’t sure this is true. Because Father does the best he can. Father gave him Titus, and helps take care of him without ever complaining about the level of maintenance. Father can sometimes be bothersome and pushy and he usually expects too much, but if there is one thing Damian can count on, it is that Father will be around. He picks up the phone on the first ring. He is constant and present as the sun rising. Damian thinks that this is what it means to do the best you can—to just be around—which Drake’s parents were most certainly not. 

But he doesn’t say any of this out loud. What he does say is, “Titus is very low maintenance.”

Drake smiles. “I believe you.” 

“So, if you wanted to have a dog when you were younger… we have a very good one, now.”

“Oh,” Drake says. Damian runs a hand over Titus’s furry back, and although he is not looking at Drake, the smile that spreads on his face is big enough for Damian to see from the corner of his eye. “Right.” 

#

As far back as Damian can remember, Drake has had off days. 

That’s how Grayson refers to them, anyway. On these days, Drake becomes cold and sullen and detached. He does not leave his room and Damian suspects he does not leave his bed, either, because the few sightings he gets of him throughout the day, Drake’s hair and clothes are rumpled as if he’s been lying down for extended periods of time. On these days Drake is a complete stranger, passing through the Manor like a ghost. 

A small part of Damian had foolishly believed that, with how common the good days have been over the last couple months, the off days had gone away for good. But they return with a vengeance, abrupt and intense. For nearly a week, Damian only sees Drake in rare glimpses throughout the house, either through a crack in his door or when he emerges hobbling from his bedroom hibernation to replace his mug of coffee with a fresh cup. He doesn’t turn on his Nintendo Switch, he doesn’t cook omelettes. 

He stops coming down for meals, and when Father has to take his dinner up to his bedroom, Damian hides in the hallway and watches. He listens to their voices, Drake’s barely audible, Father’s pinched tight with concern as he frets—You need to eat something, Tim and Have you drank any water today? and Can I open the blinds? Drake only mumbles singular, inaudible words in reply. 

Then, there’s a long, sprawling silence, and Father sighs. 

I thought you were doing better, Father says quietly. 

This time, when Drake responds, Damian is able to make it out: Can you close the door when you leave?

Father obliges him, and once the door is shut, he takes a few steps away before stopping in his tracks. Right there in the middle of the hallway, Father just stands and breathes and runs a hand over his worn face. Without looking backwards at Damian, he says, “Damian, it’s time for bed.” 

Damian creeps out of the shadows. “What’s wrong with Timothy?”

A shadow passes over Father’s face before he regains his composure. “Nothing,” he says. “He just isn’t feeling well right now, chum.” 

Damian thinks back to how strange Grayson was acting that first night they came back from patrol, when Drake had first broken his leg. Father is acting the same way now, cagey and on edge, and Damian does not like it one bit. He does not like when information is withheld from him, and he knows that he is not being given the full picture now. “You said that he is not getting better,” Damian pushes. “Is his leg not healing properly?” 

“He just needs more time to recover,” Father says vaguely. “All we can do is give him some time and space right now.” Father reaches out and squeezes Damian’s arm, but the gesture brings little comfort. “Let’s get to bed, alright?”

Damian tries to give Drake time and space, as Father suggested. But it’s upsetting to see him like this, like a corpse on his feet, refusing to see anyone. And—perhaps Damian has grown a bit too accustomed to spending time with Drake, because without him around, days feel longer, and less interesting. As the off days get increasingly frequent, the loneliness hardens into frustration and annoyance. Drake cannot spend eternity sleeping in his room, wasting the week away. 

Damian’s patience wears thin, and the next time Drake skips a meal, he decides that this has gone far enough. He goes to Drake’s bedroom and knocks furiously on the door. “Drake, I’m coming inside,” he announces, not giving Drake the chance to turn him away before he can let himself in. 

