Part Three

"Grandson, might I borrow one of your toys?" It was not a request, and Ra's only gave further information to torment his pawns: "There's a Russian upstart that I would like very much to dissuade."

"Of course, Grandfather. Drake is ever at your command." Damian doesn't bat an eye, despite knowing that Ra's will return his predecessor broken if at all. There have been other missions—Russia and other locations as if anyone other than Talia posed a credible threat to the League. It was an ugly truth, but Damian had limited power. He could not afford to waste it on defying the Demon's Head.

It might have been different if Ra's had taken a liking to Brown or favored Grayson. They might all be dead under such circumstances.

Drake had always been a sacrifice of some kind or another—often of his own choosing—and Damian is simply keeping a Wayne tradition alive. He chose to think that his predecessor would have insisted upon it were the older boy aware. Red Robin was always so responsible after all . . . so carefully mature when it 'mattered.'

The nobility of protecting his hated younger brother would probably have appealed to Timothy Drake-Wayne anyway.

The justification was argued and reestablished repeatedly over the course of the sleepless night. Damian still agreed with the rationale as he woke yet again around dawn on his thirteenth birthday. The concept was sound. The ethics were skewed, but the concept was sound.

It was still sound an hour later when Drake was deposited on his doorstep by an anonymous ninja regardless of the broken form left in Damian's arms. Clearly, the Russian upstart was neither currently in Russia nor easily dissuaded.

It was much easier to access medical supplies when his mother is staying in the States. Damian already had most of what he needed, and he could improvise for what he lacked.

It was easy enough to hoist the older man onto Damian's bed. Although currently better fed than Drake ever managed when left to his own devices, the former Robin was naturally small and thin. The broken nose was set automatically, Damian's attention held by the erratic breathing, a bleeding head wound, and the unnatural cant of Drake's wrist.

The ribs were cracked, not broken, and the bruising on Drake's throat had begun to darken. His lungs seemed undamaged, thankfully. Even the vertebrae and larynx were intact despite the pressure of what had clearly been a boot, and Damian wrapped the ribs simply for something to do. The pressure of Drake's head against the ruined pillow had stopped the bleeding, and it took forty-seven stitches to close the gash behind the older vigilante's ear and following the curve of Drake's skull.

Pennyworth had taught him how to do this. Tiny neat sutures to minimize scarring that were practiced on Grayson's lesser wounds and once in the field on an unconscious Todd with Drake's unnecessary coaching over the comm.

The man Drake had been before—he had repeated directives. He had gone over steps with a ridiculous attention to detail. He categorized and limited things to his own expectations and provided undesired coaching with great frequency. It had been annoying, but Damian could recognize a need for control when he saw it. Drake had that in common with Damian's father—the back and forth between silence and speaking. Drake was just incapable of turning the babble off once he started.

So Damian kept a soft commentary as he worked. He counted stitches and swore when a ridge of scar tissue made the stitching uneven (Drake's entire scalp was a mass of scarring, but this injury wouldn't scar under Damian's care). He narrated the entire process, and continued even when he shifted back into Drake's line of sight.

As long as he had the materials out, he stitched up the wound in Drake's thigh. The dislocated shoulder was set to rights easily without a conscious mind to struggle or recognize pain. The split lip was cleaned, and a missing tooth taken note of, but there was little Damian could do to alleviate those injuries. There was nothing for the scrapes and bruises but clean and dress them accordingly, and Damian addressed each with the same care he had taken with the head injury.

Breakfast and the pills took brief precedence, but then Damian was back at Drake's side.

All that remained was the horribly mangled dominant hand.

Damian did not want to touch the delicate muscles and joints. The responsibility of it all was huge; there were so many tiny bones in the hand and at first glance it seemed as if all of them had been broken. The broken wrist bent the clawed digit in towards Drake's torso, and Damian could set and splint the forearm. That would be easy. Putting the hand and fingers back into alignment was another story.

Damian closed his eyes and considered his options.

His grandfather could have had Drake treated or at least exposed him to the Lazarus Pit. That Ra's never took that step was either a sign of respect to the boy he had once called Detective or a message to Damian. It could very well be both. No, Ra's would not give assistance without requiring repayment.

His mother's facilities were on the other side of the compound. Todd could easily carry Drake there, and the doctors would do as Damian commanded. They were immensely qualified, but morally dubious. Such an incident would not go unreported. He would owe his mother a favor, and she held enough of his weaknesses in her hand.

Damian could let the hand heal in the current deformed shape. Drake wouldn't feel the pain, and such a disability would significantly lessen his worth to Ra's al Ghul. Continued use of the hand was very much at stake, and the loss would save Drake in the short run, but if Drake ever recovered his senses . . . nothing could undo Damian's choice.

