(no subject)
Fic: To Make Most of Time
DVD COMMENTARY
I worked so hard on this story for last, two? months that I have complicated head canons for the various characters and for why the characters act the way they do. At the beginning, because Damian talks in a way that is very similar to how I write (though I speak quite formally as well), it was easy enough to replicate his voice within fanfic, and Dick was harder (because I luffs him, but I'm not entirely certain I understand how his mind works specifically). Later on, I become more at ease with Dick's voice as I read other comics with him in it, I spend more time in Dick's voice as the story progresses. For now, and for most of Part 2 and even Part 3, the dominating voice is Damian's, which is fair, considering this is his story over anyone else.
Part 1
He had been ignominiously shot by some two-bit villain. He refused to let it kill him, but he could feel his blood pooling underneath his body, soaking his canary cape and turning it a strange orange. Grayson was pressing down on the wound, the cowl off and his blue eyes feverishly worried. Pennyworth had called Thompkins and she was on her way, but at the rate he was losing blood, she would not be in time.
His watch was keening, from its safe spot behind his ‘R’ insignia. He weakly gestured at it; Grayson shook his head. “Damian, don’t move.”
When I first started writing this fic, I thought, where would Damian keep his fob watch? And I thought: Behind his ‘R’ insignia! And then after I wrote this, I went back and read the comics, and saw how often he tore off said insignia. In my headcanon, he only does it when he feels particularly dramatic, so I’m not entirely sure how this works, but I like the concept of Damian keeping his watch so close to his heart, so I kept it in.
“Grayson-my watch-please, just get my watch,” he rasped. It was probably the ‘please’ that did it as Grayson kept his left hand on the towel pressed against his abdomen, pulling the side of the tunic down and pulling the watch out of its compartment.
“How did I not know about this?” Grayson asked quietly; Damian shook his head.
“Help me open it-no, don’t open it Grayson, help me open it.” Grayson looked mystified, and if Damian wasn’t feeling so dizzy from blood loss, he would feel the same, but his every instinct told him he needed to open the watch. Grayson carefully folded his left hand around the watch, using his thumb to press Damian’s thumb down onto the button that opened the clasp. Golden light streamed from it, soaking Damian in it completely. In Grayson’s grasp, his body began to shake, and he wailed in agony, arching his back up off the table.
“Damian!” Grayson turned him over onto his side, slipping some sort of strip between his teeth and holding his head up as Damian seized. “Alfred, help!”
Damian was insensible to Pennyworth coming to Grayson’s aid as he shuddered and bit into the strip, pain like he’d never known before wracking his body. After a few moments, it was over, and he collapsed in a heap on the operating table, still trembling and huffing out his breaths. Pennyworth let him go warily, and Grayson did the same, twisting his hands together. “Damian?”
It’s shown on the episode where the Doctor turns human to hide from the Family of Blood how much it hurts to have your DNA rewritten. Though DW never explicitly states it, I figure it hurts just as much to return to your Time Lord form. That’s where this passage came from.
He slowly maneuvered himself off of the table, grasping onto it to keep from falling. He was still bleeding, but he could feel regeneration coming, and he needed to be standing. Grayson took a step forward, but Damian held up a hand. “I need to stand,” he said quietly, and then it took over, more golden light erupting from his head and arms. He felt his skin change-his clothes became uncomfortably tight, his boots squishing his feet considerably. In just as a short a time, it was over, and he looked down again, at Grayson, whose mouth appeared to be on the ground, and at Pennyworth, who seemed just as surprised.
They never talk about the shoes on DW, but when you regenerate, everything changes, so your shoes would become quite uncomfortable, unless you happened to regenerate into the same shoe size. When your shoes are Damian’s Robin boots, well...let’s just say, when you regenerate, the FIRST thing you do is shuck off your shoes.
“Let’s see...” he muttered, looking at his fingers. They were long and corded-still a fighter’s hands, good. Two arms, two legs…He started to unknot his boot laces; he was still shaking slightly from the regeneration, and he fumbled with the knots before tugging on them and the knots became undone. He pulled on them, finally pulling his boots off. His feet were larger, still slender, and he sighed with relief once the boots and socks were off. He hadn’t liked to get his feet dirty before, but somehow, the feel of the bunker concrete was...soothing.
“...Damian?” he looked at Grayson, who was still just as agape. He noted he was closer to Grayson’s eyes than previously; he must have grown. “Oh my god,” Grayson said softly to Pennyworth. “He looks just like Bruce.”
It’s talked about in DW circles that the Tenth Doctor’s regeneration was meant to be the most attractive to Rose; I don’t know if Word of God confirmed it. Anyway, in this particular universe, my headcanon!Dick’s original idea of what was attraction was Bruce. Once he joined the Titans, it changed, but since he’s become Batman, he’s been thinking about Bruce a lot, and so Damian regenerated to look like Bruce to be attractive to Dick, though Damian isn’t quite aware of it, and won’t be aware of it for quite some time.