As he expected, Drake is sitting in bed, his injured leg propped up on a cushion. He has dark circles under his eyes, which Damian finds ironic, because Drake has done nothing but sleep for the past week and a half. Drake doesn’t even look angry that Damian barged in without asking; he doesn’t look like he has the energy to summon any anger if he wanted to. “What ‘s it,” Drake says flatly, his voice rough from neglect. 

“How long are you planning to rot away in here?” Damian demands. “You have not come down for a meal in over a week.”

“It’s not your business.” 

“It will be if we have to clean your corpse out of this room.” Damian notices the way Drake’s shirt hangs off of him, revealing a pronounced collarbone, a knobby elbow. “Are you attempting to starve yourself to death?”

Drake doesn’t even meet his eyes. “I don’t want to talk right now,” he says, low. 

“You realize that this is not just your problem, don't you?" Damian pushes. "Everyone in this family is acting differently. Your poor mood affects all of us, Drake.”

This is what finally gets a reaction from Drake: a single, hollowed-out laugh. “Are you kidding?” he demands. “Since when has anyone given a single shit about my mood? I was in a pretty shitty mood when you tried to kill me, and they still kept you around. If anyone cared about how I feel, you wouldn’t fucking be here.” 

The words whip into Damian, searing like a brand. He stumbles a little from the force of them, stunned. 

If this was a few months ago, this would be just another strike in the ongoing war between them. Damian would tear into Drake with a retort, and the two of them would lunge for each other’s throats until someone forcibly pulled them away. But this is now, and this is different, and it—stings. It stings everywhere, his heart and his lungs, until it reaches his eyes and two hot, wet droplets hit his cheeks. 

Drake seems as startled by the tears as Damian is, surprise crashing onto his face as the venom dissipates. “Oh,” Drake says, deflating. “Damian—”

Damian is already on his way out. He makes sure to close the door when he leaves.

#

The next time, it is Drake who comes to Damian’s bedroom door. 

“Damian?” Drake’s voice calls from the hallway. When Damian doesn’t respond, Drake asks, “Can I come in?”

Damian is sitting on the floor, holding Titus in his lap and scratching the dog’s back as he usually does when he’s feeling wrong. Dogs, Damian believes, have the magical quality of being able to absorb sadness through their coats. He makes no effort to get up to open the door, but he does deadpan, “What.” 

Drake, doltish as ever, takes this as an invitation to let himself in through the door. He shuts it behind him before sitting down in front of Damian. Damian pointedly turns toward the wall, refusing to look at him as he keeps petting Titus. 

“I made another shitty omelette,” Drake says, holding out a plate like a peace offering. “I think it’s getting a little closer to the real thing, at least, if you want to try for yourself.” 

Damian doesn’t respond. 

Drake sighs and sets the plate down. “Look, I’m… I’m sorry, Damian. I shouldn’t have said that to you earlier.”

“I thought…” Damian swallows. Titus licks his palm, and it feels like the only thing keeping Damian from losing his mind. “I thought that we were becoming friends.”

“We were,” Drake insists. “We are.”

“Then why did you speak that way to me?”

“Because I’m an asshole?” Drake’s lips quirk up in a wry smile, but Damian doesn’t return it, and Drake sobers again. “Because—I don’t know. Sometimes I say things I don’t mean. Sometimes my brain decides to be horrible for no reason and it’s like I have no control over it. And I feel like I’m just—watching myself on a screen, while I’m standing in another room.” Drake pauses. “I know that probably sounds crazy. I—”

“It doesn’t,” Damian tells him. He thinks of how many times he has looked down at his own hands, mired in blood, and felt like the hardened assassin who slit all those throats was a different person entirely, could not possibly be himself. Even now, when he remembers fighting with Drake, the memory is haunting, the ghost of a past life. 

He knows what it’s like to feel out of control in his own body. 

“My brain is often unkind as well,” he confesses to Drake. Then, because it occurs to him that there may never be a better time to say this, he adds, “I know that—I have been unkind to you, in the past, but I don’t… I still want to be friends. If you want that too.”

Drake’s face softens. He reaches up and puts a hand in Damian’s hair, and Damian does not shake him off. 