As if there was ever a choice; Damian was in debt.

It took a few more moments to decide upon the best way to accomplish his task. Damian had to rearrange Drake on the bed, pushing his predecessor into a supported seated position, bending the undamaged leg and sitting as closely as possible without jarring the other. He took a heavy (likely valuable) book that had been a gift from his mother and used the broad leather-bound surface as a makeshift table.

Drake's hand must be splayed flat, and Damian could feel the grind of bone and the occasional crack under his touch. Drake was silent, and Damian returned to his monologue to fill the silence.

"My grandfather could have healed you, Timothy," he muttered. "He likes you. You are useful. So why does he leave you broken for me to fix every time?"

The hand finally laid flat against the book, and Damian pressed the bones just above the wrist into alignment quickly. It was always wiser to begin large and work one's way down rather than risk the upset of the minutiae work upon one final correction.

"None of this is as bad as it looks," Damian scoffed, feeling along the line of Drake's thumb and index finger. "It must have hurt a great deal and perhaps could have damaged you psychologically if you were actually in control. This looks like torture," Damian gestured at the hand, "but it is certainly not fatal. What does my grandfather want from this Timothy?"

Four broken fingers, three dislocated, and there was clearly damage to the third and fourth metacarpal. Veins stand out darker than ever under Drake's pale skin and the only blood comes from a torn away nail on the smallest finger.

"Honestly, it looks as if you lost a battle with a meat grinder and slammed your hand in a door for good measure," Damian scolded, losing his train of thought as he carefully, slowly realigned the tiny bones one-by-one. "What have you been doing?"

Damian must go slowly. He must take his time and do this right.

Unfortunately, this gave Damian plenty of time to consider what Ra's al Ghul might be hoping to accomplish by this regular habit of borrowing and then returning Drake in non-fatal pieces. The only thing Damian possessed of any value to his grandfather was Drake, and the Demon's Head already borrowed the man freely. This could only be a test of some sort, and Damian never fully understood the points that his mother and grandfather were trying to make.

"Tt—and on my birthday too," Damian murmured. As if his birthday ever meant anything else in this world.

He doesn't know when Drake's birthday is—sometime in the summer, July maybe—but he hadn't cared before. He couldn't even pin down the season of Todd's or Brown's date of birth. No way to celebrate if he did have the specifics.

It was immaterial.

Damian hummed low in his throat and cut his new drawing pencils down to the appropriate lengths for splinting Drake's fingers.

This is what the other Robins remember.

This is what Tim remembered after everything.

Tim fought every step of the way. He wrestled against harming Dick on Talia's command. He struggled stubbornly for two years as his body took orders from the little demon. He waged a tiresome battle every time Ra's al Ghul toyed with the metaphorical leash. He fought a futile war every time he killed under the Demon's Head.

He wanted out.

Ra's al Ghul knew it. He sought out Tim's company on missions that any competent ninja could handle, and spent the time prodding at the barriers erected by Talia's drug. Tim was a time bomb, and Ra's knew it. Ra's left him in the midst of Leviathan with total access to the Demon Head's unwitting descendants.

Tim had been fighting the whole time. He thinks that might be why he recovered the fastest the one and only time the convulsions fully played out. He managed to come off the floor upon coming to. It resulted in a spectacular face plant as his shaky body refused to recover as fast as his mind. It was an improvement though: Jason was twitching as his higher metabolism burned through the drugs at a faster rate, but Dick was motionless—drugged again—and Steph still convulsing.

If Tim could just gain control . . . he had a plan.

In the meantime, he could only let his surroundings taunt him with simple math—there were four other bodies on the floor. Damian in an unconscious heap between Dick and Steph, three white pills fallen from his hand and a pool of vomit under his chin. The teenager was bruised, bloody, and Tim didn't know what had happened here.

There was a plan. Technically, there were several plans: crush the pills (Talia could bring more at any time), check on Steph, and as soon as he could make intelligible sound . . . call for Kon.

Tim just had to be patient and wait for full feeling to return to his limbs. He needed to allow the drugged cloud to clear, and his senses to work for him instead of against him.

Damian's lips were turning blue.

Tim crawled—flailed with direction, more like—and used his body as leverage to push Damian away from the vomit and into a rough approximation of the recovery position (his fingers are stiff and numb . . . they won't work, and Tim was worse than useless without his hands). The movement staggered the former vigilante, his vision disappearing in a kaleidoscope of red, black, and gold. It was the uniform gone wrong and the scent of blood was too strong to exist solely in his memories.

