I've had this concept for a while, but I only just finished it. I'm not deaf, so some information presented here might not be quite right. I hope everyone enjoys this!
Damian had never known anything different. To him the neverending silence was common. Expected. Not a disadvantage. Just part of him. And for most of his life, he'd never even understood that noise existed. Even now, he couldn't imagine what it must be like to hear. Noise was just an incomprehensible concept to him.
Sure, he understood what it was and how it worked, but the actual process was so strange. A mouth moving produced noise, and the noise could be different, mean any number of things. He preferred his way. Where it was the movement of hands and mouths that meant something, not noises.
The story went that after Damian was 'born', he screamed and screamed. He only stopped once he had milk in his mouth. It was only once he reached the age most children began talking that anyone noticed anything wrong with him.
His mother came then, long hair swishing and swords gleaming behind her. She took him up in her arms and handed him off to a doctor.
Damian had always been told that the doctor didn't realize what was wrong with him at first, and it was only once his mother threatened to kill him that he figured it out; Damian Wayne was deaf. A malfunction in the artificial womb he'd been grown in.
The doctor made to take Damian away, to neutralize him, but Talia held her hand up.
"Wait," she commanded. "He won't be useless."
"But, Mistress Talia," the doctor gasped. "He's disabled. Shouldn't we use one of the others?"
Talia took the young child carefully, and if no one knew her, they would have called the look she was giving him tender.
"He is the strongest. He is the one who survived the longest. Besides, it will be no trouble to fix his hearing if it ever becomes an issue, correct?" she asked with an arched brow. The doctor nodded quickly. "He will be taught to read lips and speak as well as anyone. Once he reaches the age of eight I will meet him and decide whether he's worthy to keep his life."
The doctor inclined his head. "Yes, Mistress Talia."
That was the story Damian had been told since he was a child. It was his version of a fairy tale. And it was what he thought of everytime he was being trained. He knew if he was a disappointment, his mother wouldn't want him anymore.
So he perfected every lesson. He learned every language he was told to learn. He learned to lip read in every language. He learned to fight and he learned every lesson a college could possibly hope to teach you. He learned to hide his deafness, but also to see it as a possible advantage.
When he finally got to meet his father and started working with Grayson after his father's 'death', Damian kept his deafness hidden. He wasn't ashamed of it, but he knew that if anyone found out they wouldn't let him help. They might even get rid of him.
So he perfected his act. He ignored them quite a bit, and that meant that when he genuinely didn't hear them, he could play it off as sulking. He kept his headphones in a lot as well, forcing people to actually come up and wave a hand in his face or yank the headphones out.
He became very good at hiding the differences his deafness gave him. He managed to find a way to change everything coming from the communicators to words that would fly across the inside of his mask, telling him who was talking. No one, not even Drake, suspected anything. And when his father came back, neither did he.
But Damian's father wasn't called: 'The World's Greatest Detective' for no reason. Damian was clever, but his father was even more so. He might have been able to hide his deafness from his grandfather, but he couldn't keep it from his father. Even so, it was only dumb luck that his father figured it out.
It started on the way home, after being shown his and Superboy's new base. While it was amazing and cool, the injustice of having to go to a school with civilians was terribly unfair. He wasn't pouting, because Damian Wayne didn't pout, but he was annoyed.
The drive home was boring. His father insisted on it though, for some convoluted reason. Damian kept his eyes on his window, watching Gotham City pass by in a blur of lights and people. Then the car stopped abruptly and Damian felt a hand on his shoulder. Damian turned around quickly and looked at his father's mouth.
"Are you alright, Damian? Can you hear me?"
Damian met his father's eyes and saw worry as well as confusion. Then he looked down at his own hands. They were twitching. Anytime he spoke, even after so long, he was still tempted to move his hands to communicate.
"Yes," he replied. Sometimes he wondered what his own voice sounded like. "I'm alright, father."
His father looked at him again, this time like he was calculating something, and started the car. Damian felt the familiar rumble of the engine and kept his eyes on his father, just so he wouldn't miss anything else his father might possibly say.
Bruce had always known that something was off about Damian. It was a terrible thing, to think of your child that way, but it was true. It wasn't just Damian's lack of morals sometimes. It was his bloodthirstiness. All of that could be explained away by Talia's raising of him, and it was getting better. No, it was the way Damian was always watching everyone around him. How he never looked them in the eyes while talking. How anytime he wasn't on patrol or talking to someone he almost always had his headphones in and on loud enough that you had to literally yank them out of his ears to catch his attention.
Bruce's suspicions were cinched when he had to physically touch Damian to catch the boy's attention after raising his voice failed to do so. And when Damian turned around, he was surprised to see Bruce talking. Once Bruce started driving again, Damian kept his eyes on Bruce the rest of the drive home.