“Of course,” Drake says. “Of course, we’re friends.” 

And although Damian knew this, although there was no other explanation for how much time they have spent together over the last few months, it is another thing entirely to hear it out loud. Damian Wayne and Timothy Drake are friends. It feels like a miracle, like a rebirth, like a second chance. It feels like Damian’s taking his first breath. 

#

Even this, Damian finds, does not heal all wounds. The off days persist. They seem to get worse as Tim is weaned slowly off his stronger painkillers, and consequently becomes stormier and more irritable, the pain making his patience thin. He lashes out at everyone, is upset by everything. When he gets like this, Damian tries to remind himself what Drake said to him. That he doesn’t mean this. That it’s his brain getting loose again. 

Late one night, Titus wakes Damian to go to the bathroom. While Damian is letting him out, he catches a glimpse of Tim’s crumpled form lying on the couch downstairs. Tim has a blanket half-pulled over his injured leg, and he has his face buried in his hands, and he’s making these strange breathing noises, like he has something caught in his lungs. 

It takes Damian a few moments to identify the source of those noises: Tim is crying. Trying to be silent while he’s doing it. Horrifyingly, it is working far too well, well enough for Damian to suspect that Tim has been practicing this art for a long time. 

“Timothy?”

Tim’s breath catches. He lowers his hand from his face, scrubs at his eyes as they focus on Damian. “Oh,” he says quietly. “Uh, hey. Isn’t it late? What are you doing up?”

“I was taking Titus out,” Damian explains. He approaches the couch cautiously. He wants to offer some comfort, but he isn’t sure how; Grayson is much better at this sort of thing. “You’re not sleeping.”

“No,” Tim says around a dark laugh. “No, I’m not. I’ve been having a bit of trouble with it lately.” 

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Damian asks. “I can make tea…”

“No, it’s fine.” Tim pauses for a moment, and then something in his face shifts slightly. “Actually—there is one thing you could do, Dames.”

“What?” 

“You know where Alfred keeps all the medications?”

“Of course.” 

“Do you think you could get me some Ambien? But don’t tell Alfred it’s for me.”

Damian raises a brow. “Why not?”  

Tim lets out a wheezy, high laugh. “He and Bruce don’t let me take it,” he says. “Because my sleep schedule is usually so messed up, and they think it just makes it worse.”

Damian frowns. It’s not like Father and Pennyworth to deprive anyone in the family of medication, not without a good reason. “If Father and Pennyworth think it’s bad for you, then perhaps you shouldn’t be taking it.” 

“Trust me, my sleep schedule couldn’t get worse,” Tim insists. “It’s this stupid leg. I’ve barely slept since the break, and… I feel like it’s been making everything harder. Harder to focus, harder to stay awake…”

“Is that why you don’t leave your bed some days?” 

“Exactly.” Tim’s mouth quirks up at the corner. “I think it’d help a lot, Damian. Could you do that for me? Please?”

Damian thinks of Tim in bed, torpid, refusing to leave or eat or see anyone. He doesn’t want to see Tim like that again. 

“If it’ll help,” he says, and Tim’s face lights up.

And so Damian goes to the medbay. He asks Pennyworth for the pills, and when Pennyworth asks who and what for, Damian does what he has been trained to do all his life: he lies. It’s for him, he says, he’s been having bouts of insomnia lately, he’s only going to take one to fall asleep tonight. He returns to Drake later in the hour and delivers the pills to his bedroom. 

“You’re the best,” Tim tells him. 

And then, to Damian’s surprise, Tim suddenly wraps Damian in a crushing hug, ruffling his hair affectionately. Tim repeats, softer this time, “You’re the best, Dami. I’m really happy we’re brothers, okay?”

Damian is so caught off guard by the gesture that he doesn’t think about how uncharacteristic it is for Tim to be this physically affectionate. He doesn’t think about why Tim is telling him this now, with urgency, like it’s something that he needs Damian to know, like it’s the last chance Tim may ever get to tell him. 

