A/N: Ok, so…I don't even know what this is. It is a strange mash-up of angst, fluff, and the desire to see all (most of) my babies grow up without dying—inspired by, believe it or not, the music of The Lion King. I don't even know. This will be a multichapter futurefic. And yes, it will eventually have a happy ending. Until then, angst abounds. This is my first attempt at real plot, not just fluff, so hopefully it works out. I own nothing. Please read and review.
his wings are clipped / and his feet are tied
-Maya Angelou
Grandfather has gifted him with, of all things, a bird. Neither of them, however, is fond of irony, and so the bird is not a robin. It is a peregrine falcon, the fastest member of the animal kingdom, and so the only bird fit to play pet to an al Ghul. Damian returns from one of his escorted wanderings of the grounds—a brief respite from the utter blankness of his quarters—and the bird is there, encaged and unhappy about it. There is no note, but Damian knows that Grandfather is responsible.
The first day after the falcon's appearance, Damian ignores the squawks and rustlings. It will not stay. Grandfather does not give without cost, and if Damian touches the bird something unfortunate is sure to befall both of them. Its cage is placed in the corner of his room, and it makes a terrible racket and Damian does not know how to shut it up.
For those first days, they coexist—reluctantly. The bird's rations are left with Damian's own each morning and night, and he receives more than a few nicks and cuts attempting to feed the ungrateful creature. He wears gloves after the third day. He never considers leaving the falcon to its own devices. It is a living, breathing creature, and he is its only means of survival for the moment.
He thinks sometimes, in bouts of brooding—because he is entitled to brood. He is Damian fucking Wayne, and brooding is practically a requirement of the teenage son of Bruce Wayne—that the falcon is the only living being whose company he is fit for now.
There is no judgment in the peregrine's dark eyes. There is no anything. The animal wants nothing from him but its sustenance, and that, in his current situation, is refreshing.
After a time, he begins to feel a certain kinship with the bird. Grandfather does not allow him outside his quarters and the compound—not while he's young and able-bodied and fresh from the teachings of one of Grandfather's most respected enemies. Damian, though no expert on the care of avian creatures, knows that the peregrine should not be kept in a cage he can circle with his arms. Ra's is not unintelligent, not unversed in the care of such creatures, and Damian knows he knows better. This captivity is wrong, and he rails at their guards in Arabic—until he notices one day that the bird's wings, elegant machinations of feathers and bone, do not paint the clean lines they are supposed to.
Grandfather has had its wings clipped.
If Damian was angry before, he is furious now. The presence of the falcon is not a gift, not meant as company for a lonely, captive boy. It is a show of dominance. Ra's holds the power in their newly reformed relationship. Damian is merely a houseguest, an unwilling pupil, and they both know this. The bird is unnecessary, but Grandfather would see the poetry in their similar situations, his and the bird's.
It is beautiful in a terrible way, the complete symmetry of their powerlessness.
He and the bird are stuck with each other. Robin and the captive falcon. It sounds like the title of one of those ridiculous children's books Richard used to read him years and years ago, when he was young (younger) and jaded and innocent still.
He names the bird Aladdin—because it means faithful, and not because of the niggling memory of garish music and bright colors on a screen and the laughter of men he once called his brothers.
If they are to be imprisoned together for the foreseeable future they might as well be—well, not friends. There are no friends here. But allies, at least.
They find peace with each other, and Aladdin only snaps at him when Damian takes too long moving the bird's food from the tray to his cage.
Damian's discovery of the bird's mistreatment and consequent fury results in thick silence. And disobedience. Ra's had been in the habit of sending him books, research, lessons—because their truce, at this point, is too fragile and too completely fucked up to allow Damian anywhere close to a sword. Damian would complete the provided work in the allotted time, and new tomes would arrive.
For the first time since his arrival at his former home, Damian sends the work back incomplete.
Grandfather's displeasure, like Damian's anger, bears the familiar weight of silence.
For two weeks, Damian eats, sleeps, and cares for Aladdin. Unused to inactivity, he eases his body through the kata Mother taught him long ago each morning and night, fists empty where his swords should rest. For two weeks, Damian holds on to what defiance he can find and Ra's looks the other way.
On the fifteenth day since the full understanding of his grandfather's gift, he is summoned.
The journey to his grandfather's study is silent, his entrance even more so. Nothing has changed in the long years of his absence. Each and every object in the room has a purpose, and while Grandfather does enjoy the finest quality in all things, no excess will be tolerated. There is no softness in the room, just as there is none in the man who sired his mother.
"Sit, Ibn al Xu'ffasch." They are alone now. After all, discipline is a family matter.
Damian sits. He meets the green eyes that never quite lose the shadow of pit-madness. Ra's studies him from across the desk, long fingers steepled. There are deep lines around his eyes—crevices, really—that show his vast age despite the newness of this body. The lines are not attractive, not like (stop it, stop it) Grayson's laugh lines are, and Damian thinks that his grandfather looks both hard as stone and thin as paper all at once.
Damian raises his eyebrows at the scrutinizing glance and allows his gaze to rove the room. Ra's continues to stare, so Damian shrugs.
"You have not changed the décor at all, Grandfather," he says, gesturing to the pair of ornately forged and styled scimitars crossed on the wall. "Does the same ornamentation not grow tedious after the first few centuries? Truly, I would not have minded if you had converted my quarters—as the Americans say—into a gym."
Ra's frowns. "Do not be coy, Damian. It is ill-fitting to an al Ghul."
Damian smirks, leaning forward, and his eyes harden.
