**Disclaimer: This follows, admittedly loosely, the events of ROTJ. Naturally Damian is not a BB character but I endeavored to give some life to some of the ideas posited as a possible future in the books. I do not, in any way, own any Batman characters nor do I claim any rights, those honors, such as they are, go to Bob Kane**

He'd prescribed to a very precise life. Following his father's patterns like the checkerboard layout of the manor's kitchen floor. There at that black tile beneath the farmer sink was the year at the Fessenden School before he'd been expelled for breaking Sal Vincent's nose with the heel of his hand. He still remembered the blackness spreading through the handkerchief and down the boy's wrist, pooling in the woolen elbow of his sweater. Damian knew what mercy was, that's why he didn't kill him. His version of an early Christmas gift.

The time waiting in the headmaster's office had been a practice in tedium, the voices of teachers and then the headmaster wafting through his ears like static. They were frowning and the telephone kept ringing. Eventually Pennyworth arrived to fetch him and sign the necessary paperwork. Then there was the ride to the station and that long night on the train. Pure boredom.

That ivory white tile before the refrigerator was like that following summer on the farm with Grayson and that woman who he charitably referred to as "the Tramp."

Father's little mistress. He knew next to nothing about her background but no amount of polish and rub would erase the grit or grease of poverty in his eyes. He did admire her though, grudgingly. And she didn't pretend to like him, but she didn't taunt him or try to win him over. She lent Grayson the farmhouse and left them to their own devices. Grayson, the circus boy, just as poor as the rest…but endlessly, fathomlessly patient. He became that…figure, that approachable influence that father never was. Father was a beacon, a light on that proverbially far away shore. Grayson was there in the morning with stubble and trousers over a union suit, ready to teach and talk. He never glowered or fumed.

That summer came and went and Grayson moved on, back to Blüdhaven, and Damian managed to remain at father's alma mater Rumsey Hall for a mere two months before transferring to Rectory. Rectory was Oliver III and Nicholas Charles Queen. Bizygotic twins, one meek and easily sated, the other fierce and somewhat sadistic. Nicky became a good friend and he and Damian seemed to fuel one another's defiance, making each other's time there nearly bearable.

Nicky, however, contracted a blood infection the next summer, out west. He did not die but suffered immensely. He returned more like his brother, handsome but now frail. Eventually he grew older through St. Mark's, shirked Princeton in favor of Harvard and smoked a pipe. He and Damian wrote one another when the later set off for the Middle East but the correspondence died in its second year.

Damian moved almost uneventfully through Andover but did not return for his final term, opting to move to Lawrenceville. Father'd merely peered at him over the papers on his desk, his faithful secretary Sarah ticking emotionlessly at the Corona to his left, "I see. That's…disappointing."

Every year father wore his class ring and attended the Andover-Exeter game, one of his few admissions of nostalgia outside of his nightlife. Damian was perpetually relegated to the nosebleed seats. Timothy Drake Wayne sat at Bruce's side.

Damian hated "Drake" for his unswerving ability to mirror father's expectations perfectly though he was loathe to admit it. Where Damian had seemed to inherit only his father's more insufferable traits, the holiness, the arrogance, the obsessions, Tim was quieter, more measured, equally obsessed but more understanding. And Tim wasn't even Bruce's biological child. But Damian didn't relish that awful business with the Joker and he did not savor Drake's suicide attempt or his having to relinquish the role of Robin. But father would not allow him to come home and step into the void. It felt like banishment.

Father did not attend Damian's graduation and he wandered numbly along the empty corridors while the grounds outside throbbed and shouted happily with young men and their families, carting trunks to cars and tossing motorboards. He hadn't expected his mother to come given their estrangement but his father…

He found himself walking indeterminately through the woods, crying and cursing himself, "G*ddamit Wayne, he's not here, do not care. All you give are f*cks and…and what…?"

He'd been unable to find an answer. Grayson and Pennyworth were waiting at the dormitory with a glass of sparkling cider for him. Grayson was jovial, naturally, "I looked all over for you. Didn't you hear us whooping and hollering? Babs and Stephanie are around here somewhere…"

Damian had pressed his fingertips against his eyelids and didn't respond, his throat a useless coil of muscles.

Grayson's face fell and he braced the boy by the shoulder, "Hey, come on kid. I know it's crap but he missed my graduation too."

They all piled into the cab and Stephanie kissed him on the cheek by way of congratulations. Another long train ride. Another return to the great, empty house. Alfred made him his favorite meal, flaked egg with sauce and a bottle of Soder.

Damian refused Columbia in favor of Cambridge but was sent down after his second year for lack of attention to his studies. Thereafter he traveled through Jordan, Egypt, Greece, Syria and Iran. He stayed at the Red Apartment in Marrakesh with his father's former protégé Cassandra Cain and developed a haunting crush but she rebuked him. She was seeking a life of her own and did not have any interest in being bogged down with her adoptive father's son or his abandonment issues.

He hadn't guessed they were siblings and too like Drake shunned her by way of salving his grief. He returned to London and found young Oliver working at the Royal Bank of Scotland. They had lunch and later dinner and he found the old fellow was suddenly far more interesting than he'd ever been as a child.