Damian isn’t thinking about tomorrow. He is thinking only about how proud he is that he was able to do this one good thing for Tim, for his big brother. He hugs Tim back and says, “I am, too.” 

#

Damian is the first one awake in the Manor the next morning. The sun is still rising, and through the window the sky is a dreamlike gradient of pink and powder blue. Birds start to sing overhead, perched on power lines. 

Damian goes downstairs to the kitchen, where he turns on the stove and whisks three eggs. Low heat, butter, keep the eggs moving. To his delight, the eggs are actually behaving this morning, no clumps or tacky edges. He folds it over with a spatula and it holds its shape, fluffy and pale yellow, exactly the way it looked on TV. 

He can’t get it onto the plate fast enough. Tim will be sleeping, but Damian doesn’t think that he’ll mind being woken up for this. He can’t stop staring at it the whole way to Tim’s room, feeling very pleased with himself. He’s already imagining how excited Tim will be, too. 

Damian pushes the door open. “Timothy,” he starts giddily. 

Tim’s name dies in his throat, and the plate crashes to the ground. 

In the next few moments, Damian feels himself drift away from his body. It’s the same feeling Tim described before: that feeling like he is standing in another room, far away, watching himself on a grainy screen. None of this is real. None of this is actually happening to him. The world sucks in on itself like a vacuum and time distorts and stretches sideways and backward and everything is blurry, out of focus. Someone is screaming, someone is speaking, someone is saying Tim’s name, someone is saying his name, saying Damian, you need to let go, Damian, hey, look at me—

When Damian is aware of himself again, he has his fists clenched in the fabric of Tim’s shirt, although he has no recollection of even crossing the room. Damian’s eyes drift down to find Tim’s face, and—

And—

“Damian,” the voice says again, urgently. This time Damian recognizes it: Father. Then Father’s hands are around his, and he’s pulling Damian’s fingers back, forcing him to release Tim, but Damian doesn’t want to release Tim because Tim isn’t moving and there’s dried vomit on his mouth and he’s making these awful wheezing, drowning noises and his lips are blue and and and 

Father gets Damian’s hands free, and then he is scooping Tim into his arms and in the next moment both of them are gone and Damian tries to follow after them but there’s a strong grip around his arms. “Hey,” says Jason, “you need to breathe, kid. It’s alright, settle down.” 

Damian prickles with annoyance at this—how dare Jason tell him to settle down, like he is a child, like he is incapable of regulating his own emotions—but when he tries to tell Todd as much, he can’t gather up the oxygen to do it. Jason is right, he isn’t breathing—why isn’t he breathing? This has never happened before. Damian has never had trouble breathing. It’s a base instinct, it’s hardwired into him, it’s a biological reflex, it’s the easiest thing in the world, so why—why—

“There you go,” Jason murmurs. His tone is softer than Damian has ever heard it, the same tone Damian uses when he talks to Titus. “That’s it. You’re alright.”

It’s incredible how quickly oxygen makes Damian snap back into lucidity. Once the air is properly flowing to his lungs, his heart, his brain again, the world rushes back to him in vivid color. Tim’s bedroom is empty now, although Damian is certain that Father and the others were here moments ago. 

His omelette is lying in a wreck on the floor. 

Damian stammers out, “Is—is he… he looked—”

“They’re taking him to the emergency room right now,” Jason says. He’s combing his fingers through Damian’s hair, but Damian hardly feels it. “He’s alive. You found him fast enough, Dames, he’ll be alright.”

Damian barely allows himself to believe it. He’s seen Drake injured after patrols before, but he’s never seen Drake like that—cold and clammy to the touch, red-faced, completely limp. “What is wrong with him?” 

Jason’s face sobers. “He… took too many pills. It made him sick.” 

“Doesn’t he know the proper dosage?” Damian’s head is spinning, unable to make sense of any of this. He’s seen other family members take too much medication before by accident; usually they’ll act loopy, or get sleepy, or slur their speech a little. They don’t vomit and turn blue and stop responding to the outside world. In order to get that way Tim must have—“How many did he take?” Damian says, practically pleading. 