Damian stretched out the kinks in his back. “I’m fine, Pennyworth. You can call Dr. Thompkins and assure her her services are no longer required.”
“What are you talking about?” Grayson said furiously. “You were shot-you were dying! And now you’re...taller.”
I think the tallness is what gets Dick the most about the change for the moment. He kinda likes that Damian’s small enough that he can be picked up and toted about-though he’d never do it on fear of death-and now Damian’s bigger than that, and it throws him.
“Amazing observation,” Damian said dryly. “I need a mirror.”
“Seriously, Damian, what was that?” Grayson’s eyes were narrowed, and he blocked Damian’s path to the glass case that held Father’s spare cowl. “Is that something your mother gifted you with? If that kind of ability is within the League of Shadows, we need to know this.”
Damian looked at the watch on the operating table. “I highly doubt my mother knew about this. You said you didn’t know I had my watch. How? It threw off the lines of my Robin uniform.”
Grayson shrugged, still not moving from his way. “I never saw you with it. I didn’t even know you had a watch.”
“Strange,” he mused. “Grayson, get out of my way. I need to see what I look like.”
Slowly, Grayson moved, but as Damian moved past him, his leg jerked and he tripped slightly. Grayson grabbed him, holding him up as he-for lack of a better term-burped out golden energy. Grayson opened his mouth to say something, but Damian tugged his arm out of Grayson’s hold and strode to the glass, eyeing himself.
Let’s face it, the Doctor can seem quite uncouth when he’s getting over a regeneration.
“I have Drake’s hair-that will never do,” he groused, tugging on the longer strands. “I do look like Father, but...” His build is no longer as stocky and muscular as it used to be-it’s far more like Grayson’s slender acrobatic build now. His eyes were bluer than the slate grey they had been; his nose was still the same, and his mouth was roughly the same as well. His scars were gone. He tugged the remnants of the Robin tunic off and swiveled to look at his back in the glass. The long silvery scar that had marked him previously was also gone.
He didn’t know how he felt about that.
When I first started to write this, I didn’t think about the scars, but then, I realized that yes, regeneration means that Damian’s scars are gone. For people like Damian, Dick, Bruce + rest of the Batfam, they’re defined by their scars, of nights/cases that were successful, the ones that weren’t. If your scars are gone, does that mean your stories didn’t happen? (Like the tree falling in the woods). I might write a one-shot detailing Damian’s thoughts about this. I’m not quite sure yet.
When he looked around again, both Grayson and Pennyworth had come closer. Carefully, Grayson rested a hand on his bare shoulder. “Damian, what happened?”
“I’m fine,” he told him. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“That golden energy...”
“Regeneration,” Damian clarified. His body jerked again, and Grayson’s light touch turned into a hold, to keep him from falling as more golden energy expelled from between his lips. Damian slowly straightened again, and Grayson’s hands fell away. “I...regenerated. I’m a Time Lord-when we’re close to death, we regenerate; new body, same person.”
Grayson blinked once, twice. “Okay.”
“Part of my consciousness was sealed away in that fob watch,” Damian continued, quieter now as he worked through the details. There was too much he didn’t know. He instinctively knew that this was his second body, first regeneration. He was young, for a Time Lord, and there was something missing. Some sort of echo or playback that wasn’t there. In his head, it was silent. That bothered him. He didn’t like the idea of people going through his head, but there should have been some sort of awareness of...something, and there was nothing. “When I opened it, it released that part of my consciousness and rewrote my DNA into Time Lord DNA.”
In the US, we call it a pocket watch, but since we have canon proof that Damian thinks like a Brit at least some of the time, I think he’d call it a fob watch.
“I take it it hurt, Master Damian?” Pennyworth inquired.
Damian’s lips pressed together; they all took that to mean ‘yes.’ “I need to see my mother,” he added. “She should know about this, what this means.”
“I thought Talia said not to come back,” Grayson answered warily. “I’m not saying I’m not up for it, but I’d prefer not to have the League of Shadows invade Gotham.”
“I doubt that will occur,” Damian said confidently. His mind raced through the possibilities-his mother likely abandoned the London hideout after he brought Grayson there a few weeks ago, and if Drake’s intel was correct, she would be avoiding wherever Grandfather would be likely to be-she liked comfort, and she liked style. She could ‘rough it,’ but she needed a solid reason, so all of the out-of-the-way places were out. “Spain, or France.”
“What?”
“Keep up Grayson,” he snapped. “My mother is likely to be in Spain or France.”
“Sorry, kid, but I’m still stuck on keeping the League out of Gotham if we piss them off,” Grayson reiterated.
Damian sighed, almost wishing he could pinch the bridge of his nose. He’d never done it before, but he could start doing it now. “We will not be going as Batman and Robin. My mother will recognize that that makes it an unofficial visit, and to have the League invade Gotham in retaliation would be...unwise.”
“We will not be going as Batman and Robin,” Grayson repeated, his eyebrows scaling his forehead impressively. “How will that help, exactly?”
