When Damian woke up once again he found himself in a different room, the sheets were thankfully a mix of soft cotton and silk in muted blues and greens. Alvin was laying on his side on the bed, his breathing even and his hand unconsciously holding Damian's own.
It was a pleasant wakening, the most pleasant he'd had in the last few days.
Damian looked around the room, trying to find some clues as to his whereabouts but found no toys nor pictures of Alvin and his family, no drawings or the strewn clothes that civilian children usually had laying around the residences.
He frowned.
The furniture, however, was Alvin's size and even the doorknobs were set for a child's hands.
He shook his head. Either he was in a dwarfed adult's bedroom with Alvin, or this mysterious boy was not the civilian he pretended to be.
"You can ask if you want," Alvin whispered, wide eyes staring at him in the dark. Damian tensed, eyes narrowing.
"Where am I?" he demanded, arms crossing over his chest. Alvin blinked owlishly.
"You are in my room," he explained softly. "Selina was kind enough to help me get you out of the hospital as soon as we could. They are not kind to street kids."
Damian's frown deepened.
"Selina being…" he prodded, tilting his head.
"Catwoman," Alvin answered honestly. "Are you hungry? I should bring you something to eat soon."
"Won't Catwoman mind you brought me to your house?" Damian's frown deepened. Alvin blinked in obvious confusion.
"Why would she? It's not her house to begin with," he said.
So, this house was not Catwoman's and most likely Alvin was not her kid by blood or association, perfect, the less the Gotham undergrounds knew of him the better.
"What is your name?" Alvin asked suddenly as he left the bed and stretched his arms over his head lazily, allowing Damian to see the faint outline of muscles on his torso as his childish Superman T-shirt rode up. Training then, not a civilian.
"Why should I tell you?" he huffed, hands clenched. "For all I know you could be one of my father's enemies."
Alvin stared back in shock before the quietest giggle burst from his lips.
"For all I know you could be an enemy of mine," he said. "But I decided you needed a place to stay until you could stand on your own again… That is, if you want to."
Damian stared as the small smile on the other boy's face turned sour and diminutive, doubts filling those light grey eyes instantly. He found something familiar in those eyes, a feeling of cold bursting inside of his stomach he could hardly name. It was the same he felt when his grandfather stared at him and told him he was nothing like his prodigious father.
He shook his head.
"I am indebted to you," he said softly, his fingers reaching towards the hand nervously wringing the sheets. "My name is Damian and one day, I will be sure to repay your kindness in doubles."
The hesitant and painful smile widened.
"I'm Tim," the boy said finally. "It's an honor."
"Tt, of course it is," Damian sighed, shaking his hand politely, just like his grandfather taught him. In seconds he had checked Tim's pulse, normal, if a little sped up that spoke of nervousness, the texture of his skin told the younger boy he was not used to strenuous activities but had been performing them for at least two – a brush of fingers against fingers – four years, and the way his eyes regarded Damian behind the nervousness, the caution, spoke of intelligence, study.
"I guess," Tim said with that infuriatingly enigmatic smile. "What were you doing outside so late at night?"
"What were you doing so late at night?" Damian shot back trying to force his brain to stop buzzing about the contradiction of it all. This child before him was clearly not a vigilante. Besides the fresh stitches on his forehead there were no other scars lining his skin, therefore he was not exposed to violence, and yet he broke every single parameter Tarek had taught him about average civilian children and therefore could not be predicted.
He should feel threatened, he should be tightening his muscles for an attack…
And yet he wanted nothing but to sit there and trade questions with this Tim, this charmingly shy boy with the intelligent and frigid eyes that seemed to actually care about his well-being.
"I like to walk the streets, practice," Tim replied with a shrug. "But I've always been in Gotham, you, on the other hand are a foreigner and don't know your way around the city, it was a dangerous move."
Damian's eyes widened.
"I'm not a foreigner!" he protested, instantly sitting up in bed and wincing when his leg turned into an angle not comfortable inside the cast. Tim immediately placed his hands on Damian's smaller shoulders and gently pushed him backwards, soft shushing whispers spilling from his lips.