Jason sighs and doesn’t meet Damian’s eyes. “Let’s sit down for a minute, alright?” he suggests. 

#

Damian has picked up on Tim’s poor habits. All of the meals he skips, the days on end spent in bed, his refusal to let a single speck of sunlight into his room. Damian has always chalked it up to utter stupidity, an utter lack of survival instincts, but now he knows the truth. 

Now he knows that Tim simply does not want to be alive, sometimes. 

Later, after Jason has finished telling Damian this, he and Damian drive to the hospital together to regroup with the rest of the Bats. Tim’s condition has stabilized, they’re told, although when Father walks out of his room he doesn’t look relieved in the slightest. Damian cannot recall the last time he saw Father like this, his face fragile and brittle as glass, one crack away from shattering.

Jason leans down and says softly, “Why don’t you go in and see Timmers? I’ll hang out here.” 

Damian isn’t sure at first why Jason isn’t coming in too, but then he sees Jason walk over and put an arm around Father’s trembling shoulders. As the two of them exchange hushed words, Damian feels the familiar twinge of frustration and jealousy that he’s not being let in on another conversation—but then he catches a glimpse of Father’s watery face and decides that it’s alright for some things to stay between them. 

Inside the hospital room, Tim looks somehow worse than he did when Damian found him. Before, he looked wrong, a body malfunctioning, but now he looks like a body that’s ceased its functions entirely. His cheeks are sunken, his pallor waxy and pale. The only sign of life is the heart monitor beside him and the faint rasps of breath coming from the bed. 

Richard is sitting beside Tim with his face buried in his hands. When he looks up from them, he looks frighteningly gaunt. Damian has seen Richard come out of a twelve-hour bout with Fear Toxin and look less haunted. When Richard smiles, it’s paper-thin. “Hey, little bird.”

Damian sits down in the plastic chair next to Richard. It is hard and uncomfortable, but Damian is used to discomfort. “Is he going to be alright?” 

Richard places his hand over Damian’s and squeezes. Normally Damian would hiss and shake him off, but right now he doesn’t have the energy, or maybe just doesn’t want to. “He’s fine. They pumped all the bad stuff out of him, so he should be good to go back home in a day or two.” 

“I meant, is he going to get better?” Damian’s voice fractures as he finishes, “Is he going to—want to be alive?”

Richard’s eyes widen slightly in surprise, his lips parting. “I don’t know, Dami,” he says finally, truthfully. “We’re all going to try our best to get Tim what he needs, but. He’s been feeling pretty down for a while now.” 

Damian’s head spins with that knowledge. Every off day Timothy has had recontextualizes itself. Damian has always been aware of them, but he only started caring recently. Now, sick with guilt and dread, he wonders—“How long?”

Richard takes a breath, runs a hand through his hair. “God. I don’t know. I know he always struggled with it, but it got a lot worse when his parents passed. Maybe about a year and a half now, I guess.”

A year and a half. Damian wants to shrink until he’s a speck of dust on the hospital chair. A year and a half not knowing or caring what wars Tim was fighting alone in his head. 

“That night that Timothy fell…” Damian swallows. “His line did not malfunction, did it?”

He doesn’t say it like a question because he already knows the answer. 

Richard purses his lips. When he speaks, each word is carefully measured and meted out. “He… he did fall. He didn’t jump.”

Damian fills in the part that Richard doesn’t say: “But he didn’t try to save himself.” 

Richard just grimaces in response. “I was hoping you wouldn’t have to find out at all,” he admits sadly. “I hoped… he’d be better. That it was just a one-time thing. But that was stupid of me. I was so stupid. I should’ve…” He trails off and doesn’t finish that thought. 

