Damian had learned to remain silent. Not that he used to talkative as much as argumentative, but with time, came the knowledge that his opinion was considered unnecessary.
At first he believed it was because of his mother, being the child of Talia al Ghul wasn't something that people got over easily, then he decided it was because of his assassin training – it didn't help that he had slipped in the whole no-killing ordeal several, several times – but the reality was Damian was just too low on the bat food chain.
He might've been Bruce Wayne's kid, but they all considered him just a kid and it all spoke volumes when it came to his thoughts and how much attention they would get.
So, to preserve his sense of self-worth, already highly damaged since he got here, Damian decided to take a more observant route. He would watch, he would think, he would consider his words carefully and would choose the precise moment to deliver them. It wasn't easy, in fact it was exhausting, but it felt worth it when he overheard father talking to Grayson.
"He maturing, Dick. He seems… peaceful."
Damian felt the corner of his mouth turning upwards until he caught a glimpse of Grayson's face, the look conveyed that the man did not agree with his father, but it went by unnoticed. Father was mostly blind to business unrelated to the mission.
And though it seemed to bother everyone else, it wasn't something that Damian minded.
In fact his father's obliviousness to the fact that his peacefulness was only an act only made him all the more convinced that it worked, and the attentive silence began to seep to other areas of Damian's life.
In school he'd gone from the spoiled-obnoxious-brat to the tall-dark-mysterious-snarky-Wayne-heir. It was a longer title, but it seemed to work better in that particular social environment, so he'd give tiny smirks with the corner of his lips when girls looked and would only voice his opinion about an assignment when asked directly by the teachers. Though that never ever ended well, it was part of what gave him the reputation, something extra to dazzle his fellow classmates, so he kept doing it.
Grayson and Drake seemed suspicious, not in the same way, of course. Drake was sure it was some devious scheme of Damian's, a plot to destroy the world and every living being on it. He never said it aloud, but Damian knew. It only took a few minutes to hack into Red Robin's computer, and being Drake it was the same as reading his diary.
Nightwing on the other hand had been his partner for a really long time, they got to know each other and Grayson knew Damian was not acting normal, he just didn't know why.
So Damian soldiered on, prepared for when the questioning came, but not expecting it anytime soon. He was being too much of a good boy.
On patrol, Batman sent him in first. Robin was not as small as he used to be, but was still light, lean and deadly silent, so he was given the task to check the situation and report back before they charged.
It was a reoccurring action for a couple of months now, he'd been the first one in every scene, he'd do the recognition and most importantly, the orders were given swiftly, almost carelessly just as they would've been given to Nightwing or even Red Robin, and Damian knew what it meant.
Father trusted him.
It was proof that all his hard work was being recognized, being sent in first was an honor, Batman finally trusted him enough to know he'd do the right thing.
It was a good thought. And with what happened in their last mission, it was his last thought for a while.
It seemed simple enough, a bunch of criminal commuting in a warehouse. Batman told Damian to check how many were there, their positions, their weapons. He never even considered mentioning exactly why these particular criminals were so important, and even if the whole need to know infuriated Damian, he found a way around it: he did his own research.
His fate was to become the Bat, so it only made sense that his investigative skills were up to par, nonetheless it was extenuating to keep up with father.
Yet he knew this was about a stolen shipment, the contents were not so easy to uncover, and with his limited time window, from when father informed him of the mission and the actual deed, the intel gathered had led him to conclude it was a weapon prototype, he only failed to discover what it did. Unnerving, yes, but manageable.
As it was the new norm, he went in first. The second he slipped in through the warehouse window there was an explosion of light. There was no other way to explain it; the white light had a twinge of blue around it – though Damian couldn't be sure since it blinded him almost immediately –, threw him back through the wall he had just climbed to get in, and the sheer pressure of if made his ears start ringing.
When he woke up later, sprawled in a pile of debris, Damian had no idea how much time had gone by, how many walls he'd gone through – it felt like 5 at least – or where in hell Batman was. Or the warehouse for that matter.
Getting up was way harder than it should've been, there was dust in his hair and he tasted concrete on his mouth. He took his time looking around as his joints popped back into place, it was Gotham, sure, but nowhere even near where he was supposed to be.
"Batman?" he called on his comm and got nothing back but white noise.
Damian felt a warm spot on his back he knew to be blood, but he couldn't be bothered by it in that instant. He had to figure out what was going on, and with Batman gone – as well as the Batmobile – the only thing his slightly shaken up brain could come up with was returning to the manor and regrouping.
On foot.
The wonders of being Robin. Sometimes he had to remind himself why the hell he actually fought Drake for this, it sucked.
Not one to wallow while he bled and ached, Damian began to walk.