Once they reached the Manor, Bruce called Dick. If anyone would be able to help him with this, it was Dick.
When Grayson appeared out of nowhere one day, Damian was surprised. As far as he knew, Grayson was busy in Bludhaven. Too busy to visit me, Damian thought bitterly. Even so, it was a nice surprise.
Grayson dragged him an inane cartoon, chattering all the while. It was something about a family of superheroes, and it was completely unrealistic, but Grayson seemed to enjoy it, so Damian put up with it.
"You're right, Bruce," Dick said wearily.
"You think so?" Bruce asked him.
"Yes," he said sadly. "I think so. I could be wrong, but it happened too much to just be a coincidence. He should have heard me say his name when he wasn't looking. And I tried a lot."
"Should I ask Tim, just to be sure?"
Dick nodded. "He might be able to find out more. They are getting along better now."
Tim didn't take a subtle approach. They asked him to find out why Damian couldn't hear them when he couldn't see them unless it was on the comms. So he hacked them easily and discovered that the words appeared on Damian's mask as well as informed him who was saying what.
But for all Tim knew, it might be because the comms are bad or Damian just didn't want to listen to them. Either way, it wasn't conclusive. He sighed deeply and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He knew what he wanted to try, but would Jason actually agree to help?
Jason was curious why Tim wanted him to shoot a gun up into the air a building away from Damian, but he was curious, and if what Tim told him was true, it was definitely a good test. So he did it. And the Brat didn't react. Well, that was something to report to Tim.
In the end, it was Tim who called Cass in. She followed Damian on patrol, staying out of sight and observing everything. She saw what was going on easily. And she reported it to Tim. When Bruce asked her to join everyone for a family breakfast, she agreed and dragged Steph along.
Damian wasn't expecting the whole family to be seated at the table when he woke up and came down for breakfast. Everyone looked grim or too happy. Damian sat down carefully next to Cassandra. She was probably the safest at the moment, even with the indiscernible look in her eyes. He made sure he could see everyone's lips from where he was sitting. It wouldn't do to miss something.
"Damian," his father began seriously. "It has come to our attention that you are…" His father stopped and seemed to be trying to find a way to word it, whatever it was. Damian felt something ice cold race down his spine. "Hiding something from us," his father finished awkwardly.
Damian huffed and crossed his arms, ignoring the cold feeling that had settled in his gut. "I'm allowed to have secrets, aren't I?" he asked rhetorically.
"Of course, Damian," Grayson said quickly, reassuringly. "You are allowed to have secrets. But we're worried."
"And what we've learned so far is, quite frankly, worrying," Drake continued. He leaned forward and clasped his hands together under his chin. Everything about his being screamed that he was waiting for Damian to come clean, and so was everyone else.
"What he means is we think you're being an idiot and demand to know what you're hiding, from your own mouth, because we already know based on our own investigations," Todd snapped.
Damian rubbed his temple between his fingers, leaving his eyes open so he wouldn't miss anything. "It's none of your business," he repeated forcefully.
"Just so you know, " Brown piped in. "I had nothing to do with any of this and I'm not quite sure what they're talking about. I came for the food. But whatever is going on, you can tell them whenever you feel like it.
"Of course you don't know, Brown," Damian snapped again, but there was a warm feeling filling his heart at having someone on his side.
"But…" Brown continued. "I have the same training as you guys. I can make a conclusion. It may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's not. I'm good at keeping secrets though, Damian."
Suddenly Cassandra spoke up, and like every time she talked, everyone looked at her and listened to her words carefully. Since she didn't talk often, any time she did, whatever she said was always carefully considered.
"It is his secret to share," she said slowly and sternly. Then she turned to Damian. "But you should share. No one will… judge you."
Damian dropped his head onto the table and stopped trying to keep up appearances. He simply let the silence fill his head, focused on it. He was pretty sure they were still talking. He couldn't see them or hear them though, so whatever they were saying was lost to him.
Finally, he sat up but kept his eyes closed. If he had a choice, it would be kept secret forever. But Damian was smart enough to know that they all knew he was deaf. They simply wanted confirmation. Or maybe they wanted him to tell them they were wrong.
He couldn't tell them they were wrong, because they weren't. He was deaf. So he could either stay silent and let them start to suffocate him or he could tell the truth and demand to not be treated any different.
He chose the second option.
"I'm not able to hear," he ground out, eyes still closed tight. "I was born that way. Mother trained me to not need my hearing."
After a moment more of the silence that came from not being able to hear, Damian opened his eyes. Everyone was looking at him, but they didn't look shocked or even sorry for him. That was nice. Better than he expected, even.
"I don't want to be treated any different," Damian said slowly, signing along with his words. It felt good, to be able to sign. "I'm the same as always. And I don't want Robin taken away. Nothing's different."
Slowly everyone nodded. And Damian, Damian smiled.