In preventing asphyxiation, Tim had opened a wound that Damian's dead weight must have been keeping sufficient pressure on. There was a gaping hole in Damian's side under the blood-smeared hand, and Damian must have known that he needed medical attention, Tim decided as he listed to the side. His vision was starting to clear again. Bloodstained tile, vomit smeared across the teenager's face (it's not bloody and that means his organs are probably more or less intact—Tim knew these things from experience), and the last three little white pills just beyond the cleaner hand's finger tips.

Tim hated those pills. They stole his willpower every morning.

Damian didn't know that. The teenager was under the impression that those pills were the only thing keeping them all alive, and he'd risked his own life to ensure the others received their 'medication.' With a growl that didn't even remotely sound like Timothy Drake once had, Tim pushed his small, otherwise-useless hand into the gap.

It was sufficient to stop the blood flow.

It meant Tim couldn't fight back when Talia arrived with her doctors, but his little useless hand saved Damian's life.

"Grandson, might I borrow one of your toys?"

Damian turned to face his grandfather. "I am afraid Drake would be quite useless to you in his present condition."

That seemed to surprise the Demon's Head; it's a new step in their little game. He paused, tilting his head as if to better see Damian from a new angle, and then continued: "One always has a few uses for a Detective."

"Perhaps you should consult the one in Gotham," Damian returned modestly.

"With his son and heir at hand," Ra's marveled deceptively, "I should think not."

"You should know that the Batman would not recognize me as such, Grandfather." Damian crossed his arms, intending to wait the Demon's Head out. "I have it on good authority that he also considers me a poor detective."

"No detective is infallible," Ra's shrugged easily; there's a new casualness about the man that sets Damian's teeth on edge. He attributed it to the current form Ra's held, although perhaps even Ra's al Ghul can adapt. "I know a great many things that the Detective does not know. Even more wonders that you are not yet aware of, Grandson."

Damian gave a dismissive snort. He would not do so in front of his mother, but Ra's al Ghul could not retaliate here in the current stronghold of the Leviathan. He was not as powerful as he had once been.

"Uninterested, Grandfather," and Damian left it at that, bowing out of habit before turning and walking away.

He almost reached the end of the hallway when Ra's called out after him in the regal quiet of the command of the Demon's Head: "Even if what I know is the reason your father will not welcome you home."

It was not a question. Ra's al Ghul was incapable of asking questions to which he did not already know the answer. Damian wanted more than anything to understand why his Father would not believe him over Talia. What had his mother shown the man to convince him of Damian's disloyalty?

Ra's smiled. "Come walk with me, Grandson."

They 'walked' in the garden, quietly at first with only the half-heard steps of the bodyguard that Ra's had brought with him for the visit, and then they talked of treason. It had been most enlightening, even if Damian already knew some of the delicate rebellions on both sides.

Talia and Ra's had reached an uneasy truce long ago.

That wasn't to say the Demon's Head was without rules while in Talia's domain. His visits were encouraged, but Ra's was limited to a single guard whilst in his daughter's territory. It was a bitter pill for the man to swallow given his loss of the White Ghost.

Damian was painfully reminded of the cautionary tale of King Lear, and felt Talia's sense of security was hyperbolic at best.

Damian never suggested as much to his mother; he wasn't there to serve Talia or Leviathan. His loyalties lay elsewhere. He had other responsibilities to consider when playing his ancestors' games. As long as the Robins lived, Damian was leashed. It made no difference to him who held the chain, but it could be life or death for the others.

Ra's al Ghul liked to play with a full hand of cards.

At the moment, the Demon's Head seemed content with just Damian. His plan was simple enough; undermine Talia's organization from within while whittling away any opportunity for growth from without. Ra's had been 'taking care of' the opposition and thus, any organization powerful enough to make a worthy ally for a few years. Damian would ensure that the rumors of Talia's inability to lead were fanned into flames powerful enough to bring Leviathan down.

"Your mother believes that she has successfully won you over, little Demon," Ra's told him, almost affectionately. "She believes that you will stay where she has put you and do as she commands while she raises her new little prince. Your mother thinks that she controls all, but she is mistaken. She does not control your thoughts," Ra's raised a hand to Damian's head, brushing against the teenager's temple gently before bringing the hand to his own face. "She does not control the Demon's head," Ra's smiled again at the play on words.

"Mother wants us to be a family," Damian said simply. "Is it so hard to play those roles, Grandfather?"

"Is it so hard to live your father's law in the home of your mother?" Ra's returned knowingly.

Damian bit back a reply that would win him nothing.

"Suppose we do as you propose and grant my daughter her wishes for just a little longer," Ra's suggested after a few moments later. "Surely, it is good for a man to spend time with his fatherless grandsons—to take them under his wing and train them in the ways of men?"

