Damian had slender fingers. Strong, rough finger, yes, but you could never tell those hands were able to kill. They looked like musician's hands.

Dick didn't say that, just watched as they worked on picking out all of the broken glass from the fallen chandelier from his arm.

He tried to find the ten-year-old he once knew in the stranger in front of him, but the stranger was so damn distracting. Damian the boy had hard features, he wasn't an ugly kid, but… most of the time he didn't really look like a kid, too serious, too angry. The Damian in front of him was… Old Hollywood. All melancholy and long stares into the distance, kinda like a young Alain Delon, but you know… murderous and not French.

"You are staring." Dick startled at the sound of Damian's voice.

"It's my arm you're poking at, gotta keep an eye on you."

Dick waits for the 'I've been suturing wounds since I was six months old, Grayson.', but Damian doesn't even dignify him with an eye roll, it's more like a tiny eyebrow shrug.

It's almost like Damian has run out of real words for the day; he brought Dick food and was patching his wounds, not seeming to care that his own were unattended, and though the silence between them wasn't absolute, it wasn't companionable either.

"Why don't you just leave?" Dick asked after Damian put the tweezers down "I can tell you hate it here, and if you know how to get out, why don't you just pack and go?"

Damian rubbed his eyes and blinked a couple of times, he'd been straining them in concentration for quite a while cleaning Dick's arm "You should eat."

"So you're gonna pretend I'm not asking you anything?"

"I would recommend the cherries, they are particularly sweet."

"Damian, you killed a guy back there."

The smile Damian gives him is unreal. It's slow and hard, full of sharp teeth and malicious intent. "The shower is over there" he points, but Dick doesn't turn to look where, still unable to get over the look in Damian's eyes "After you're finished I'll wrap your wounds."

Yeah, like Dick will let him get within arm's reach after that creepy face "You have no idea how to handle this, do you? You promised you'd get me home, but getting me home means you care about my safety in some level, and if you care Talia can use me as a pawn in her little war against you. I mean, I don't get why you two are at war in the first place, but that's it, isn't it?"

Damian watched blankly as Dick paced and ranted, the half-moon marks left by Talia's fingernails were bright red with blood on his cheek "I meant it as…" his eyes get distant as he thinks of a word "appreciation. You were in my position when we first met and you took me in after father was believed dead, allowed me to bare the mantle of Robin, tried to turn me into a suitable partner…" he shrugged one shoulder "I was merely attempting to repay you the courtesy. If it annoys you, I could just ignore you completely."

He demonstrated that by getting up and moving to the furthest corner of the bedroom where there was a desk and began looking over a map.

"Hey, wait. What do you mean I was in your position when we first met?"

Damian starts scribbling on a slip of paper "Go shower, go eat. I do not have time for this."

"You said you don't want me here, so… You think I didn't want you there?" Dick leans forward, staring baffled at Damian who sighs looking up.

"I forgot how hard to ignore you can be." Dick opens his mouth, ready to make Damian listen to him, because this whole thing is too fucking crazy but Damian is faster "No." he points to the bathroom door in a way that reminds Dick of Bruce "Go shower. Eat. Sleep. Then we'll talk."

"You remember I'm not really your pet or whatever, right? 'Cause you keep ordering me around like it slipped your mind."

"I will not address you anymore until you have stopped looking like a homeless person."

Dick sits down with a huff and starts stuffing his face with anything he can reach from the platter of food Damian brought earlier. The cherries are fantastically sweet. It's so fucking infuriating.

He didn't even realize how hungry he had been until that moment, so he decided to let Damian look through his maps and write in his stupid notebook for the time being.

Fucking cherries.

The shower was amazing, in fact, if this wasn't pretty much a hostage situation, he'd be having a blast. It occurred to him that maybe this was some attempt to pull a Stockholm Syndrome on him, and he seriously appreciated the effort, the shower was that awesome.