It felt rather disappointing when the manor actually came into sight, I seemed no one was looking for him, not that he needed a search party, it just seemed protocol to have one whenever one of them went missing and by the way the sun was peaking at him on the horizon, he'd been knocked out long enough to be considered missing.
Oh well.
Though he didn't really need to be sneaky about it, Damian didn't make a fuss about getting inside the grounds, it was just his nature to make sure he didn't trip any of the several alarms father had around the property. It was the same with the house itself.
It was quiet, like it always was after patrol, on the rare hours everyone was asleep, and the silence got under Damian's skin. It was the weirdest feeling, like… everything was right, just perfect. But it couldn't be, there'd been an explosion in the middle of an investigation, as far as he knew, Batman was missing, how could the manor seem so… peaceful?
There were different kinds of silence in the Wayne household, Damian was familiar with most of them if not all. There was the silence in the mornings, a simple lack of words since birds sang and Pennyworth hummed quietly while preparing breakfast. There was the tense silence, when father was working (or obsessing as Pennyworth called it) and there was the tenser silence, when something went wrong during the vigilante hours.
But sometimes, not often, there were silences like this. A comfortable stillness, perfect for sleep, that made him despise every sound that disturbed it. And now he's the noisy one, adding to the fact that he was parading around the house in his Robin outfit? It all just should've made him walk that much faster straight to his room, instead, Damian found himself standing in front of father's bedroom.
The door was slightly ajar so Damian could see his father's sleeping form and it left him baffled. Did father really care that little for him? Was he that much of a burden that the fact he was missing meant nothing?
It was more confusing than anything. It hurt, sure, people kept trying to make him more humane, and seemed to constantly forget to act the same, but even if father hated him, he wouldn't rest until Damian was back. That much was obvious, so… why? Why was father sleeping while Damian had to walk back after being thrown by an unknown explosion?
He was tempted to simply walk in there and demand an answer, but forced himself to remember that it wasn't worth it. He'd never get a straight answer, father would say only what he believed to be necessary and it would be the end. Setting his jaw, Damian stepped away.
And it was funny how things worked sometimes, if Damian wasn't so focused on not putting his fist through a wall only for the fun of ruining something, he might've missed the light shining from beneath the door on one of the bedrooms.
The unoccupied bedrooms on Wayne manor were always clean, always ready for use thanks to Pennyworth, but the windows were never open, the dark ambiance was just another part of what made Bruce Wayne Batman.
Damian threw the door open expecting to find nothing short of ninja assassins from outer space, and had to content himself with a sleeping girl.
The light he saw escaping from underneath the door was the moonlight coming from the open window and outlining the girl's profile.
It took him a moment to realize that a sleeping girl was a lot more concerning than ninja assassins from outer space.
Did father bring home another one? This picking up strays was getting out of hand.
"Yes, Bruce..." she mumbled mostly asleep, body turning to face the door "Still alive and kicking, stop perving on me and go to bed."
He stepped back so silently that it should've seemed that no one was even there, yet somehow the girl's eyes snapped open, zeroing in on Damian while she sat up slowly, her long dark hair flowing down one shoulder, with a single stark white lock falling on her forehead. Damian knew that girl.
"Who are you?" she asked frowning slightly "Did Bruce send you?"
Damian knew her, but it couldn't be. But with the way her green-blue eyes narrowed, she couldn't be anyone else.
"Todd?"
There was a gun in her hand even before the sleepy look on her face turned hard, suspicious and wide awake "How do you know my name?" he stared down the barrel of her gun and realized that whatever happened next, this would end badly "Why the fuck are you wearing that?"
He spared a quick glance to his Robin outfit "Tt."
This would end very badly.
It would be a simple matter of who acted first, if Damian moved the wrong way, he was sure to get a bullet between the eyes. At least if that girl was really-
"Diana? What is it?" another female voice asked barging in, and even before any sort of answer was given, already engaging Damian in combat.
This one's hair was even longer and it kept covering her entire face, but even as Damian barely managed to hold back the blows, there was no mistaking that fighting style, the graceful movements, the speed, the completely unnecessary showing off…
Damian cartwheeled over the bed noting how the gun was still trailed on him, but what really caught his attention was the huge Superman t-shirt the other girl, the acrobat one, was wearing.
That is, if she really was the acrobat.
"Grayson, stop!" Damian said – demanded – jumping onto the windowsill and pushing an appeasing hand out to both girls.
"How the hell did you get in here?"
"Who the hell cares?" Todd said pressing the gun against Damian's palm as she knelt on the bed "Look at what the little fucker is wearing."
"Diana, a gun? Again?" Grayson huffed "Bruce's gonna murder you."
"Been there" Todd smiled sardonically "Done that. And if you're gonna bitch about it, they're rubber bullets. It won't kill him."