It all makes sense now. Of course Tim didn’t slip up; he doesn’t slip up often. Damian hears Tim’s voice thrumming at the back of his skull, saying, Calculated risks. Of course—Tim calculates everything. He probably calculated the speed of the fall, the height, hoping it was just enough for what he wanted. Probably calculated the dosage of zolpidem tartrate in each Ambien pill, hoping it was enough to—to—

“I did this,” Damian realizes in a horrified whisper, pulling his knees to his chest. “This is my fault.” 

Richard’s brow knits together. “What?”

“He asked me for the pills. He told me that he was just having trouble sleeping, from the pain. I didn’t know he would try to…” A new thought rolls into Damian like a seasick wave. “He probably asked me because he thought I didn’t care whether I killed him, because I—tried, before—” 

Because it is all you know to do, whispers a voice from the shadows behind Damian’s skull. Because you are a killer, because you are alive to kill—

“No,” Richard protests. “Damian, no, of course not. Tim probably asked you because he trusts you. Because he knows you care about him enough to want to help him with his pain.”

“He shouldn’t trust me.” 

“Of course he does,” Richard says gently. Then, “He loves you, Dami.”

That word—love—comes to Damian like a bird with no place to land. It is a puzzle with no solution, a fight with no victor. Organisms have biological needs and love is not one of them. 

“He shouldn’t,” Damian repeats adamantly, his vision going blurry as his eyes start to burn. There is no logical reason why Timothy should care for him, after everything Damian has done to prove that he is undeserving of it. It defies the laws of nature. “That doesn’t make any sense.” 

Richard just wraps an arm around Damian’s shoulders and shrugs. “But he does, kiddo.”

This time Damian feels the tears welling in his eyes, and he turns toward Richard before they fall and lets them soak into the fabric of Richard’s jacket. As Richard holds him, Damian thinks, Oh. Perhaps this is the use of another person, to soak up your tears before they could fall, to cover your soft and vulnerable spots. Perhaps they were never meant to do any of this alone. 

#

Richard is right; Tim’s physical recovery is quick. But the rest of his recovery is not as straightforward. 

Even after he is well enough to be discharged from the hospital, Tim does not immediately return home. Per Father’s request, he spends the next week in the psychiatric ward. 

It is the longest, most excruciating week of Damian’s life—every moment of it is tense and unpleasant and full of dread. With Father and Tim absent and the lingering knowledge of what Tim tried to do, nobody acts like themselves, despite their pathetic attempts. The Manor is cold and eerily quiet. 

And, worst of all, everyone is treating Damian like he is an infant. They think he does not notice, but they all watch him in shifts; no matter what he does, he cannot shake his family off for even a second. As if he is in need of assistance or care. During these two weeks, they are all annoyingly, infuriatingly kind to him, and he hates it. He longs for Richard to crack his horrible jokes again, for Jason and Stephanie to get into shouting matches over inane Internet melodrama. He just wants normalcy. For things to go back to how they were. 

But he knows that, even when Tim returns, nothing will be the same. Things are going to be different for a while. 

Towards the end of this two week stretch, Stephanie finds Damian while he is playing video games in Tim’s room. He’d managed to escape his family for all of half an hour, but now Stephanie is back to take her shift on Damian Watch. “There you are,” she clucks, poking her head in. Damian resists the intense urge to roll his eyes. “God, I was looking all over for you.”

She lets herself in, shutting the door behind her before sitting next to Damian. Her eyes drift over to the TV. “Oh my god, I love this game,” she exclaims. “I used to beat Tim’s ass all the time back when—” She pauses, catching herself, then tosses Damian a breezy smile. “Let me play a round with you.”

Damian grudgingly passes her the other controller. Only a couple minutes into the game, it becomes overwhelmingly clear that Stephanie is not trying very hard; she keeps letting Damian’s character pummel hers, only defending and rarely attacking. Experimentally, Damian lets his fingers slow on his own controller, waiting for Stephanie to seize the opportunity to K.O. him. But her character just floats on the opposite side of the map, not daring to touch Damian. 

For some reason it’s this, after everything, that sets Damian off. He stands up, throws his controller down. “You aren’t even trying,” he accuses Stephanie. 