“My mother is already aware of your civilian identity, and to be frank, I cannot wear my current Robin uniform,” Damian gestured to the ruinously-stretched leggings, “as I am taller, and I refuse to wear Drake’s uniform until we order a new suit. Besides,” here he hesitated; he did not know if Grayson had heard all of his exchange with his mother before his mother showed him the new child gestating within the birthing matrix, “my mother does not like me to wear the Robin uniform around her. She will think I am changing my behavior to suit her, and it might make her feel smug enough to explain herself.”
Grayson’s shoulders slumped slightly. “All right, I guess I’m okay with that. So you think Talia’s in France or Spain? Where?”
“There are four respective locations for the League in Spain, and six in France, some dating back for centuries. My mother will want a population center, so that knocks four of the options out. She also likes history, so that’s another two. It leaves Valencia, Barcelona, Paris, and Avignon.” Damian frowned; this face liked to express more emotions than his previous one. “Avignon would appeal to her for a number of reasons, but so would Valencia.”
Avignon has a rather...notorious history. It was the seat of the papacy for roughly a century, give or take a few years, and it was kinda-sorta where the witch trials began (though the witch trials were codified in 1484, with the Malleus Maleficarum and Pope Innocent VIII). It’s not as big now, but I can see Avignon appealing to Talia on the basis of that history of being the seat of the Guelph/Ghibelline conflict.
“We can go to either,” Grayson pointed out, walking to the Batcomputer and plugging in the coordinates of both cities. “Are there any markers that would indicate Talia is there?”
“No,” Damian said flatly. “We’d have to search ourselves. That’s fine; I just want answers.”
“What makes you think Talia would have those answers?” Grayson pointed out, leaning against the console. He looked exhausted-Damian remembered that only twenty minutes ago, Grayson thought he was dying.
Grayson required rest. It was good that he could fly the Batplane; Grayson could sleep in the passenger section.
Damian shrugged in response. “Unless some sort of mind control existed to make her think I was her biological child, she has to have answers.”
“That’s the thing, Damian-in our world, mind control is a strong possibility,” Grayson replied, crossing his arms. “If that is the case, what next? Do you track down Ra’s al Ghul? Considering he’s likely to kill you on sight?”
Don’t make me watch you die, Damian heard. He pinched the bridge of his nose-oh, he liked that, he will definitely be doing this more often-and let his shoulders slump. “If Mother doesn’t know, then I will track down my grandfather, but I will be prepared. I will also go alone.”
Grayson’s eyes narrowed. “I am not letting you face down the Demon’s Head alone.”
“You let Drake,” Damian said restlessly.
I have this headcanon that Dick knew exactly where Tim was during that whole saga, and he wasn’t pleased, but he knew this was something Tim had to deal with on his own, and so he didn’t arrange a rescue mission. He had already let Ra’s know about his opinions of Ra’s’ attempt to convert Tim to his cause, but Tim had to realize his personal attempt to Ra’s for himself (even if it meant being creeped on by Ra’s. Run, Timmy, Ra’s wants your body in more ways than one!)
“There was no ‘let’. Tim did it on his own, and you know how I felt about that. Damian, maybe you should try to track down other Time Lords before Ra’s al Ghul. Maybe they’ll have the answers you seek, without putting yourself in danger.”
After he said that, Damian realized what the quiet in his head was, and he spoke without thinking. “There are no more Time Lords left. I am the last.”
--
Talia was in Valencia, as it happened. Damian had found her somehow by concentrating-honestly, Dick didn’t understand it at all, but he’d seen stranger, so he kept quiet.
Damian insisted on flying them (“Because I hardly trust my life to your subpar piloting skills, Grayson”), but after all this time, they’d managed a system of communication, and he was kind of glad to sleep for a bit on the flight over.
O HAI HEADCANON. Dick and Damian have this rapport that the rest of the Batfam can’t really crack, although Alfred Knows and Steph’s usually got a rough translation, because she and Damian have a similar rapport (but different). Bruce...doesn’t get how Damian thinks or expresses himself, because Damian couches it in those terms. Dick, who has the Power of Love on his side, and great patience (Dick rarely gets pissed at Damian in the comics. There are moments of frustration, but rarely does Dick yell at him. In Damian-land, that means a lot) gets him much more than anyone else.
Damian was wearing his clothes-his ‘prior’ clothing would have hardly fit-and though he grouched about it (like he grouches about everything), it was better than Damian wearing Tim’s castoffs.
He didn’t think he’d be getting that leather jacket back, though. Damian looked far too pleased with it.
He suspected Damian had deliberately flown more slowly than the Batplane was capable of (Gotham to Valencia could have been a far shorter flight, but when he awoke, he had that rested feeling that meant he’d hit at least six hours), but there wasn’t any time to ask, because as soon as Damian landed the plane, they had been beset upon by some of Talia’s henchmen.
Damian cares about Dick’s well-being, but he doesn’t express it in the normal ways Dick’s seen from the caped community. Instead, Damian hides it in gestures like this.