"It might cripple him." Grayson pointed out tiredly, like that was a reoccurring argument.
"I'm willing to take that chance." Todd's eyes were bright with something akin to madness.
"Don't you think we should figure out why is there a boy dressed as Robin in your bedroom before we shoot him?"
"Not really, but you're gonna do it anyway, aren't you?"
"Don't mind her…" Grayson smiled, and if Damian had any doubt that the girl really was Dick Grayson, they all vanished right that instant "Diana can be kind of a psycho." She whispered loudly like she was indulging a child "But I do wonder how did you get in?"
While Todd was still pressing the gun against his palm, Grayson was inching toward him slowly, almost unperceptively, on the tip of her toes like a ballerina would.
Damian just wasn't sure if they were acting like that to distract him or if it was just… interaction. Both made sense.
"I was under the impression that this" Damian said tapping the R on his chest with his free hand "would explain a lot more than whatever else I might say."
"Yeah, right." Grayson said with a huff of sarcastic laugh "You're Robin."
Todd on the other hand narrowed her eyes slightly, tilting her head to Grayson's general direction "I thought you said he was a boy."
"I did."
"Doesn't talk like one."
"Yeah, he talks funny."
That aggravated Damian way more than he expected "I must speak to Bruce Wayne. If you ladies would be ever so kind to call him, I would be delighted to leave both of you to go back to sleep."
"This thing's not a boy." Todd concluded.
"If you really need to talk to him, wouldn't it be easier to just… I don't know" how in hell did Grayson get this close? "Make an appointment during work hours?"
"Yes… I suppose you are right, Grayson." Damian said with a fake suffering sigh "I shall call him tomorrow then. I appreciate the advice." He turned his body and gave the slightest push forward, out the window, feeling the wind on his face for all of one second before his back hit the wall hard.
"Holy shit, he's heavy!" Grayson bitched.
"What's going on?" a new voice asked as Damian realized he was being hoisted up by his damn cape.
"Go away!" Todd snapped, voice strained with the effort to keep Damian from falling.
"Are you pulling someone into your bedroom or throwing them out?" the new voice asked, sounding amused.
"Get the hell out or I swear to God, I'm shooting your kneecap off."
The voice scoffed "Yeah, right" but the next second, Damian started to slip, like one of the girls had let him go "Oh crap! I'm calling Bruce!"
"Diana!" Grayson growled and Damian was being hoisted up again "Did you just threaten to shoot Sammy?"
"Little kiss ass had it coming." Todd mumbled as Damian felt himself slide back through the window, then hitting the floor of the bedroom.
The whole experience was not only disturbing, but rather humiliating. The sight of the slightly ajar door felt like a saving grace and he lept to it, hearing the chorused protest coming from both Grayson and Todd.
He knew for a fact that the door was open. He knew that. Then what the hell had he just walked into?
Whatever it was it felt solid and sent him back sprawling to the ground.
In a second, he was trying to fight Grayson of off him, in the next Damian found himself on his stomach, Todd's gun pressing to the back of his neck, her bony knee on the middle of his spine, holding him down.
"Put the gun down, Diana." Bruce Wayne, who happened to be the huge block on the door, ordered wirily.
"Rubber bullets." Todd said with no inflection.
"Rubber bullets will still cripple him."
"They might! Might. Why is everyone such a pessimist today?"
"Why is that boy dressed as Robin?" Damian lifted his eyes to see yet another girl, the one whose kneecap had been threatened. There was nothing special about her, and if that told him anything, this one was Drake.
"It's not a boy." Todd and Grayson answered as one.
Damian decided to ignore that "I am Robin and I would prove it if I could get up, but I know they won't let me. I can respect that, given the circumstances, and won't fight it." he trained his masked eyes on his father, trying not to notice how much younger the man looked "Mr. Wayne, I know you are Batman. I also know that your ward, Grayson, used to be your first Robin. When she moved on to become Nightwing, you took on another Robin, Todd. And when she had an unfortunate encounter with the Joker that resulted on her death, you replaced her" his little jab didn't go by unnoticed since Todd's knee did a painful twist on his back "with whom I believe to be you current Robin: Drake."
Now Damian could only hope that the only thing that changed on this godforsaken place was the gender of some of its heroes, he wasn't sure what would happen if his father wasn't Batman here. Although that seemed unlikely considering Grayson's and Todd's reactions to his presence there.
"You seem to have a lot of ideas about what goes on in this household, young man. And yet we know nothing about you." Father's voice was calm but hard, stuck somewhere between Bruce Wayne and Batman, making Damian's shoulders almost sagged in relief.
No ordinary millionaire would react like that to an intruder like that.