"Don't move so fast," he chided. "You will only hurt yourself more."
Damian conceded, cheeks flushing. He should be killing Tim, he should be grabbing the other boy's neck with his fingers and twisting until the life faded from his eyes and the pink-ness disappeared from his lips.
But he couldn't.
True, Tim had saved him – he could have saved himself, of course, but still, he put himself in danger for a complete stranger – and brought him to his home. He lent him his own bed – apparently, would have to investigate further later on – and even tried to answer all his questions with openness and honesty.
He was thus indebted to him and his honor as an Al Ghul would not let him forget his bravery.
Still, honor alone didn't protect him from Damian's assassin-trained hands.
Something else did.
Was it something as what his mother described? When his grandfather finished his lectures of the cool-headed emptiness of the Demon's heart and his mother would walk with him around the garden telling him stories of the encounters she'd had over her life and the people she had met. The way they all made her feel protective and strong at the same time.
The oath of his father: "To protect those that can't protect themselves."
Tim obviously couldn't protect himself from a real threat. If he could, he wouldn't have brought Damian into his home so trustingly.
Damian's eyes widened once more.
So, it was a mixture of his honor debt to Tim and the other boy's seemly weak body that made Damian feel like he wanted to protect him? To care for him in return of the care he was receiving?
It was a possibility.
"… plus your head was too high and your shoes too unused to be a part of Crime Alley's inhabitants," Tim was explaining and Damian forced himself to pay attention. It was easy to drift off and distractions were weaknesses he could not afford. "Plus it's mostly because of how you speak."
"My speech is impeccable and so is my pronunciation!" Damian protested, trying his hardest not to allow his lips to purse in the way his grandfather calleddisgraceful and his mother called a pout.
Tim raised his hands.
"Yes, but children in crime alley don't use words like 'impeccable' and 'pronunciation'," he replied, shrugging his shoulders. "The thing about going undercover is that you have to blend in with the crowd around you as much as possible, whether it is mimicking their ethnicity, social background or even gender, look."
And, with another small shrug, Tim seemed to shift before Damian's eyes. The curl of his mouth became softer, his eyes heavier and his shoulders gentler, his black hair suddenly seemed to frame his young face artfully in ways he hadn't noticed before.
Before Damian, Tim became a female like the ones he had seen interacting around his grandfather's compound.
"Don't you think it is easier this way?" he purred, his voice going smoother.
Another shrug and it was gone. Tim was once more a boy.
"How do you do that?" Damian asked in awe.
"I observe and try to commit as many details as I can to memory," Tim said with a proud smile, the first one to ever reach his eyes that Damian had seen. It was pleasant.
Suddenly it all clicked into place in Damian Al Ghul's head. Tim wasn't a person he held a honor's debt to, nor was he a weakened civilian playing hero that evoked protectiveness out of him. Tim was the young equivalent of his grandfather's long respected other half.
'It is a thing of beauty,' Ra's had said to him once as they walked around his mother's garden. 'To come face to face with the one that holds all you are lacking and can give it to you with open arms, grandson.'
'Did you meet someone like that, grandfather?' Damian had asked, staring up at the man that, at the time, had been his hero.
'Yes, once,' Ra's replied, eyes lost in the horizon. 'Though he was fooling enough not to stay by my side. The things we could have managed together… Grandson, if you ever meet such a person, do not let them go. Do anything in your power to keep them by your side for they will complete all that is you and bring it to greatness.'
Damian had never forgotten this lesson, and not because his grandfather had been talking about his father that afternoon, but because he felt frightened by the naked longing reflected in his grandfather's usually cold, unfeeling eyes.
And now, sitting innocently in front of him, was the missing piece of his path to greatness. The Detective for his Demon's Head. A person that was slowly sorting him out by observation alone. A noble person that had offered him his hand and had yet to let it go. A wounded genius.
He licked his dry lips.
"Teach me?" he asked and felt the tension inside of his chest come undone when Tim answered his request with another one of those brilliantly small smiles.