Apparently Mommy Dearest wasn’t too happy that her son had come looking for her, but just as Damian had hypothesized, she had taken the fact that her son wasn’t wearing the Robin uniform as a point to her.
Her face had displayed some shock when Damian announced their presence, and it was easy to empathize with-though Dick had suspected Damian would look more and more like Bruce as he grew, suddenly Damian was taller and looking like Mini-Bruce (albeit with longer hair that Damian swore he would cut at the next available opportunity). It was strange.
However, from the moment Damian opened his mouth, there was no disputing who he was. “Mother, I demand you tell me the truth. I was a human, but now I am a Time Lord, because part of my consciousness was sealed away in this.” He held up the fob watch. “Explain.”
Talia flicked her fingers at her henchmen; they bowed and left the room and she rose up from her throne and padded down to Damian and Dick. When she looked at Dick, her mouth twisted up, but she didn’t say anything about his presence this time. She looked back at Damian, taking the watch from him. “Damian, I’ve never seen this watch before.”
Damian looked thrown, before he pursed his lips and narrowed his brows. “Mother, you saw it at my eighth birthday party. You took it, and it sparked, so you handed it back to me.”
“It’s not sparking now,” Dick felt compelled to say, but mother and son ignored him.
Because it no longer has Damian’s Time Lord consciousness in it, you dummy.
“Damian, I have never seen this watch before.” Talia looked...intense. She wasn’t as displeased with Damian as she had been the last time they were in this situation; this was closer to what she looked like when Ra’s decided he wanted to take Damian’s body (and there was never a context in which that wouldn’t sound creepy). “I promise.”
I really, really loved Talia in Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul. I’d really like to know how Talia went from Protective!Mama!Bear to Manipulative!Viper!Mother in Batman vs. Robin. I’m exploring that in another fic-I just really love Talia’s character.
Damian took back the watch and pocketed it in Dick’s borrowed jeans. He eyed his mother from beneath his fringe of bangs. “Just out of curiosity, when did you decide it was time for my father to provide his DNA?”
Dick felt like plugging his ears and saying LA LA LA, but that would be unprofessional, so he glanced around the opulence in Talia’s audience chamber instead (honestly, with the level of sheer tackiness, it required the term ‘chamber’ instead of ‘room’).
Talia furrowed her brow, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “I know my father had informed me it was time. I wasn’t unwilling, but I had been hoping to go to Gotham to Bruce instead of luring him...After that night, we set up the birthing matrix.”
In my head, Talia can be really romantic when she’s in the mood for it.
“So it was my grandfather, not you?” Damian needled, and Dick eyed his partner. Damian was getting at something.
“Yes,” Talia said, raising her brows at Damian’s insistence. “But I would not recommend going to him. He is still displeased at Drake’s destruction of his computer network, and is not likely to show any sort of geniality to anyone related to him.”
“-tt-“ Damian snorted. “I’m hardly related to him.”
Was that pride sweeping over Talia’s features? Yes. Yes it was.
Talia doesn’t like Tim. She could’ve liked Tim, and then he promised to help her find Damian, and he didn’t. She knows that Damian was made safe by Bruce, but Damian might never have gotten into Ra’s clutches had Tim stopped to help her instead of going to White Ghost.
“Come, Grayson,” Damian demanded. “We need to be back in time to patrol tonight.” He swept out of the room, and Dick made to follow, before Talia stalled him.
“Grayson. I’m aware we haven’t...gotten along well in the past,” she started.
Dick snorted. “You think?”
Talia and Dick are totally the divorced parents fighting over custody of their only child. Just read Tomasi’s run on Nightwing. I nearly peed my pants laughing when Talia demanded Dick help her so she can protect her son. I have this essay idea discussing how Dick and Talia are set up as maternal influences to Damian, and how they are compared/contrasted. Just shows, you can take the girl out the university but you can’t take the women’s studies/English literature majors out of the girl.
She very clearly restrained from rolling her eyes. “But you should be aware...my father wishes for an al Ghul heir from Drake. My aunt....has been...commissioned to do so.”
Dick raked his hands through his hair. “What is the fuck is wrong with you people? Why can’t you reproduce the normal way, you know, consensually?”
When I wrote this, I hadn’t been made aware that the drugging of Bruce had been retconned. Now that I know, given how Bruce talks about it, so vaguely that it could be taken as dubious consent, that’s how Dick think about it.
Talia raised a brow. “I merely sought to bring the situation to your attention.” She started to walk back to her throne, before she turned and the look in her eyes was almost...saucy. “Besides, cat-and-mouse is much more interesting.”
Talia wouldn’t mind sleeping with Dick. He’s pretty, and enough of a reputation that he would be fun. But Dick would never, ever sleep with her, even before Damian, so she sighs and turns to others for entertainment.
Dick glared, but he turned and followed Damian. Tim needed to be warned as soon as possible. If Damian was difficult to deal with, a Mini-Tim with the same training was frightening.