"I wouldn't mind rectifying that." he squirmed just enough to show the discomfort of his position "In private."
"Why don't you just talk?" it wasn't a question as much as a demand from Todd "Now."
"You won't shoot me." Damian knew he was trying his luck, but this was a matter for his father's ear alone. At least for the moment, maybe Grayson could be included later "Not in here, not in front of fa- Mr. Wayne. It's against his rules to kill people. Or shoot them with intent to cripple." he added the last part upon hearing Todd's intake of breath, ready to protest "We all know that."
"I don't need a gun to kick your creepy ass."
"I don't need a crowbar to kick yours either."
"What the fuck did you just say?"
"Enough." father ordered in his Batman voice. Damian smirked "Diana, let him up. We'll speak in my den."
"But Bruce-" Grayson started but was cut short by father's raising hand.
"Stay here with the others, Jane."
Todd retreated, not before another twist of her knee, and Damian got up with slow, deliberate movements, he didn't need any of them trying to immobilize him again. He needed help to figure out how to get back to his world.
He joined father on the hallway, and Grayson pulled Drake away from him, closer to her. Father splayed a hand on the middle of his back, guiding him forward "This way."
He bit back the 'I know' on the tip of his tongue and simply walked.
"Security matter my ass, Janey!" he heard Todd's aggravated voice "No way she's staying in my room, she steals my panties!"
"It was only that one time, Diana!" Drake whined back "And I didn't steal them, our underwear got mixed when you moved in!"
"Whatever you say, stalker."
Damian stole a look at his father to gage his reaction to that weird interaction and found him with a slight but visible smile on his lips. He honestly couldn't decide what creeped him out more.
Once in the den, father offered him a seat and leaned his hips on the desk, crossing his arms.
"Well, Robin, we are alone."
Damian was painfully aware of that. He knew if anyone could help him with his predicament it was father, but asking for it, especially in this bizarre situation wasn't easy. And words were never his friends. "I am aware of how bad this must look."
"You mean the fact that a child managed to break into my home without setting any of the several alarms I have around the property? Or that the same child sneaked into my daughter's bedroom in the middle of the night?"
"First of all" he pressed his lips to keep the word 'father' from stumbling out "sir, I'm sixteen, barely a child anymore. But yes, I meant those things. I didn't trip any of the alarms because I'm familiar with all of them, and I never had any intention of disrupting Todd's sleep, I didn't know she was there. In fact, where I come from, she is a man."
Father's eyebrows shot up in disbelief, even if his voice stayed composed "And where did you come from?"
"Of that I'm not sure. It is Gotham city, but not the same as yours. As I said, where I come from Todd is a man, just as Grayson and Drake. And I believe we're a few years ahead, since in my… reality, you all seem older and I have replaced Drake as Robin."
"Alright. Who are you?"
Now that was the hardest part. Damian wasn't sure he should confide that information. If this was really the past, it was probable that mother had him in the making and maybe father knowing it beforehand could compromise Damian's existence. Father never wanted him, maybe given the chance, this Bruce would make sure that mother was stopped.
Not that it would affect Damian personally, but he wasn't sure how to feel about it.
"I think that… Since I'm from what could be considered the future, it might be for the best if I don't tell you that."
"You're not helping you case here."
"But I am Robin. Isn't that enough? I've proven myself to you already, obviously, it just… hasn't happened yet. I think." This was confusing. And probably the longest Damian had spoken in a really long time. "All I know for sure is that I don't belong here and I want to go back."
"This is why you broke in in the middle of the night?"
Damian felt himself frowning "No. I never meant to break in, I thought I was home. Then I happened to find Todd, and Grayson thought I was attacking her. You know the rest."
Father sighed, sitting on the big chair on the other side of the desk, he leaned on his elbows and stared at Damian "You won't tell me who you are, how am I supposed to trust you?"
"You shouldn't." Damian said completely serious "But I have nowhere else to turn to and nothing else to offer but my word that I have no secret agenda." In all fairness, the last thing Damian wanted was to have to deal with younger, female versions of his former mentor, the criminal and the pain in the ass "But if you must know, I believe I can tell you my name." it wouldn't make any difference, father had no idea about him yet, and for all he knew, he could be a girl here as well.
"That's not nearly enough, but I guess it's a start."
"Damian." he said after a short nervous pause "My name is Damian." he stood up with perfect posture and offered a hand "It is nice to meet you again, sir."
A/N.: Well... Can't say that I regret.
The idea of Damian with girl versions of Dick, Jason and Tim just amuses me. Hope Damian isn't too weird, I'm pretty sure he won't grow up to act like that, but it just worked for what I had in mind, he's gonna get feistier as this thing goes on, 'cause it's just too fun to write him moody.
Sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes, I'm way too lazy to check.