When he got out, Damian was gone. Which, by the way, only proved he was his parents' son. He bribed him with great stuff – Talia – then disappeared – Bruce.

Dick pondered his choices – which weren't many – and came to the conclusion that he really wanted to go back to that bedroom with all the drawing pinned to the headboard. So he did.

This time, no one interrupted him on the way there, actually he didn't hear a single sound, like the whole place was empty. The bedroom looked pretty much the same as Dick remembered, and there was Titus, drawn with pencil staring at him with his doggy grin.

On a different sheet he spotted Gotham's skyline and on the other various sketches of Damian's face, sleeping, with Alain Delon's distant stare, with his face completely bloodied... Not one with a smile, not even that creepy mockery of a grin he used on Dick before.

On the bedside table he found an unfinished drawing with three people, two men and a woman, on what looked like it was going to be a forest. Dick wondered who those were.

He wanted to snoop some more, but all of the pictures were pinned too close together and by moving one he'd misplace the others and someone was bound to notice and the rest of the room didn't have anything of interest, nothing personal.

The return to Damian's bedroom also presented no trouble and Damian was nowhere to be seen. Dick sat down on the couch feeling more than a little bitter resigned himself with waiting.

Against his wishes, but with nothing better to do, he dozed off.

His eyes opened slightly to see Damian sitting on the window, eating cherries distractedly. Dick wanted to say something, anything, but he blinked first, well, he thought he blinked, but he must've slept again because this time, he was alone again.

Pissed beyond imagination, Dick stomped to the door, not caring who he would have to go through to get the hell out of there, and found himself face to face with a bloodied Damian.

It wasn't like the sketch, he wasn't sporting a clever look and a devil may care attitude, Damian was roughed up, bruises forming and peaking over his collar and sleeves.

"Oh" Damian said flatly "You're still here." And pushed Dick out of the way.

"What happened?!" Dick stepped closer only to be pushed away again "Is that your blood?"

Damian didn't answer and sat down on the bed slowly. "Richard, may I tell you something?"

Not exactly what Dick was expecting but… "Okay."

"You should kill me. If you were smart, you would kill me and leave." Damian's eyes were glazed over and unseeing.

"What?" Dick asks mildly horrified.

"You would have a forty minutes head start. Plenty of time to vanish before anyone even notices you're gone. There are ways to leave this place undetected."

"I'm not gonna kill you, Damian."

"Of course not, you're not that smart. But you'd have my permission. He wouldn't understand, at first and would come after you."

"Who?"

Damian kept speaking through Dick's question "But you'd make him see reason." he stared at his hands and tried to wipe the blood on the thighs of his pants "You would take him in and he would be everything you had expected of me."

"I don't understand."

Damian brings a finger to his lips, effectively silencing Dick. He's oddly alert now as he motions for Dick to step back further away, something Dick is about to question when he sees the ninja.

There's no other way to call the intruder, who'd look almost cartoonish if not for the sharp looking scimitar he's carrying.

Damian is limp now, head bowed to his chest, as if he passed out that way, the ninja raises the scimitar over his head and strikes.

Dick was already jumping in when Damian grabbed the blade with his naked hand. The blood flow was impressive, scary, but the move startled the ninja enough for Damian to have time to grab the intruder's head with his free hand and pulls it down while shoving the scimitar up.

The suffocated noise that escaped the ninja's lips only lasted a second and he fell heavily.

"Shit, Damian, your hand" Dick breathes and searches around for the first aid kit used on his own wounds earlier. Damian's hand on his shoulder stops him.

"I have never asked you for anything, and I need you to promise me he'll be safe with you." Beneath all the blood, his face is ashen "In fact, make sure he stays away from father as well, I want him to have at least a small chance at being somehow mentally stable."

"What are you talking about?"

"Promise me." Damian demands in a growl through gritted teeth with closed eyes.

"I do." Dick says quickly, because what else was he supposed to do? "I promise."