--
Part 2 coming soon.
DVD COMMENTARY
I worked so hard on this story for last, two? months that I have complicated head canons for the various characters and for why the characters act the way they do. At the beginning, because Damian talks in a way that is very similar to how I write (though I speak quite formally as well), it was easy enough to replicate his voice within fanfic, and Dick was harder (because I luffs him, but I'm not entirely certain I understand how his mind works specifically). Later on, I become more at ease with Dick's voice as I read other comics with him in it, I spend more time in Dick's voice as the story progresses. For now, and for most of Part 2 and even Part 3, the dominating voice is Damian's, which is fair, considering this is his story over anyone else.
Part 1
He had been ignominiously shot by some two-bit villain. He refused to let it kill him, but he could feel his blood pooling underneath his body, soaking his canary cape and turning it a strange orange. Grayson was pressing down on the wound, the cowl off and his blue eyes feverishly worried. Pennyworth had called Thompkins and she was on her way, but at the rate he was losing blood, she would not be in time.
His watch was keening, from its safe spot behind his ‘R’ insignia. He weakly gestured at it; Grayson shook his head. “Damian, don’t move.”
When I first started writing this fic, I thought, where would Damian keep his fob watch? And I thought: Behind his ‘R’ insignia! And then after I wrote this, I went back and read the comics, and saw how often he tore off said insignia. In my headcanon, he only does it when he feels particularly dramatic, so I’m not entirely sure how this works, but I like the concept of Damian keeping his watch so close to his heart, so I kept it in.
“Grayson-my watch-please, just get my watch,” he rasped. It was probably the ‘please’ that did it as Grayson kept his left hand on the towel pressed against his abdomen, pulling the side of the tunic down and pulling the watch out of its compartment.
“How did I not know about this?” Grayson asked quietly; Damian shook his head.
“Help me open it-no, don’t open it Grayson, help me open it.” Grayson looked mystified, and if Damian wasn’t feeling so dizzy from blood loss, he would feel the same, but his every instinct told him he needed to open the watch. Grayson carefully folded his left hand around the watch, using his thumb to press Damian’s thumb down onto the button that opened the clasp. Golden light streamed from it, soaking Damian in it completely. In Grayson’s grasp, his body began to shake, and he wailed in agony, arching his back up off the table.
“Damian!” Grayson turned him over onto his side, slipping some sort of strip between his teeth and holding his head up as Damian seized. “Alfred, help!”
Damian was insensible to Pennyworth coming to Grayson’s aid as he shuddered and bit into the strip, pain like he’d never known before wracking his body. After a few moments, it was over, and he collapsed in a heap on the operating table, still trembling and huffing out his breaths. Pennyworth let him go warily, and Grayson did the same, twisting his hands together. “Damian?”
It’s shown on the episode where the Doctor turns human to hide from the Family of Blood how much it hurts to have your DNA rewritten. Though DW never explicitly states it, I figure it hurts just as much to return to your Time Lord form. That’s where this passage came from.
He slowly maneuvered himself off of the table, grasping onto it to keep from falling. He was still bleeding, but he could feel regeneration coming, and he needed to be standing. Grayson took a step forward, but Damian held up a hand. “I need to stand,” he said quietly, and then it took over, more golden light erupting from his head and arms. He felt his skin change-his clothes became uncomfortably tight, his boots squishing his feet considerably. In just as a short a time, it was over, and he looked down again, at Grayson, whose mouth appeared to be on the ground, and at Pennyworth, who seemed just as surprised.
They never talk about the shoes on DW, but when you regenerate, everything changes, so your shoes would become quite uncomfortable, unless you happened to regenerate into the same shoe size. When your shoes are Damian’s Robin boots, well...let’s just say, when you regenerate, the FIRST thing you do is shuck off your shoes.
“Let’s see...” he muttered, looking at his fingers. They were long and corded-still a fighter’s hands, good. Two arms, two legs…He started to unknot his boot laces; he was still shaking slightly from the regeneration, and he fumbled with the knots before tugging on them and the knots became undone. He pulled on them, finally pulling his boots off. His feet were larger, still slender, and he sighed with relief once the boots and socks were off. He hadn’t liked to get his feet dirty before, but somehow, the feel of the bunker concrete was...soothing.
“...Damian?” he looked at Grayson, who was still just as agape. He noted he was closer to Grayson’s eyes than previously; he must have grown. “Oh my god,” Grayson said softly to Pennyworth. “He looks just like Bruce.”
It’s talked about in DW circles that the Tenth Doctor’s regeneration was meant to be the most attractive to Rose; I don’t know if Word of God confirmed it. Anyway, in this particular universe, my headcanon!Dick’s original idea of what was attraction was Bruce. Once he joined the Titans, it changed, but since he’s become Batman, he’s been thinking about Bruce a lot, and so Damian regenerated to look like Bruce to be attractive to Dick, though Damian isn’t quite aware of it, and won’t be aware of it for quite some time.