Stephanie blinks, startled by the outburst. She lowers her own controller into her lap, her blue eyes wide in surprise. “I was,” she said. “It’s just—been a while. I’m a little rusty, I guess.”

The lie does not convince Damian for a moment. If Stephanie was good enough to beat Tim at this game, she is certainly good enough to beat Damian now. “You’re letting me win,” he snaps. “I don’t need you to let me win. Timothy never let me win. If Timothy was here he wouldn’t—”

He stops before he says something he doesn’t mean, before he lets his brain do the unkind thing. Stephanie is looking at him with huge, glassy eyes, equal parts sadness and pity, and Damian can barely stomach it. 

“I don’t need you to keep me entertained,” Damian hisses instead. “I’m not going to break, so you can all stop treating me like it.”

“I know you won’t,” Stephanie reassures him. She offers him a small, lopsided smile. “We all know you’re a tough cookie, Dami. We just—want to make sure you’re okay. I know it must have been really scary, finding him when he—”

Damian cuts her off, partly because he doesn’t want her to finish that sentence, doesn’t want to relive it all over again. “I’m fine.” He says it with a snarl, hoping it’ll be enough to get her to finally back off. “I’m not Timothy. I’m not going to try to kill myself, if that’s what you’re all afraid of. I am not that stupid and weak—” 

“Damian.” Stephanie’s voice is a shock: sharp, steely, colder than he’s ever heard her. The smile is gone. “Stop it.” 

Damian stops. He watches, stunned, as Stephanie buries her face in her elbows and takes deep, ragged breaths, sounding far too close to sobs than Damian would like. 

He sits back down on the carpet beside her. It’s about as close to an apology as he can muster right now, but to his overwhelming gratitude, Stephanie accepts it anyway. He knows he’s forgiven when she taps a socked foot against his ankle, which she knows he hates and makes him wrinkle his nose in irritation, and she lets out a tiny laugh. 

“I just don’t understand it,” Damian confesses quietly. “How Timothy could want to die. It’s not—that is not how organisms are wired. The human body is designed to protect itself.”

Stephanie’s lips quirk up. “Well,” she says, “not everyone has your survival instincts, Dami.” She lets out a breath, then leans back against Tim’s bedframe. “I think he just… forgets sometimes. How good life can be. How there are plenty of reasons to keep going if you stop to remember them.” 

When Stephanie leaves and Damian’s finally allowed to be unsupervised for the night, he goes to his room and pulls out a notebook. He decides that if Tim cannot remember why it is important to stay alive, he will simply write them down to remind him. 

Damian starts jotting down the first things that come to mind: Sleeping. Eating. Fighting. The very first things he came into this world knowing to do. But once he’s looking at them on paper, he is underwhelmed by their significance. These words inspire no meaning to him. 

He thinks about the last few months, all the time that he and Timothy spent together. Damian had felt more alive then than he had in a very long time. It was not the act of surviving that made him feel that way; it was the act of living. 

Maybe there is a difference. 

And so Damian tears the page out, and on the next one he writes: Video games. Reality television shows. French omelettes. Other omelettes, when we have the time. Bothering Jason. Chess. Dogs. 

Brothers. 

He keeps writing until he runs out of space. He surprises himself by how easy it is for him to fill the page.  

#

When Timothy returns home, the first thing he does is ask Damian if he’d like to take Titus on a walk around the park. 

Tim’s leg has been out of the cast for a while, and the surgical scars are already beginning to fade. It looks nearly good as new, but Damian knows better now how looks can deceive. Tim still has to walk at about half a normal pace, stopping every few minutes to catch his breath or readjust his grip on his crutches. 

After a while of this, Damian notices that Tim is getting low on energy, so the two of them make their way to a bench. Damian tosses a pinecone for Titus to fetch to keep him entertained while Tim groans and complains and gently massages his leg. 

“I can’t believe I’m still dealing with this,” Tim gripes. “On top of everything. Like, pick a struggle.” 