Damian actually sags in relief, but suddenly is letting go of Dick's shoulder and grabbing his own, expression scrunching in anger and pain like he was just shot, and yet when he turns to face Dick he's almost smiling, and it's not the creepy one "That's good" his eyes are dropping and so is his body "That's good…" Damian repeats before falling face first in his pillow, already sleeping.

Now that was weird.

Not just the talk, but the way Damian passed out. It couldn't be from an injured shoulder; Dick had seen firsthand when Damian was shot several times and got immobilized, and even then the kid was completely awake – and bitching – pain is not really an issue. His reaction looked a lot like he'd been injected with something.

Which was even weirder.

And the things Damian said… Dick tries to make sense of that little chat, but can't for the life of him imagine who Damian would want to protect so bad. Could the kid be hallucinating?

Who the hell knew what kind of stuff was in the kid's system, maybe Talia over did it this time. Thankfully Damian was still breathing.

"Brother?" a tiny voice hoarse with sleep called from the door and Dick watched in amazement as a small, skinny boy padded his way to Damian's bed on bare feet "Brother," the boy moaned climbing on the mattress "you are not supposed to be asleep, you know that!"

Dick doesn't expect Damian to acknowledge anything or anyone at that point, but he murmured a "I'm not asleep." muffled by the pillow, then shifted his head enough to show the boy a flash of teeth that could've been a smile and his nearly mangled hand lifted, almost on its own accord to touch a fingertip to the boy's cheek in what looked like a light caressing motion.

The boy huffed, shoulders dropping and he takes hold of the hand sliding tiny fingers down the wrist towards the elbow "Liar."

Damian was out like a light again. The boy frowned at that and touched two fingers to Damian's neck – checking his vitals, Dick realized – then sat back and looked straight at Dick, like he'd known there was someone there the whole time.

And staring directly at the boy's face blew Dick's mind. That was Damian. Same eyes, nose, mouth, only around 7 or 8 years old. There was a symbol on the other side of his face, and it dawned on Dick that Damian hadn't caressed the boy, he had drawn on his cheek with blood. Dick couldn't make out the symbol.

Talia engineered another child.

Suddenly that whole promise talk started to make sense in some bizarre Twilight Zone kind of way.

"You're brother's pet, aren't you?" the boy asked, supporting his elbow on Damian's hip and leaning his head on his hand, completely focused on Dick.

Dick wanted to deny that, but his brain had shut down and he couldn't think of any way to explain the situation, and… well, what was the point? "Yeah, I guess."

"I'm not allowed to have a pet yet. Mother says I'm much too young." Dick shuddered thinking about what Talia meant by that "But brother told me he'd give me a pet I would actually enjoy. I believe he means a horse." the boy finished thoughtfully "What does he call you?"

Dick is about to say his first name when he rethinks the question "Grayson."

"Grayson." the boy echoes, eyes wide with wonder "He must've named you after the knight."

"What knight?"

"The Knight Wing. Haven't you heard the story?"

It feels like being bitch slapped with words. Dick catches himself staring at Damian's sleeping form and forces his attention back to the little boy "I don't think I know that one…" he clears his throat "Can you tell me?"

The smile he gets is so bright it's almost blinding. Damian – the big one – has never looked that happy about anything. "I know everything that's happened so far, but…" the boy starts, clearly trying to contain his excitement "Brother tells it so much better than I ever could. He does the characters voices."

Dick smiles at that. Now he knows it's not Damian, no matter how much they look alike. Damian would never admit being second to anyone "I'm sure you'll be great."


A/N.: Turns out you guys are just as creepy as I am, 'cause last chapter got me a ton of followers!

Not that I'm complaining, us creeps have to unite. In fact, I apreciated the faves and follows very, very much! As I said, it's what keeps this moving.

I hope you guys enjoy this one too, stuff's about to go a little (a lot) crazy