Work Text:
Duke was still mentally reviewing what he needed to put into his report from his patrol as his motorcycle smoothly drifted to a stop into the batcave from the tunnel entrance.
Placing it in park alongside the others, he glanced at the time stamp on his visor.
Just in time.
The bats chirped throughout the cave as he unbuckled his helmet and placed on his workbench in the cave, slightly dusty from disuse. He generally did his work at the Hatch or commandeered Tim’s just to be irritating.
Tim had once mentioned offhand during a stakeout that he wondered what it was like to have a normal younger sibling.
Duke had delighted in showing him since, though he was pretty sure Tim hadn’t really caught on with why his candy was always gone since Duke made sure to vacate the desk whenever he used his future sight to see when Tim would enter the cave and made sure to seed comments that he didn’t like sweet things when Tim was around.
He was on his seventh month now, and Duke wanted to see how long it took him. He might even leave him more overt clues it was him since he was pretty sure Tim suspected Jason or Cass.
But not today.
He was just heading out of the locker room when he saw a flash and intercepted a bottle from hitting his face.
“Hey Cass. You’re here early. Were you doing something earlier?”
The dark haired woman smirked, signing the batsign secret. “Damian was doing driving lessons with Bruce. He didn’t want anyone to know.”
Duke snorted. Damian had grown a lot since Duke had joined the Bats, but he was pretty sure Damian would prefer no one knowing he’d have to have supervised time behind the wheel for an American drivers license when he’d been proud about knowing how to drive pretty much any standard car since he was 10 years old, including the Batmobile.
“You’ll have to show me your hiding spot.” Duke spotted the rest of the Bats that had agreed to be here for the scheduled bi-yearly appointment as they entered the main section of the cave. “Later.”
He hung back with Cass as he watched his - (allies? Coworkers? Siblings was probably the most accurate term now, with him and his mom agreeing to a dual custody agreement a few months back after Bruce had asked repeatedly. Bruce had said it was for contingency reasons only, but Duke had wised up after the first time he saw Batman kneel down next to a young teenager who had by no fault of his own gotten involved in a drug deal gone wrong and talked the kid through a panic attack.
It had honestly taken him so long to agree due to various conversations he had with his mom and then to Izzy, with whom he had reached a serious point in their relationship, enough to possibly consider marriage, along with his own reservations on being tied permanently to the Wayne name instead of just being a past ward with all the ups and downs it entailed.
Still, if there was one positive to the entire thing, it gave him a defined relationship term to call the rest of the bats, though Bruce would always remain more of a mentor than anything else. It was a major part of his reasoning to spend more time with everyone for the past few months.)
These bi-annual meetings had been something that Duke had been involved in pretty much since the start of his training under the Batman, and they had been occurring since before Batman had taken on Dick as Robin.
When he had first heard of the reasons why, he had been reading the assigned notes that Batman had given him, and it pretty much answered all of his unasked questions and wonderings of why Gotham was so bad compared to the rest of the country, despite having so many vigilantes operating in it while also setting the tone for the rest of his training and mission operations in Gotham.
In that, Gotham was literally cursed. This was apparently something that happened pretty regularly elsewhere in the world, though most cursed places were more obvious, smaller in size, and much more temporarily cursed.
Gotham in comparison was cursed around the 1600’s and it had been estimated that it would remain in its cursed state for another 100 years. It was the primary reason why there were so many atrocities occurring in Gotham despite the Bats efforts and the Wayne family’s contribution towards the economy and culture reformation.
It wasn’t a completely hopeless situation, only a curse that made anything destructive significantly more difficult to permanently stop and much easier to accelerate, which is why it takes so long to reform any of their rogues or prevent trafficking of any kind from setting up shop in Gotham.
But this curse also made other curses and magic more prevalent in Gotham itself, leading to every person in the Batfamily coming to these meetings to get whatever curse had latched onto them in the past 6 months removed by Zatanna.
This generally happened from oldest to youngest, so Duke sat back and bantered with Steph about her class work and Cass about their self made game of scaring any rogues as the Birds of Prey came and left, along with Luke, Selina, and Azrael. By the time it was his turn, most of the Bats were just waiting for Damian to be done with Stephanie and Dick staying in to look over cases. Izzy had arrived earlier, and he had given her a hug and kiss before she took her turn and left. She was on dual duty tonight with Oracle, doing comms for the general Batfamily while Barbara took charge of a specific mission for the Justice League. Or course, Bruce was standing stoically over Zatanna’s shoulder each time she cast her detection and purifying spells.
