Allowing Maya into the Batcave was a mistake.
She has already surveyed the Batmobiles, attempted to log onto the Batcave computer, and criticized Father's setup – it's not really as water resistant as it could be like this, she said. Damian said that the lack of resistance was the point – if the Batcave should become damaged beyond repair, the files need to be lost, in case they fall into enemy hands.
Now, she's looking through the medical supplies.
"Ducard, don't you have anything to do besides snoop?" Damian asks.
Maya shakes her head. "Hey, I'm a guest. Guests can't snoop."
Damian grabs the vial out of her hands and glimpses at the label. Licodaine. For local anesthetic. "Then what are you doing?"
"I'm inventory-ing your supplies, obviously," Maya says while smiling so much she nearly shuts her eyes. "That's what your dad told you to do, right?"
… She is entirely too happy about this.
"Father asked me to check what supplies we were running low on, and I said that you could keep me company," Damian says, putting careful emphasis on the last half of his phrase. "He did not give you permission to do it for me – "
"Well when has your dad's permission ever stopped you?" Maya asks, interrupting him.
Damian crosses his arms and frowns slightly, so that she knows he's not amused.
Maya rolls her eyes – Damian's not sure why – and Damian takes advantage of her distraction to put the licodaine back. Hmm. They're getting a little low on anesthetic. He notes that down.
"The amount of medical supplies you guys have is kind of macabre," Maya continues as Damian counts.
"Macabre? How is it macabre?"
Maya laughs.
Why is she laughing at him?
"You sound so offended," she continues.
"I would rather have them and not need them then need them and not have them," Damian says as he shuts the cabinet. "Yes, it reminds us we might get injured. But we have gotten injured in the field. There's not a one of us who didn't."
Maya swallows slightly.
She doesn't like to think about the possibility. That's why it's macabre to her.
Thinking about the possibility – well it's easier for Damian to think about himself getting injured than his family members. Healing and not being able to go out is frustrating. But he also knows that he can take it.
"We had supplies like this on the submarine," Maya says. "But we didn't need to use them very often."
Damian doesn't bother asking who we was. He knows she's referring to her and her father... whom Damian killed.
Damian never knows how to talk about Ducard to Maya. She knows that he killed him. She even forgave him for it, which Damian doesn't know if he'd ever be able to do, had someone done the same thing to his father, even if they did change. But... Damian never asks about him. He doesn't want to hurt her, and he doesn't want to remember all of the bad things he's done.
If Maya's aware of Damian's discomfort, she pretends not to notice: "My dad got injured pretty infrequently. It helps if the bad guys never see you coming."
Damian nods. He can agree with that at least. "You should use a more subtle ranged weapon," he says, "to exploit your invisibility better. Melee necessitates getting up close, and your sonics, though powerful, come in waves that give your position away – "
"Nobody likes a backseat fighter," Maya says. But her voice is light enough that Damian knows she's not really annoyed.
Damian keeps up the teasing: It will keep them distracted, keep her from thinking about her father again. "If you don't want my fighting advice, perhaps you don't want my sword-fighting lessons," he says, while tilting his head up.
"I'll just watch you," Maya says. Then, she injects a bit of mockery and derision into her tone – in a joking manner – and adds, "I don't need official lessons to learn how to fight, who needs those?"
Damian lets himself smile slightly.
He is excited to share with her his sword-fighting skills, though. She's created a truly ingenious invention – a sword with a retractable blade, with the option to hook into an energy from her sonics, to either electrocute foes or create an energy shield to dull the blade enough to make it non-lethal.
He doesn't need such a device to avoid lethal blows, but he can see why a less experienced sword-fighter would appreciate it.
"We got more medical supplies," Maya says, opening up a drawer.
Damian shoves it shut. "Those aren't medical supplies."
Maya tries to open it again, and Damian relents and lets her. He doesn't want them arguing over something like children to destroy Father's equipment.
She takes out a syringe. "They look pretty medical-y to me."
"It's a cabinet and refrigerator designed for keeping poisons," Damian explains.