"Tt—Mother has very little use for men in her new world order, Grandfather," Damian replied. "Have you not noticed the favor granted to St. Hadrian's? Or her preferred retinue? Look at Todd, her footstool or the manbats that make up her expendable army." Damian stared out over the flowers that Talia had so little time for, but kept up in her more public homes. "I am not entirely sure why she bothered with Benjamin or myself at all. Any number of scientists could guarantee her gender selection and a daughter to sculpt in her own image."

He tried to shake off that haunting notion.

"No, that would not be an argument to serve Mother at all."

"I believe, Grandson, that the irony is the main appeal." Ra's began to walk once more. "You, the very vision of your Father being raised in our world with blood on your hands and the terrible clash of separate creeds in your very genes, are both everything your Mother and I wished for at the time of your creation and a possible undoing of our line. So if you will assist me in bringing down my errant daughter, I will offer you a choice as your reward."

Damian waited quietly.

"When my daughter has fallen, you may rejoin your Father in Gotham with the knowledge of how he was tricked—no, I will not give it to you now—and be Robin once more . . . or, my dear little one, you may stay with me as my heir once more, a trusted and valued member of my organization."

That was an alarming concession either way.

Damian hesitated. "The others?"

"A dreadful waste of talent," Ra's sniffed. "I have no use for them now without a capable handler. Already, I have had to execute the few half dozen to whom I entrusted the younger Detective in my quest for your attention because of their failure. The former heroes are yours."

"Benjamin? Is he your next vessel?"

Ra's snorted. "Do you remember the implants your Mother once had placed in your spine? Did the Detective have them removed?"

No, the implants from that misadventure had stayed firmly lodged in his spinal cord. Pennyworth said that to remove them could very well kill Damian. That natural growth could very well paralyze the young Robin for life if even one implant was a millimeter flawed in placement.

"Grayson destroyed her machines."

"Machines can be rebuilt. Scientists remember or relearn, and the al Ghul live for a very long time."

Damian suddenly felt cold. If his mother could take over . . .

Ra's stopped him this time, two strong hands wrapped around Damian's shoulders. "She has no need of further method to pull strings, Grandson. Not at the present, but as a reminder that it can be developed, she had those implants placed in your brother's spine as well. That particular process was not lost." He let go of Damian. "I will not take a vessel another could control. There is time, and there are other descendants."

That particular tidbit did not surprise Damian, although he would wager his mother remained unaware. "Then why me?"

"Irony, little Demon," Ra's al Ghul teased, and Damian found it as discomfiting as the man's ability to shrug. A grandfather prone to ridiculous and generous gifts, grand gestures certainly, but nothing so mundane as gentle teasing. The Demon's Head must miss Drake's wit indeed. "To answer your other question, Grandson, Benjamin, I will also make a gift to you regardless of your choice. Send him to Gotham, stow him away safely, or keep him at your side—I would see what you make of your match."

"What must I do?"

"Continue as you are now. Tend to your brother, fulfill my daughter's orders, and listen before you speak." That was pointed; a lesson hard-won only after years in Gotham which Damian must now prove to his Grandfather as well. "Play my daughter's game, and in the hour when she is certain of her triumph over your spirit, you will defect to my side . . . leaving Talia al Ghul with nothing to show for her obsession with Bruce Wayne and nowhere for Leviathan to grow under her hand."

"You want Mother to return to you," Damian realized.

"She is my daughter," Ra's acknowledged. "I love her still as my greatest treasure."

"But you intend to kill her," Damian murmured, uneasily taking in the garden. It's his mother's favorite place for secrets, free of all surveillance, and that is why Ra's has chosen to 'walk' here.

Ra's is quiet for several long moments. "I do. My daughter has suffered much at my hand and at the hands of others. Mistakes have been made, damage has been done, and I have allowed all of it to happen. Obsession now clouds what was once interest. Love has been twisted, perverted, by betrayal, and I own a portion of that lie as does the Detective. My lovely daughter is not all she once was, and I would not have her suffer needlessly."

Damian remembered his mother differently once upon a time. She was distant, and Damian a trophy at times, but there were moments when she had touched his hair in the way that she stroked Benjamin's. There were occasions when her manipulations were sweet as honey, and he believed her willingly enough as a child. She loved him in her own way even as nothing went according to plan once she involved his father.

She was his mother, and Damian loved her.

"Death is cheap, little Demon," Ra's offered. "Think about it, Grandson, you will know the moment when the decision must be made. I will continue. My visits will not be altered, and your little flock will be safe if you attend to my missions alongside them. Leave your Mother's fate until the time comes and her fight crumbles."

"Mother calls it a war," Damian reflected. "The story only ends with either Mother or Father dead."

"No, Damian," his grandfather corrected. "This is your story and it begins and ends with who you are. It asks, What will you become?" Ra's tucked his own knife into Damian's belt. "It will end when you can answer that question alone."