Damian stretched out the kinks in his back. “I’m fine, Pennyworth. You can call Dr. Thompkins and assure her her services are no longer required.”
“What are you talking about?” Grayson said furiously. “You were shot-you were dying! And now you’re...taller.”
I think the tallness is what gets Dick the most about the change for the moment. He kinda likes that Damian’s small enough that he can be picked up and toted about-though he’d never do it on fear of death-and now Damian’s bigger than that, and it throws him.
“Amazing observation,” Damian said dryly. “I need a mirror.”
“Seriously, Damian, what was that?” Grayson’s eyes were narrowed, and he blocked Damian’s path to the glass case that held Father’s spare cowl. “Is that something your mother gifted you with? If that kind of ability is within the League of Shadows, we need to know this.”
Damian looked at the watch on the operating table. “I highly doubt my mother knew about this. You said you didn’t know I had my watch. How? It threw off the lines of my Robin uniform.”
Grayson shrugged, still not moving from his way. “I never saw you with it. I didn’t even know you had a watch.”
“Strange,” he mused. “Grayson, get out of my way. I need to see what I look like.”
Slowly, Grayson moved, but as Damian moved past him, his leg jerked and he tripped slightly. Grayson grabbed him, holding him up as he-for lack of a better term-burped out golden energy. Grayson opened his mouth to say something, but Damian tugged his arm out of Grayson’s hold and strode to the glass, eyeing himself.
Let’s face it, the Doctor can seem quite uncouth when he’s getting over a regeneration.
“I have Drake’s hair-that will never do,” he groused, tugging on the longer strands. “I do look like Father, but...” His build is no longer as stocky and muscular as it used to be-it’s far more like Grayson’s slender acrobatic build now. His eyes were bluer than the slate grey they had been; his nose was still the same, and his mouth was roughly the same as well. His scars were gone. He tugged the remnants of the Robin tunic off and swiveled to look at his back in the glass. The long silvery scar that had marked him previously was also gone.
He didn’t know how he felt about that.
When I first started to write this, I didn’t think about the scars, but then, I realized that yes, regeneration means that Damian’s scars are gone. For people like Damian, Dick, Bruce + rest of the Batfam, they’re defined by their scars, of nights/cases that were successful, the ones that weren’t. If your scars are gone, does that mean your stories didn’t happen? (Like the tree falling in the woods). I might write a one-shot detailing Damian’s thoughts about this. I’m not quite sure yet.
When he looked around again, both Grayson and Pennyworth had come closer. Carefully, Grayson rested a hand on his bare shoulder. “Damian, what happened?”
“I’m fine,” he told him. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“That golden energy...”
“Regeneration,” Damian clarified. His body jerked again, and Grayson’s light touch turned into a hold, to keep him from falling as more golden energy expelled from between his lips. Damian slowly straightened again, and Grayson’s hands fell away. “I...regenerated. I’m a Time Lord-when we’re close to death, we regenerate; new body, same person.”
Grayson blinked once, twice. “Okay.”
“Part of my consciousness was sealed away in that fob watch,” Damian continued, quieter now as he worked through the details. There was too much he didn’t know. He instinctively knew that this was his second body, first regeneration. He was young, for a Time Lord, and there was something missing. Some sort of echo or playback that wasn’t there. In his head, it was silent. That bothered him. He didn’t like the idea of people going through his head, but there should have been some sort of awareness of...something, and there was nothing. “When I opened it, it released that part of my consciousness and rewrote my DNA into Time Lord DNA.”
In the US, we call it a pocket watch, but since we have canon proof that Damian thinks like a Brit at least some of the time, I think he’d call it a fob watch.
“I take it it hurt, Master Damian?” Pennyworth inquired.
Damian’s lips pressed together; they all took that to mean ‘yes.’ “I need to see my mother,” he added. “She should know about this, what this means.”
“I thought Talia said not to come back,” Grayson answered warily. “I’m not saying I’m not up for it, but I’d prefer not to have the League of Shadows invade Gotham.”
“I doubt that will occur,” Damian said confidently. His mind raced through the possibilities-his mother likely abandoned the London hideout after he brought Grayson there a few weeks ago, and if Drake’s intel was correct, she would be avoiding wherever Grandfather would be likely to be-she liked comfort, and she liked style. She could ‘rough it,’ but she needed a solid reason, so all of the out-of-the-way places were out. “Spain, or France.”
“What?”
“Keep up Grayson,” he snapped. “My mother is likely to be in Spain or France.”
“Sorry, kid, but I’m still stuck on keeping the League out of Gotham if we piss them off,” Grayson reiterated.
Damian sighed, almost wishing he could pinch the bridge of his nose. He’d never done it before, but he could start doing it now. “We will not be going as Batman and Robin. My mother will recognize that that makes it an unofficial visit, and to have the League invade Gotham in retaliation would be...unwise.”
“We will not be going as Batman and Robin,” Grayson repeated, his eyebrows scaling his forehead impressively. “How will that help, exactly?”