When it was his turn, he walked into the circle she had drawn out when she had first arrived. Perfectly 3 feet in diameter, the edge was outlined with what Duke had learned to be Ancient Egyptian glyphs and Sumerian cuneiform script. Ideal for containment.
Zatanna raised her hands in a signal. “Laever eht sesruc nopu mih.”
Duke watched as the magic that formed from her words drifted out from the very particles of the air to spread out into a sheet of light to settle on his skin, before seeping in and disappearing in most areas except in two different areas; one on his hands and one on his - he peered through his skin to see the outline of his heart, illuminated by magic.
“Two. Better then last time for sure.” Zatanna said wryly.
“Anything was better then last time. It would have been a record if Bruce didn’t make it his mission to outdo everyone else in getting into trouble.”
Bruce grunted at that, probably not wanting to admit that to be true when it definitely was. “That was not my fault.”
Tim looked up from his tablet. “B, you managed to contract 17 curses the year Duke joined us, and you weren’t even Batman for a majority of it. Zatanna literally wasn’t sure how you were still alive. I’m not sure how that wasn’t your fault.”
Bruce ignored him, though Duke could see the ever so slight slump of defeat. He resolved to pat the man on the shoulder in solidarity once his curses were gone. He wasn’t sure how he managed to contract 14 curses that one time either. Though he had definitely been feeling it.
He watched as Zatanna did her literal magic to detach and disperse the curses into the air, returning to the neutral form that most magic was usually in; white motes of magic twinkling midair, before laying a general protection spell on him.
Duke was suddenly reminded of a question he'd been meaning to ask. “Hey, so is it possible to learn magic like this?”
Bruce stiffed out of the corner of his eye.
Zatanna smirked. “Yes, actually. Well, not specifically like this, but you can learn magic. Though surprisingly you’re the first to ask.”
“Wait, really?” Duke had expected a negative. With how much magic they ran across in Gotham, Duke had expected that Bruce would have wanted to introduce some basics of it instead of just giving the advice to “use logic or creativity as necessary” which was just incredibly helpful when you suddenly found yourself trapped in a cursed haunted building out to trap you with your own worse doubts and fears Bruce.
And suddenly he was finding out he could probably have done something about it.
“For what reason did you decide not to include that in training?” Duke looked curiously over at Bruce, noticing that the line of conversation had caught the attention of his other siblings, some of them giving more accusing stares then others. Duke was honestly just curious, because generally Bruce had pretty good reasons for why he did things, especially when it came to training them.
At least when he didn’t let his emotions get in the way of things. Which may have been a factor.
Bruce sat silently for a moment, which Duke recognized as him pausing to find the right words. “…there were multiple reasons at first. Gotham had much fewer magicians even a half decade ago then it does now, with maybe one incident a year if that of some artifact appearing or a magician coming up with a scheme that appears on our radar. I was connected with Zatanna at the time and the public mostly disbelieved that magic existed in the first place. With all of the training I have to put each of you through, I find it more prudent to sharpen your martial, strategic, and analytical skills when under my tutelage then others you might be talented in. You all know my opinions on magic.”
Zatanna elbowed him slightly in the side, smiling slightly. “What the big oaf isn’t mentioning is that he has no magical potential whatsoever. And once he found out you’d have to sacrifice something of yourself to learn if you have no potential, he was scared off pretty permanently from trying to learn anything.”
Bruce grunted discontentedly. “I was not scared off—“
“Wait, wait, clarifying question.” Steph waved frantically before gesturing to a stack of magical lock boxes that contained some of the various magic items - artifacts - that appeared in Gotham. After this meeting, Zatanna would be taking them with her to Shadowcrest, her hidden-in-a-pocket dimension magical mansion. “What about all the artifacts that random people can get their hands on and use? Even we can get caught up in spells if we handle them incorrectly. I may be one of the most inexperienced with magic here, but that doesn’t seem right.”
Dick cleared his throat from where he was leaning on the back of Tim’s chair. “There’s a difference between having the potential to wield magic and being able to use magical artifacts.”
“Yeah.” Jason spoke up, waving a part of a disassembled handgun over at the pile of boxes. “Those over there can be used by the everyday smook. Fighting actual sorcerers and dealing with the supernatural on the other hand -.”
He paused, looking over his shoulder for a moment at Damian, before turning back. “That’s a whole different ballgame for sure. You can get way over your head real fast. That’s why you leave that up to the professionals.”
Steph grimaced commiseration, nudging Jason from where he sat next to her. “You said it Jay.”