Maya raises an eyebrow. "What do good guys need poison for?"
"Comparing unknown samples in the field to what we have the antipoisons for. Recognizing the effects to best administer the correct antidote. Building a resistance. You can use them for lots of things."
"You sound like a traveling poison salesman."
Damian sighs. He's pretty sure the only reason Maya came along was out of boredom, to bother him.
"What's this?" Maya asks, as she takes yet another vial out of the fridge.
"Truth serum, put it back."
Maya snorts. "You have a resistance to truth serum?" She sounds doubtful.
"I have moderate resistance to all of the poisons present, including some not in Father's collection. Now put it back please."
Maya holds the vial out to him. "Prove it."
She's goading him into wasting time. He knows she is.
He shakes his head.
Maya takes a syringe out. Damian does not like where this is going. "Put that back this instant, Ducard – "
"Relax, I'm not going to try to stick you with anything," Maya says. She rests the body of the syringe – thankfully not the needle – between her teeth and rolls up her sleeve. "I'm not an asshole."
"Disagree on that last point." Damian grabs Maya's hand, preventing her from injecting herself.
"Oh, come on, you're allowed to masochistically build up a poison-resistance but I'm not?" she asks.
Damian narrows his eyes. This is... bizarre for Maya. He's not sure why she lept to this so quickly, and simple boredom does not explain it. Still, if he's not going to be able to talk her out of it... "There's nothing masochistic about training, and if you insist on injecting yourself you need to sanitize the site. Otherwise you could get an infection."
Maya rolls her eyes again.
Damian puts on gloves and sanitizes a quarter-sized circle of Maya's arm with rubbing alcohol, then, since he has more experience in the matter anyway and she doesn't know the proper dose, injects her with the lowest dosage of truth serum.
"Whatever you are wanting to happen will take affect soon," Damian explains.
"You act like you've had practice with this," Maya says. "Medical stuff in general, I mean."
"Well, I am capable of carrying out surgery – "
"Liar," Maya says, and sticks her tongue out at him.
Ugh, so immature! She is not acting like the one who is three years his elder here!
"I see what you're trying to do, Ducard," Damian says. "You want to goad me into taking the truth serum with you, so that you're not alone in your bad decisions."
Maya shakes her head. "I actually don't care whether you take it or not," she says.
… It just got injected, so it probably hasn't taken affect yet.
"But I can tell you're frustrated or angry or something," she says. "You always talk stuffier the more frustrated you get."
"'Stuffier'?"
Maya snickers.
She finds too much joy in frustrating him. That's why he's frustrated!
"You know, all precise," Maya says. "'Exploit your invisibility', 'melee necessitates', 'capable of carrying out surgery' – "
"None of those words are 'stuffy'; they are all valid English!" Damian says, and cringes on the last phrase because he knows that she'll refer to valid English as 'stuffy'.
Maya shrugs. She's looking away slightly. Uncomfortably.
Something's wrong. And Damian's been too frustrated with her to see it.
He sighs, puts her needle in the sharps bin, retrieves a fresh one, and starts putting rubbing alcohol on his arm.
"What are you doing?!" Maya asks.
"I am endeavoring to keep up with your sub-optimal decision making capabilities," Damian says, intentionally choosing 'stuffier' words to goad her on.
Damian injects himself with the last dose he'd practiced at – it feels weird for a moment, just coldness – and then prickles.
"Okay, fine, whatever," Maya says. Again, slightly annoyed.
… Damian just has to help her deal with it without exploiting the truth serum she chose to inject. He doesn't want to make her talk about something she doesn't want to talk about.
"So, are you going to get back to inventory?" Maya asks.
Damian shakes his head.
"... After you were getting on about how much you had to do it and 'this isn't a game, Ducard'?" Maya asks, attempting, but failing, to vocally mimic him on the last bit.
"You were trying to distract me," Damian says. "You succeeded. You should congratulate yourself."
"I actually wasn't trying to distract you!" Maya says. "I was just bored."