“My mother is already aware of your civilian identity, and to be frank, I cannot wear my current Robin uniform,” Damian gestured to the ruinously-stretched leggings, “as I am taller, and I refuse to wear Drake’s uniform until we order a new suit. Besides,” here he hesitated; he did not know if Grayson had heard all of his exchange with his mother before his mother showed him the new child gestating within the birthing matrix, “my mother does not like me to wear the Robin uniform around her. She will think I am changing my behavior to suit her, and it might make her feel smug enough to explain herself.”
Grayson’s shoulders slumped slightly. “All right, I guess I’m okay with that. So you think Talia’s in France or Spain? Where?”
“There are four respective locations for the League in Spain, and six in France, some dating back for centuries. My mother will want a population center, so that knocks four of the options out. She also likes history, so that’s another two. It leaves Valencia, Barcelona, Paris, and Avignon.” Damian frowned; this face liked to express more emotions than his previous one. “Avignon would appeal to her for a number of reasons, but so would Valencia.”
Avignon has a rather...notorious history. It was the seat of the papacy for roughly a century, give or take a few years, and it was kinda-sorta where the witch trials began (though the witch trials were codified in 1484, with the Malleus Maleficarum and Pope Innocent VIII). It’s not as big now, but I can see Avignon appealing to Talia on the basis of that history of being the seat of the Guelph/Ghibelline conflict.
“We can go to either,” Grayson pointed out, walking to the Batcomputer and plugging in the coordinates of both cities. “Are there any markers that would indicate Talia is there?”
“No,” Damian said flatly. “We’d have to search ourselves. That’s fine; I just want answers.”
“What makes you think Talia would have those answers?” Grayson pointed out, leaning against the console. He looked exhausted-Damian remembered that only twenty minutes ago, Grayson thought he was dying.
Grayson required rest. It was good that he could fly the Batplane; Grayson could sleep in the passenger section.
Damian shrugged in response. “Unless some sort of mind control existed to make her think I was her biological child, she has to have answers.”
“That’s the thing, Damian-in our world, mind control is a strong possibility,” Grayson replied, crossing his arms. “If that is the case, what next? Do you track down Ra’s al Ghul? Considering he’s likely to kill you on sight?”
Don’t make me watch you die, Damian heard. He pinched the bridge of his nose-oh, he liked that, he will definitely be doing this more often-and let his shoulders slump. “If Mother doesn’t know, then I will track down my grandfather, but I will be prepared. I will also go alone.”
Grayson’s eyes narrowed. “I am not letting you face down the Demon’s Head alone.”
“You let Drake,” Damian said restlessly.
I have this headcanon that Dick knew exactly where Tim was during that whole saga, and he wasn’t pleased, but he knew this was something Tim had to deal with on his own, and so he didn’t arrange a rescue mission. He had already let Ra’s know about his opinions of Ra’s’ attempt to convert Tim to his cause, but Tim had to realize his personal attempt to Ra’s for himself (even if it meant being creeped on by Ra’s. Run, Timmy, Ra’s wants your body in more ways than one!)
“There was no ‘let’. Tim did it on his own, and you know how I felt about that. Damian, maybe you should try to track down other Time Lords before Ra’s al Ghul. Maybe they’ll have the answers you seek, without putting yourself in danger.”
After he said that, Damian realized what the quiet in his head was, and he spoke without thinking. “There are no more Time Lords left. I am the last.”
--
Talia was in Valencia, as it happened. Damian had found her somehow by concentrating-honestly, Dick didn’t understand it at all, but he’d seen stranger, so he kept quiet.
Damian insisted on flying them (“Because I hardly trust my life to your subpar piloting skills, Grayson”), but after all this time, they’d managed a system of communication, and he was kind of glad to sleep for a bit on the flight over.
O HAI HEADCANON. Dick and Damian have this rapport that the rest of the Batfam can’t really crack, although Alfred Knows and Steph’s usually got a rough translation, because she and Damian have a similar rapport (but different). Bruce...doesn’t get how Damian thinks or expresses himself, because Damian couches it in those terms. Dick, who has the Power of Love on his side, and great patience (Dick rarely gets pissed at Damian in the comics. There are moments of frustration, but rarely does Dick yell at him. In Damian-land, that means a lot) gets him much more than anyone else.
Damian was wearing his clothes-his ‘prior’ clothing would have hardly fit-and though he grouched about it (like he grouches about everything), it was better than Damian wearing Tim’s castoffs.
He didn’t think he’d be getting that leather jacket back, though. Damian looked far too pleased with it.
He suspected Damian had deliberately flown more slowly than the Batplane was capable of (Gotham to Valencia could have been a far shorter flight, but when he awoke, he had that rested feeling that meant he’d hit at least six hours), but there wasn’t any time to ask, because as soon as Damian landed the plane, they had been beset upon by some of Talia’s henchmen.
Damian cares about Dick’s well-being, but he doesn’t express it in the normal ways Dick’s seen from the caped community. Instead, Damian hides it in gestures like this.