There was a brief moment of silence before Zatanna broke it. “Dick, what do you know about magic?”
Dick frowned thoughtfully. “Well, I actually asked Bruce before why we didn’t learn magic as another tool in our arsenal before when I first realized it was a thing. Besides Bruce saying he had no potential for magic, there was the fact that only about 1 million people on the planet had potential to use it. Which, in 8 - 9 billion people? That's 0.000125 percent of the population, if that. It had been rare during the beginning to even hear about someone using magic, much less to commit crimes with it. Now?”
Dick shrugged. “Maybe it’s the curse. Maybe something’s in the water. I have an idea what it could be, but ultimately the fact that we’ve had to fight 10 different criminal magicians in the last year is concerning. I would be certain that heroes becoming more mainstream and spread of information in the last few decades has been the main component of the sudden increase if not for the unpredictability of high level magic. But it does need to be acknowledged that the average person knows magic exists now.”
Damian scowled. “Of course. When faced with the idea of potential power, people can’t help themselves.”
Duke slightly disagreed. “Power is tempting, sure. But some of the things that occurred that we had to call in magical help for seemed to be out of control.”
Damian raised an eyebrow at Duke. “Fine. So they want power and or they’re incompetent. Like that’s much better.”
And well, Damian had a point about that.
“Honestly, you all have been lucky.” Zatanna cut in, before interrupting some disbelieving protests. “Yes, really, you have, because you had at least managed to get the spells or artifacts contained before I arrived. Most spells, curses, supernatural beings, etcetera you wouldn’t be able to do that for. At this point you’ve become a stop gap measure that isn’t going to be able to plug the dam anymore. I was going to talk to Bruce if Duke hadn’t spoken up about it because if Bruce didn’t change his mind on letting me actually mentor those of you who have the potential for magic, a whole lot of someone’s are going to die and it most likely won’t be you guys.”
Bruce let out a grunt at that and Duke grit his teeth but didn’t disagree. The others didn’t look much happier then Bruce. If there was anything that they hated, it was preventable civilian casualties. That Zatanna brought it up in the first place would have been insulting if not for two separate facts:
The first was that they implicitly trusted her competence.
The second being the Bats avoiding the complication that was magic, bringing with it the necessity of Zatanna needing to point it out in the first place. Magic tended to have a lot of hidden costs, and with their lives already being what they were, they tried to avoid it.
But they wouldn’t be trusted members and leaders of the hero community without listening to their experts.
The only reason Duke had decided to bring it up was that his fights against the supernatural had displayed data of the difficulty level ramping up to the point that he’ll need other options besides his abilities to deal with them. He currently was the main Bat being called in to deal with magic users and the supernatural in Gotham due to his skillset and while he didn’t mind, he was still underprepared. He had been lucky in those missions. That luck would run out eventually.
“What’s prevented that so far has been the kinds of opponents you’ve been facing. There are four main parts of magic that need to be understood in a person: their potential, their affinity, their power, and their capability. The power or their capability is the limiting factor right now; most of the people you’ve fought and will probably continue to fight have either little power, minor capability, or both.”
Duke could believe it, he’d had a few missions on what Justice League Dark dealt with and they were so far out of his league it became something he couldn’t bring himself to joke about with the other Bats.
“But you’re implying that we have the ability to learn the kind of skills to neutralize people with higher power and capability? What would that cost? Since, from what I know, none of us have the potential for producing magic?” Tim brought up, wary. His fingers tapped against his tablet methodically as Zatanna brought up information, but Duke could see the microscopic pause of hesitation after Tim asked his questions.
Tim was troubled. Duke shot him a side eye that made Tim stiffen slightly but nod.
Tim hated the fact that Duke was the one that had to deal with such supernatural missions - mainly alone - in Gotham and it wasn’t until recently that Cass had given him a heads up as to why.
For a family who so liked to dismiss the boundaries of others and psycho analyze them, they sure made a lot of assumptions. If Duke, Cass, and Steph hadn’t managed to manipulate the lot of them with Damian as a spearhead last year to attend therapy in some form or another Duke was sure it would have been a lot more difficult in getting an actual answer out of Tim when he had brought it up one night. The answer mainly boiled down to Tim’s inferiority complex in not being able to help Duke more and the fact that Duke worked alone - in field at least, he generally had Izzy as Flare for his eye in the sky.
Even Batman worked with a partner most nights.
But he was also the one that gave Duke the idea to ask Zatanna in the first place, as since Tim had brought up his and apparently quite a few others concerns Duke had been thinking about his options upon dealing with magic more often.
