Notes: When I sat down to write this I intended for it to be funny…and then it just wasn't because Damian has no childhood. Whoops?
"For chrissakes Di—Batman. He's ten. Encourage him to act like a child sometimes, would you?" Batgirl had all but yelled at him, arms thrown wide in disgust, and Dick can't even remember what sparked her comment. Apparently Steph had developed some vested interest in Damian's childhood, and that too happened somewhere outside of Dick's memory. Outside of his awareness. He'd been playing fine at being a father figure to Damian, all while managing to repeatedly forget that the boy is in fact a ten year old.
Standing amidst the toy aisles, he wished he'd asked Steph to come along and help him. Damian would find himself above all of this frivolity. Oh god, and Dick could just hear the disdain already. "This is going to be a disaster." He muttered to himself.
Toy cars? Why bother when he has the Batmobile.
Action figures? The kid is Robin. Enough said.
What do you buy for a kid who probably has no childhood left and doesn't even know how to be a kid if he did?
Dick found himself staring down a wall of stuffed animals. A wall of unseeing, unblinking eyes in plush faces. It was unnerving and perfect: a moderate creep factor and the added bonus of deniability for Damian about owning a toy. A stuffed animal, he figured, was a private kind of childhood joy; a passive, reliable companion in dark and lonely hours easily passed off as a trivial gift for the sake of saving face.
Of course Damian scoffed at the cat with its green glass eyes and mane of shaggy orange fur. He berated Dick, as expected, pointing out that he was superior to other children who felt the need for harmless playthings. But Dick could hear Steph's grin over the comm when he told her that Damian had taken the cat to his room in spite of his superiority complex. And later, he counted it no small victory to find Damian curled up asleep with the cat tucked under his arm, half hidden beneath the sheets.