On the eleventh day of Christmas (just one more!) my true muse gave to me, 'Damian, Gingerbread House/Men'. Now, Damian has been very absent from my stories so far, but this was a lot of fun. (Gee, seems like I keep saying that about all of these.) You get Damian being a little bastard, and Bruce still playing the part of the Dad who cannot believe he has somehow accumulated all these sons, and doesn't know how to handle them.
There are no warnings for this except referenced murder, and really if that kind of thing freaks you out I don't know why you're even here, considering what else is in these stories. XD It's a little short, but the scene was done and I was so not going to mess with what wasn't broken. Enjoy!
"Father, what is the point of this?"
"It's tradition, Damian," I answer easily, over my tablet and not even looking up to see exactly what it is that my youngest is actually talking about. The only thing he's asked that about for the past two weeks has been various Christmas decorations or events. I bless Talia for teaching my son to fight, and the hundred other things she made sure he knew, but I would have appreciated it if she'd also bothered to teach him anything about the actual world beyond the walls of her stronghold. Anything at all.
"Another one of your Christmas traditions?" he asks, and I can hear the sneer in his voice.
"Yes, Damian," I answer, considering the four different cameras pulled up on the tablet and the recorded fights playing on them.
None have been near Gotham, in fact all of them have been in an entirely different continent, so the quality is bad enough — pieced together from a dozen different traffic cameras, cell phones, etc. — that even I can't attempt fixing them. It was difficult enough to put together at all, but the effort doesn't matter. I'll take any information on my missing son, Jason, that I can get, no matter how bad. I have to keep track of him, I have to make sure that he never gets the chance to ambush any one of us again. I've almost lost Tim three times now, and Dick once. I will not risk any of my sons to Jason again, and I won't let him at Damian.
I can't deny wanting him back — he's my son — but that won't come at the expense of my other three children. It can't.
"You have a tradition that involves creating small men out of dough, as well as houses, and then destroying and eating them to prove your supremacy?"
I blink and look up, finding Damian perched on the opposite side of the table — just sitting, thankfully, not standing — considering the collection of gingerbread men and the house that appeared this morning, courtesy of Alfred. He has a look on his face that I've learned to be wary of, however I've also learned that there's generally no way to stop whatever idea has caused the look in the first place.
"I don't think that was the intention of it," I clarify, watching him as he watches them, "but yes."
"Then what was the intention?" he asks, a small frown on his face. It is something between disturbing and impressive that even at ten years old, he manages to have an adult's frown. I still don't know where he got that sneer from either.
"Does the original intention matter?" I counter, looking back down at the tablet in time to see the end of the fight in the upper right recording, where Jason crushes his opponent's throat with one boot. "It's not anything more than a holdover now, Damian. You're fully aware that all of the standard 'Christmas' traditions were cannibalized from various other religions and rites throughout the years."
"Yes, but which one was this?" Damian presses, and for a moment I reflect that this must be what other parents always complained about. The never-ending stream of questions about things you take for granted, or never considered.
Except that my son is an assassin, was one even before he came to me, and I didn't expect to have to answer these kinds of things considering the fact that he is both a trained killer and of above average intelligence. I was expecting raising him to be much like raising Tim, who only ever asked a question if he couldn't find the answer on his own. I was not expecting to be doing this much explaining.
"I don't know," I admit, glancing back up at him. "If you're interested, look it up. Or ask Alfred. I have work to do, Damian."
"No you don't," my son counters, and I stare at him for a second, until he looks up at me for the first time. He arches one eyebrow with a look of disdain that I know he practices. It's also copied straight from Ra's al Ghul, I've seen that look many times. "If you had work to do you would be in the Roost, father. You are not, therefore you don't have true work to do, only idle work. You're just keeping busy."
Unfortunately, that's true. Keeping track of Jason is a priority, but it's also something that's done completely by automatic on my computer. Any hits that come up will prompt an alert for me, and all I have to do is piece together the footage or simply watch it. I've seen these four videos before, I'm merely scanning them again for anything I may have missed in my last several viewings. It's coming up on Christmas pretty quickly, and usually I use that time to plan out strategies for the coming year, but most of my preparation for that is already done. Apart from a standard patrol, and it isn't late enough for that, there isn't anything that needs to be done. I'm stalled on nearly everything else, as Owlman and as head of Wayne Enterprises, waiting for other people to respond.
It's frustrating, honestly. I'm the first to admit that the lack of anything productive to do isn't something I handle particularly well. At this point, I'm considering calling Dick to see if he wants to spar. Tim would say no, and with Damian I'd have to restrain myself and teach instead of letting loose. Right at the moment it's simple excess energy that I'm looking to burn off, with something that will consume my attention and focus. It's been a long time since I've had excess energy of any kind. I wish it had come at a time when I could actually use it for anything.
I set the tablet down on the table, watching Damian as he picks up one of the gingerbread men to turn it between his fingers. It's a lot of studying focus for something so completely mundane and honestly, common.
"The rest of my statements still stand," I tell him, and he sets the man back down inside the dish they're laid out in, with the others. He looks up, and the look is enough to make me just a little wary. Damian probably can't hurt me — badly, and physically — but that's the same look he had before he went on a killing spree through the shrubbery outside, and then later on when he all but demolished his room looking for surveillance devices, and found them all.
I chose to consider that last one as an impromptu training exercise, for the sake of my own sanity. It's probably a bad thing that 'training exercise' has become an excuse among my sons for just about everything. There are days I'm almost convinced that Jason is going to turn up one day and claim that this was all just an exercise to see what we'd do if one of our own betrayed us.
He won't, of course. Jason's anger is real, and dangerous.
"I wish to create a replica of Gotham with this, 'gingerbread'," Damian states calmly, with every inch of determination that makes me so proud of him and, occasionally, resigned to his existence. "You will help, father, since you have no work to attend to. Alfred will help as well, as will my predecessor." His lips curl into a sneer as he looks down his nose in distaste, with every combined drop of his mother's arrogance and mine. "Dick is not allowed in the house until it is done."
He nods once, like it's settled, and slips off the table to pad silently into the kitchen. I blink, and then smother a sigh as I get up to follow him, leaving my tablet on the table.
I suppose it could be much worse. All things considered, creating a model replica of Gotham with gingerbread is far simpler and less destructive than I expected. Even barring Dick from the house is a small price to pay for keeping Damian focused on a project like this, and therefore keeping him out of trouble. Tim will, of course, make sure it's done accurately as well. I'll help for as long as I have nothing to do, and then leave the rest to them.
Maybe, if I'm lucky, this will take them a couple of weeks to complete. And if I'm even more lucky, some business will crop up for me and I'll be able to excuse myself from helping. Though there is the question of where Damian expects to put this replica…
Well, it's too late now. Ah well.
So in continuity, this is the year after 'You're a Mean One', and one year before 'Auld Lang Syne'. I'm slowly filling in my empty spaces. Jason has done some serious damage to Bruce/Dick/Tim, including the 'three stabbings' that Tim references, but hasn't yet had the chance to go after Damian (I am undecided, as of yet, whether Damian has taken over the role of Talon at this point). I actually know, in my head, exactly how that whole confrontation goes. I'll be writing more of that later XD
Alright, so I put together the master list! It has the correct reading order for these pieces, and I'll be updating it as I add more to this universe in other series. Please consult my profile for it, or head over to Archive of Our Own, where it's way more convenient and easy to read. Over there, I'm the same username (Skalidra), and everything in this continuity will be put into a series for convenience.
Just one left guys, just one, and I will just say this now. I am so sorry. See you tomorrow!