The Bats, for all their mastery of various martial arts, mainly dealt in corruption, on both the individual and systemic level, and the unsolved. Detective work and justice to sum it up. The physical need to beat someone up was mainly a required side effect. They were all on teams that tended to get involved with the extradimensional, extraterrestrial, and unexplained. They just typically didn’t face those types of threats head on.
Zatanna shot a look at Batman before looking back at them levelly. “Quite a few of you actually do have the potential for magic. Permanent costs would be involved if you didn’t. Potential and affinity tend to be hereditary.”
The cave exploded with noise and accusations hurled at Bruce, mostly by Jason, though he never needed a reason to start heckling Bruce. Most of them weren’t mad by the looks of it, just mainly surprised, which Bruce knew since he had raised them to be dramatic and took it. Tim was slightly upset as well as Dick, but it seemed to be at the fact that they hadn’t known at all. Which seeing as they both had multiple ties to the broader hero community and other magicians, that made sense.
Duke sat back to take in the fact that some of them had the ability to do magic. He was pretty sure he was one of those people, since he had several abilities that didn’t really intersect with his meta abilities. Like the way he was able to see magic. Not normal that one was.
It eventually took Cass bringing out the air horn to even cause a modicum of quiet.
She folded her arms and glared. “Bruce didn’t know. We didn’t need to know. We’re fine.”
Zatanna shrugged as several of them looked from Bruce to her in disbelief. “As I said before, Bruce asked me not to bring it up unless someone else did and because you weren’t dealing with anything life threatening, I agreed. Now, not all of you have potential. And before I bring up those that do, if any of you want to leave, go head. Now’s the time.”
Jason sighed gustily and slammed a hand down on his helmet and fixing it on his head. “Well, that’s my cue to leave and I’m out of here.”
“Tim,” Jason pointed. “Send me that evidence later. And Dick.”
He glared. Dick tilted his head and smiled in that way that said I did what you’re going to say I did but I’ll deny it till the day I die.
“Stop not restocking the medical kit in my apartment, I know it's you. A’ight, toodles.”
Zatanna waited until he left with a roar before turning to those that were left, nodding at Tim and Bruce, the two who were bringing out personalized tablets. “I do have files that I made for each of you regarding what I’m about to explain.” At their nods, she began, obvious in her cadence that this was something she had thought about more than once.
“Now I mentioned earlier that people have potential, affinity, power, and capability. Potential is hereditary and so is affinity.”
“Now those that have potential is Dick- “ Dick blinked and folded his arms, looking thoughtful.
“Stephanie.” Steph stood up straighter at her name.
“Duke.” Zatanna's eyes met his and he nodded. He wasn’t surprised.
“And Damian.” Damian tutted at his name, tense.
Tim was noticeably relieved that his name wasn’t called and Cass and Bruce didn’t react at all.
Those two were so self assured, it made Duke envious at times.
“Jason technically has potential too, but whatever he did after his death changed his affinity and tied it up in a way that can’t be undone without further cost.” Zatanna sent a calming look to Bruce, which seemed to help him ease up on the grip he had on the tablet.
“For the rest of you, most of your magical affinities are situational and even with whatever training I can set you up with, I don’t expect you to be able to join JLD. So don’t get crabby about that B.” She sent a knowing look at Batman, who grunted and nodded but still made a note on his tablet.
“Dick, I’ll start with you.” The man nodded. “Your affinity is thread magic. Any kind of thread magic, weaving, knots, anything that historically has been associated with thread, you can do. It’s not generally a magic you can use offensively, but as a Bat I wouldn’t be surprised if you came up with something. Thread magic is generally proactive. Protection spells, weather spells, banishment spells, with thread magic these are all something that needs to be created beforehand or in response to something. You have middling high power, but that goes up if you are directly influencing someone close to you. So any protection spells you weave for your family will be stronger than my own for yours.”
Duke could tell Dick was pleased by this.
“Now your capabilities are directly tied to your creativity. Symbolism is a powerful part of it, be the symbol personal or cultural. I’ll lend you a book about it and you can ask me questions after.” Dick nodded and caught the book she tossed at him, tucking it under his arm.
“Stephanie,” Steph perked up, a pocket notebook that Duke knew she carried everywhere at the ready. “Your affinity is tied to your Norse heritage. As capability directly influences what you can do with your magic, as it is itself influenced by your experiences and environment, you’re actually uniquely suited to the affinity magic you have. You’re going to have to be dedicated at a Norse temple, but in return would receive a blessing by a specific god. There are two that I believe you have the requirements for that I have connections to. It’s important that whatever god you decided to be blessed by also has attributes you value or else the blessing won’t take.”