Apparently Mommy Dearest wasn’t too happy that her son had come looking for her, but just as Damian had hypothesized, she had taken the fact that her son wasn’t wearing the Robin uniform as a point to her.
Her face had displayed some shock when Damian announced their presence, and it was easy to empathize with-though Dick had suspected Damian would look more and more like Bruce as he grew, suddenly Damian was taller and looking like Mini-Bruce (albeit with longer hair that Damian swore he would cut at the next available opportunity). It was strange.
However, from the moment Damian opened his mouth, there was no disputing who he was. “Mother, I demand you tell me the truth. I was a human, but now I am a Time Lord, because part of my consciousness was sealed away in this.” He held up the fob watch. “Explain.”
Talia flicked her fingers at her henchmen; they bowed and left the room and she rose up from her throne and padded down to Damian and Dick. When she looked at Dick, her mouth twisted up, but she didn’t say anything about his presence this time. She looked back at Damian, taking the watch from him. “Damian, I’ve never seen this watch before.”
Damian looked thrown, before he pursed his lips and narrowed his brows. “Mother, you saw it at my eighth birthday party. You took it, and it sparked, so you handed it back to me.”
“It’s not sparking now,” Dick felt compelled to say, but mother and son ignored him.
Because it no longer has Damian’s Time Lord consciousness in it, you dummy.
“Damian, I have never seen this watch before.” Talia looked...intense. She wasn’t as displeased with Damian as she had been the last time they were in this situation; this was closer to what she looked like when Ra’s decided he wanted to take Damian’s body (and there was never a context in which that wouldn’t sound creepy). “I promise.”
I really, really loved Talia in Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul. I’d really like to know how Talia went from Protective!Mama!Bear to Manipulative!Viper!Mother in Batman vs. Robin. I’m exploring that in another fic-I just really love Talia’s character.
Damian took back the watch and pocketed it in Dick’s borrowed jeans. He eyed his mother from beneath his fringe of bangs. “Just out of curiosity, when did you decide it was time for my father to provide his DNA?”
Dick felt like plugging his ears and saying LA LA LA, but that would be unprofessional, so he glanced around the opulence in Talia’s audience chamber instead (honestly, with the level of sheer tackiness, it required the term ‘chamber’ instead of ‘room’).
Talia furrowed her brow, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “I know my father had informed me it was time. I wasn’t unwilling, but I had been hoping to go to Gotham to Bruce instead of luring him...After that night, we set up the birthing matrix.”
In my head, Talia can be really romantic when she’s in the mood for it.
“So it was my grandfather, not you?” Damian needled, and Dick eyed his partner. Damian was getting at something.
“Yes,” Talia said, raising her brows at Damian’s insistence. “But I would not recommend going to him. He is still displeased at Drake’s destruction of his computer network, and is not likely to show any sort of geniality to anyone related to him.”
“-tt-“ Damian snorted. “I’m hardly related to him.”
Was that pride sweeping over Talia’s features? Yes. Yes it was.
Talia doesn’t like Tim. She could’ve liked Tim, and then he promised to help her find Damian, and he didn’t. She knows that Damian was made safe by Bruce, but Damian might never have gotten into Ra’s clutches had Tim stopped to help her instead of going to White Ghost.
“Come, Grayson,” Damian demanded. “We need to be back in time to patrol tonight.” He swept out of the room, and Dick made to follow, before Talia stalled him.
“Grayson. I’m aware we haven’t...gotten along well in the past,” she started.
Dick snorted. “You think?”
Talia and Dick are totally the divorced parents fighting over custody of their only child. Just read Tomasi’s run on Nightwing. I nearly peed my pants laughing when Talia demanded Dick help her so she can protect her son. I have this essay idea discussing how Dick and Talia are set up as maternal influences to Damian, and how they are compared/contrasted. Just shows, you can take the girl out the university but you can’t take the women’s studies/English literature majors out of the girl.
She very clearly restrained from rolling her eyes. “But you should be aware...my father wishes for an al Ghul heir from Drake. My aunt....has been...commissioned to do so.”
Dick raked his hands through his hair. “What is the fuck is wrong with you people? Why can’t you reproduce the normal way, you know, consensually?”
When I wrote this, I hadn’t been made aware that the drugging of Bruce had been retconned. Now that I know, given how Bruce talks about it, so vaguely that it could be taken as dubious consent, that’s how Dick think about it.
Talia raised a brow. “I merely sought to bring the situation to your attention.” She started to walk back to her throne, before she turned and the look in her eyes was almost...saucy. “Besides, cat-and-mouse is much more interesting.”
Talia wouldn’t mind sleeping with Dick. He’s pretty, and enough of a reputation that he would be fun. But Dick would never, ever sleep with her, even before Damian, so she sighs and turns to others for entertainment.
Dick glared, but he turned and followed Damian. Tim needed to be warned as soon as possible. If Damian was difficult to deal with, a Mini-Tim with the same training was frightening.
--
Part 2 coming soon.