"You forget, I think," he says softly, "that I am not an al Ghul. I am my father's son, and no amount of pretending on your part will change that." He sits back, carefully careless. "I forgive your forgetfulness, Grandfather. It is expected in one of your advanced years."
The murky, poisonous green churns in his grandfather's eyes. "The years amongst the lesser have turned your tongue crass and disrespectful. You will not speak to me so again."
Damian bristles but subsides, slouching in a way he knows Grandfather hates.
"I summoned you because of the dissatisfactory nature of your recent work," Ra's says pointedly. "Specifically, it was not completed."
"I am aware."
"I see. Would you care to explain?"
Damian nods slowly. "I came here, Grandfather, at your request, as your heir. I…realized the inevitability of accepting my inheritance, at your urging. I agreed to fill the vacancy my mother left at your side. I did not, however, agree to the position of desk clerk."
One gray-black eyebrow arches. "As my heir, you are required to fulfill certain duties. You must learn, Damian, and I have much to teach you. How am I to do this if you refuse my lessons?"
"Oh, I think your teachings come across quite clearly," Damian hisses. In his mind, sunlight shades gleaming feathers through the bars of a cage.
Ra's does not smile, but there is something pleased in his expression just the same. "The peregrine is my gift to you, a welcome home of sorts. And a reminder," he murmurs.
Damian rises abruptly. The room is large but sparsely furnished, and he crosses to the one open window. The window in his own room is tiny—too small for him to wriggle through—and now is the first real glimpse of the sky, of the outside world, that he's had in weeks.
It is another small, sharp cruelty, to not be able to see the sky. He has no means to mark the day's passing, and each minute stretches beyond what it should.
It's nearing sunset now, and the breath of moving air is cool on his cheeks, but it is not enough. They are high enough that he can see the sea over the walls of the compound, vast and beautiful and another barrier that keeps him from home.
He wants, for a moment, to jump. It would be over quickly, nearly painless, and the fall would be glorious—almost like flying again.
He doesn't, although he could, because Grandfather would be angry, and Grandfather's anger often manifests itself in violence—against his home and his father's chosen sons.
There have been enough threats leveled at his brothers to last a lifetime. The end of his life will not ensure their safety—only his obedience can do that.
"I need no reminders."
"It seems you do," Ra's intones, still watching him. "Your jaunt with the…vigilantes…may have resulted in other undesirable habits—insubordination notwithstanding. The Detective's influence is not what I had hoped it to be."
Anger spikes in Damian's chest, but he tamps it down.
"My father's influence is not the only I am under. You compelled me here, and now you complain of my performance. Did you think I would be overjoyed to return? I do not understand."
Ra's stands, joins him at the window. "I do not expect you to be overjoyed, child. But you will treat me as courtesy and my authority demand, and you will do as I ask."
A cold, slim-fingered hand settles on his shoulder.
"If you do not, I will be displeased. And my displeasure will extend to the riff raff the Detective saw fit to raise with you. Do we understand each other?"
Damian does not turn his head, but nods. The fear is a tight fist around his throat, and he both loathes and clings to it with dizzying tenacity. It is the last tie to a broken family half a world away.
"Good." The hand retreats. Rustling indicates Ra's has resumed his seat. "Tomorrow I will send for you, and we will begin grooming you for leadership in the League. You have grown soft under that circus child's watch, and I will not have a soft heir. The training regimen I have devised is difficult, but not impossible."
Ra's pauses. "I want you to succeed, Damian. You are our future."
He feels the eyes boring into his back, straightens his shoulders. His eyes are fixed on the horizon when he answers.
"I understand, Grandfather."
Silence stretches after his affirmation, and his fingernails dig painfully into the windowsill, just out of Grandfather's sight.
"You are dismissed."
Damian glides to the door, numb.
"Do not disappoint me, Damian," Ra's says calmly, before Damian can slip out.
He nods, and the door slams shut behind him.
In the hall, one of the guards attempts to take his elbow. He shrugs away from the grip, and they continue on to his cell once more.
It is a grim place, his childhood home. He did not notice so much before, but after years of exposure to Richard's brightness and the vivacity of their small, patchwork family it seems much quieter.
There are men. There are always men willing and able to kill for compensation. His grandfather simply offers those men the belief that their killing is for the greater good,to assuage what little conscience they have. But men trained in the art of killing are not inclined to great amounts of noise. The silence leaves him with too much room for thought, and he does not like the paths his mind wants to travel.
His mother was not particularly noisy, but she spoke to him. She was both part and apart from the League and from him. Aloof, and the best of them. Talia is gone now, too. He does not mourn her. She held no true semblance of love for him in life, and he doubts much that death is very different.
Damian is the al Ghul legacy. The Wayne legacy has somehow escaped him, a cruel twist of fate. He is not overly concerned, although it hurts a bit. His father's name will not fall to ruin in his absence.
His brothers will make sure of that.
There is no room for failure. He cannot fail.
They arrive at his chamber, and he slips inside without fuss. Dinner is waiting on the nightstand, and the last of the dying sun spills in through the miniscule window, painting the whole room in a bloody light.
It is too quiet. When he moves to Aladdin's cage, he finds that he is not surprised.
The falcon's neck lies at an impossible angle, its damaged wings spread in an imitation of flight.
Beautiful and terrible, brutal and ugly and wasteful. That is the way of Ra's al Ghul.
Damian reaches a scarred hand through the bars of the cage, fingering the bird's feathers as he had never been allowed to during the creature's life. His face is wet for the first (the only) time since he was brought here. He will not allow it again.
Grandfather has left him one last reminder, it seems.
Do not disappoint me, Damian.
He won't. He can't afford to.