Zatanna had grown grave then for a moment, but Stephanie nodded at her. “Understood.”
“Both of these gods required their blessed to be warriors; being a vigilante easily fits these requirements. The first would be Thor, who is the god of protection, storms and thunder, strength, and agricultural fertility. He would grant a more straightforward martial blessing than the second. The second would be Freyja, who is the goddess of love, beauty, child birth, war, and magic. Her blessing has a few more elements to it besides some martial magic like spell rituals, but it depends on the way you want to use magic- “
“Freyja. I’ll choose Freyja. She’s connected to - something I find important.” There was a hint of melancholy in Stephanie’s voice as she said this, and Zatanna seemed to understand as she nodded.
“Okay, I’ll get in touch with them and see if there is a time that they can host and train you. It’ll be a couple weeks at the least.”
Stephanie smiled and then elbowed Tim when he whispered something to her before stealing his tablet to look over the notes.
Zatanna turned to Duke. “You have the strongest solar and night/shadow affinity I’ve seen outside of literal gods and metaphysical beings, and I can only assume you have some divinity in your blood because of it. And while you have high power and your capability is also only linked to your creativity like Dick, you’re going to need a focus and it’s going to need to be permanent.”
Duke glanced over at Steph. “Then doesn’t Stephanie also need a focus?”
Zatanna shrugged. “Not really. It’s why she needs training. She’ll be able to create some rituals but that needs a specific area. She’ll also gain a spectral weapon of some sort which she can generate magic through. Dick can use any thread as a medium for magic, but adversely can only can use magic through thread. You’ll need a focus that you have created in tune to your own symbology or otherwise once you begin to learn magic, you’re going to start doing magic without meaning to which can have really ugly results. Remember, your own perceptions and expectation of what your magic can do are what limit you. Your creativity and belief of what can be tied to solar, night, and shadow magic expands the effects your magic can take.”
“So.” Drawing a book out of mid air, she tosses it to him. Components of Focuses and their Creation he reads. “Read that, and you’ll understand. It gives some background. I’m sure Bruce can help with the materials.”
Duke looked towards Bruce and the man nodded. Duke smiled. For all of the man’s many missteps, Bruce was always ready to help when asked.
“Now Damian.” Duke's younger brother stood straighter. “Your affinity is powerful and your power level is high, but your childhood has given it limitations, so let me explain. Your affinity is time but due to the Lazarus Pit, which has negation effects on magic, it’s made so that even with a focus you can maybe use your magic once, maybe twice a year for around five minutes. You also can’t go forward in time.”
“Which, I'm honestly grateful for. There are already many forces that interact and influence time, and another would not help the stability of the universe. I’m going to lend you a few books about time magic and then you’re going to construct a focus. Also if you get stuck in a time loop, please let me know.”
Zatanna suddenly twitched. “That’s really all I have to say and I would stay longer, but I just got an alert that someone malicious just showed up in our dimension and I really need to deal with that. Damian, do not leave. I have not cleared you yet and I do not need to find another Bat on the brink of death due to a curse. There’s a reason I do this every six months. I will come back later. Just text me if you have questions.”
And with that Zatanna and the stack of contained artifacts was gone. Bruce headed for the Batcomputer immediately after.
Taking his cue, the rest finished suiting up in silence, taking in what had just been revealed and thinking what plans would need to be made about them. Duke settled onto his desk to start his report.
“Well.” Steph clapped her hands to break the sudden onset of quiet, drawing eyes. “That was exciting. Anyways, Cass, I was thinking for patrol tonight that- “
“Batgirl. You do not have patrol tonight.” Batman growled out as he finished sending his notes to Oracle and began a quick check of his utility belt. “It is your biweekly break night with Nightwing. Don’t think I forgot.”
“But B!” Steph groaned before sighing. Duke snorted before groaning to himself. Steph definitely heard that. He wondered if he could extract himself before she decided to enact some kind of petty revenge.
Bruce ignored her and headed towards the Batmobile. Tim ran up to join him, giving Steph a shout and wave of smug apology. Cass flitted out with them in a move too quick to see with regular sight but that Duke caught all the same along with a personal good bye.
Duke felt as Damian sided up next to him. Duke drew ever so closer as he presented the book given to him. “Want to look this over with me?”
Damian watched as the Batmobile sped out of the cave before nodding. “Might as well. It wouldn’t do to waste time.”
Duke smiled as he was led upstairs. The report could wait. This would be interesting.