Damian averts his gaze. “Yes, perhaps you could have picked a more convenient time to scare us all to death,” he mutters. 

Tim sits up at this, growing quiet. “I’m sorry, Damian,” he says. “I really want you to know how sorry I am.” 

Damian stares down at the ground. Titus bounds over, holding the pinecone in his mouth. Damian throws the pinecone again without a word. 

“It was really messed up,” Tim goes on, “I know it was. I just wasn’t thinking straight. And I know that’s not an excuse. It was manipulative, and awful, and I don’t want you to feel like you had any part in… what happened was my fault. My choice. So. I just want to make sure you know that.”

Damian’s head whips around in disbelief. He narrows his eyes dangerously. “You’re apologizing for having me bring you the pills?” he demands, incredulous. 

Tim blinks. “Yes?” 

“You—” Damian pauses to collect himself, feeling winded, like he’s had all the air knocked out of him. “You think that’s the worst thing you did, Timothy? Lie to me?” Before Tim can respond, Damian keeps going: “You should be apologizing for making me find you after you’d nearly choked on your own vomit. You should be apologizing for trying to—to take your own life.” 

Tim stares at him. He swallows. “I’m sorry that you had to find me like that,” he says carefully. 

Damian frowns as his temper simmers down. He misses the anger once it’s gone; without it he just feels cold, and empty, and miserable. “But you’re not sorry you did it?” 

“I’m…” Tim trails off, thinking. He lifts his thumb to his mouth and worries at his fingernail with his teeth. “I don’t know. It’s… I don’t want to lie to you about it, anymore. I’d been thinking about it for a long time now.”

“If we… if I have done anything to make you feel like…” Damian’s throat constricts, like his body is physically repelling the words. But he forces them out anyway, even though they ache in places he didn’t even know could ache. “Like—I would be better off without you around, I—”

“No,” Tim says in a rush, “no, no. Dami, none of this was because of you. It’s—it’s all me, alright, it’s all in my head.” He lets out a colorless laugh, more of a breath than anything. “That’s what they kept telling me at the psych, at least. It’s. It’s like a sickness, I guess.” He gestures at his temples, offering half a smile. “Bad brain, remember?”

“Stephanie told me that you have trouble remembering how to live sometimes.” 

“That’s one way of putting it, I guess.” Tim is biting his thumbnail so hard now that this time Damian thinks he’ll draw blood. He hands Tim the pinecone, to give him something else to do with his hands. Tim tosses it out to the grass. Together they watch Titus sprint after it, and Tim chuckles when Titus gets distracted by his own tail and ends up flopping over onto his back in the grass. 

“I realized that I do, too,” Damian confesses.

Tim glances over at him. “Yeah?”

“Or—perhaps I never really knew how. The way my grandfather and mother raised me was very different from how Father does now. I was taught how to free myself from a hundred types of knots and how to dislocate my limbs to make myself fit in small places and how to torture a man in forty-seven different ways. But I… was never taught any of the other things.”

“The other things?” Tim echoes, raising a brow. 

Damian reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out the folded-up piece of notebook paper. He hands it over to Tim, who reads it wordlessly. 

“Things like that,” Damian explains. “Good things, important things. The things you stay alive for. I made a list of them so you won’t forget.”

Tim’s eyes are the color of spring mist as they scan down the length of the page. “Oh,” he says softly. “Damian, that’s… this is.”

“I figured we could keep adding to them, together,” Damian finishes. “If you’d like.”

Tim smiles. “I think that’d be a really good idea.”

“Good.” Damian nods, then adds, “Because you don’t have many of those yourself.”

“God,” Tim laughs, “you’re such a little asshole,” but his tone of voice implies that he does not, in fact, think Damian is an asshole. 

Titus comes bounding back with the pinecone, but this time when he drops it at their feet, he jumps up and puts his paws on Tim’s shoulders and licks him right across the face. The bright, dawn-breaking sound of Tim’s laugh makes Damian believe that they can survive anything.