Young Ollie was well-mannered and still shy and had a lisp. He blushed at the waiter and let Damian order for them both. In the evenings he saw some of the well-to-do girls and took them to the theatre and Damian scoffed, disinterested.

Ollie thought he had a future with a young lady currently housed at the May of Teck Club, known as a home for girls of a certain background whose means were otherwise diminished. In other words, she had nary but a penny to her name and was obliged to work as an office girl at RBS. Gossip being what it was, they saw others but had their eyes on marriage.

Damian was thoroughly bored but for one distinct detail, it seemed Ollie paid little mind toward the girls he was leading on. That left Damian to pick through them at his leisure. He lost his virginity and then some within weeks.

And there was a small scandal after he was discovered in a young lady's rooms by her father. The man was old-fashioned and insisted on a fistfight. Damian gave him one and promptly sailed for Cape Town before the blood dried.

Father sent him letters of introduction and they spoke on the telephone perhaps once a month but that slowly dissolved. Pennyworth died, then eventually grandfather followed and mother summoned him home and he visited once but afterward declined, finding her…different.

And ten years passed, and father was…ill. Drake contacted him, declining to go into the details over the phone. Drake had inherited the company in his stead but had stepped down, humiliated at being unable to stave off Derek Powers' eventual takeover. Damian hadn't followed the news much but knew that there must have been some sort of resulting strain. Still, he'd resolved not to rub it in, not to…what?

He wasn't sure as he'd left the airport and ridden the seven forty-five to Bristol's tiny station, hiring a cab the rest of the way. The house was in decrepit shape. Nearly a mausoleum, missing equal parts warmth and care.

Now he stood in the kitchen, imagining meddlesome, well-meaning Pennyworth at meals past. He guessed Selina was long gone by the sight of the place. And he knew Grayson kept his distance out of sheer awkwardness if nothing else. Barbara had carved her own niche and simply outlasted her old mentor in terms of staying power. Stephanie and Cassandra were elsewhere. And now there was…some whelp he'd heard little about through Drake.

None of the children had met him but apparently father had taken yet another wayward soul under his wing. But that he might do the same for his own boy…

Damian gritted his teeth and left his trunks—ancient Louis Vuitton, they'd once belonged to Solomon—in the service entrance and tipped the cab driver. He shut the inside door and started up the servants' stairs, slowly, quieting his footsteps as Grayson had taught him.

He ran his hand along the stair's banister, withdrawing it at the sight of dust, thick and wafting toward the floor. He dusted his hands together and continued.

Father's rooms were on the second floor to the left. They consisted of the main suite, a dressing room and the bath. One door led to the dressing room the other, double doors led to the suite. He tried these and pushed them open. Gone was the ancient mahogany bed with the heavy curtains, in its place was some flat, uninspiring modern thing with long drawers and a shelf where the headboard ought to be. The radiators had been removed and large windows took up the entire far wall.

But that did not concern him as much as it could have. Or would have if his father wasn't lying prone in the middle of the room. In the old days, father would have acknowledged his presence immediately. He had never been remotely comforting or kind, always matter of fact. I'll feed, clothe and provide for you because you are mine. There was no…affection. Grayson had guessed once that Bruce was standoffish because of fear. Damian had found that preposterous, his father didn't know the meaning of fear.

Grayson had shaken his head, fear of his mother Talia. That had stumped the lad who'd always been raised to believe his conception was the logical and expected conclusion to a passionate, drawn out affair. Not so, he later learned, but it meant little to him. He simply wanted…what? Again the answer eluded him.

"Damian."

It wasn't a question and he felt like a child again, sucking in his breath, unprepared to hear that voice again after so long.

"Father?"

"So, Tim wired you?"

"He did."

Father's eyes weren't open and he didn't guess how the older man knew, but he did, "If you're staying, you'll find your bedroom the way you left it. I'll be…fine."

"I don't believe you."

"You can go now…I need…rest."

"I've never seen you…asleep."

"It doesn't come easily and still won't…if you insist on talking."

Damian frowned, his cheeks reddening, he wasn't sure what he expected but it was not this, "I'll be down the hall."

"There's a boy coming later, Terry. Don't confront him, he's…welcome."

So that was his name, Terry, "Yes sir."

"There's food, the doctor will be by tonight. I'm not to be disturbed beforehand."

"No father."

He thought he heard Bruce scoff, "You were usually far more…excitable. Don't tell me South Africa has chastened you."

Damian ran a hand over his head, "It's just…you don't look well."

The reply was brusque, "I'm not. But I will be."

"Yes father."

"Go out now."

"Yes father," and Damian did go out and he walked down the main stair and out the front door. He kept walking out along the grounds, past the abandoned watchman's cottage before he took up wait near the main gate. He would see this boy, this "Terry" and measure him. There had been sightings of the Batman throughout the city for the last year after what had been a decades- long hiatus. It didn't take much to put two and two together.

He would honor his father's wishes and leave the cowl alone, but he had to know, what right did this…pissant have? Was he, in Damian's eyes, even worthy? And, if so, why?

He would wait and see.