Damian sighs. He was guessing that. Though he still doesn't know whether it's the truth serum or Maya talking.
"Physical assessment, Ducard," he says. "How do you feel?"
Maya shrugs and rubs the back of her neck. "A little weird," she says. "The lights are a bit brighter and it feels hot in here."
Damian nods. The serum would be taking affect soon, if it had not already.
He walks over to the sink. It's nowhere near what Alfred would consider proper to serve guests with, mostly just to wash hands or clean off evidence, but there are paper cups and the tap can come on cold, so he pours a glass for Maya.
"Thanks," Maya says as she drinks it. "I guess I was being a little impulsive."
She cringes as she says the second part. "Dang, it's coming on already."
"Of course you would never admit to impulsivity without something forcing you to," Damian says. He tries to not let his tone be accusatory, but it's hard to tell how he's coming across. "Though at least you possess the self-awareness to realize it's one of your flaws."
"And what flaws do you possess?" Maya asks.
"None, I'm perfect."
Maya snickers. "I guess yours hasn't taken affect yet."
… Damian's not sure Maya knows proper truth-serum testing procedure. It's regarded as rude to ask someone something they wouldn't otherwise admit to you.
… Though he supposes that Maya has already seen his gravest, most serious flaws. It's not as if she genuinely believes he's unaware of them. It is possible she was just making fun of him.
"I swear I will not take advantage of your mentally weakened state to make you make more of a fool of yourself than you already do on your own," Damian promises.
Maya snorts. "You're the nicest younger brother."
But even though her words are sarcastic, Damian still has to turn away in case his face betrays some blush of weakness. Every time she refers to him as her brother, it still feels new. It almost feels like a hug, but that's so sappy Damian would never admit to it out loud.
"And you're the nicest older sister," Damian says. He tries to make his tone sound sarcastic, too.
"Truth serum must not have taken affect yet," Maya says. "All of your family tries to make Cass sound like, legendarily nice."
"Drake, Brown, and Father idolize her for other reasons," Damian says. But he frowns. He can't tell if Maya is jealous of Cassandra –
which would be stupid – okay, unless it was of her fighting skills, in which case it would be understandable. But they just fill such different roles.
Of course, it's possible he's imagining a conflict where there is none. He can't ask her about it right now; he's sworn to himself – and to her – that he won't exploit the truth serum.
Damian hops up on the counter, so that he can look at Maya. She seems fine. She's just sipping from the paper cup slowly.
The first time Grayson had Damian do this, the man was so neurotic. So careful to explain – you can back out if you want, I won't think any less of you, it won't affect your training, I'm not going to ask you any serious questions just stuff like 'is the sky pink' –
It had annoyed Damian at the time. But back when Grayson was Batman, a lot of his approach to training annoyed Damian. Even if he hadn't tried this until the two had been partners for six months, until Father had already returned. Damian still had a hard time feeling like Grayson wasn't guilty of some type of weakness, just for not treating him like an assassin.
"If you wish for the full, Batman-approved training," Damian says, careful to phrase everything as a statement that does not demand a response, "You would need to learn how to analyze a crime scene. If this is you asking for that. Which it does not have to be."
Maya starts to say something, then stops. She furrows her brow and groans. "Ugh, do truth serums prevent you from being sarcastic?"
"Obviously not, as you just were."
"When?"
Damian mimics back her words to her in her own voice, simply because he can: "'You're the nicest younger brother'."
Maya leans forward. Almost angry. Damian doesn't understand, until she says, "That wasn't me being sarcastic, that was me being genuine, jerk!"
Maya cringes and covers her face with her hands.
Damian hops down from the counter and awkwardly pats her on the shoulder. He can guess that the truth serum is making it harder to regulate her emotions, too –
hell, he already wants to hug her even though nothing happened, so it must be working on him –
But something was also already going on before she took it. Whatever reason she took it.
"I apologize for believing your genuine affection was sarcastic," Damian says. And he feels he should add something on, and he can't tell if it's the truth serum or him, but he speaks anyway, rather than trying to resist it: "You're not the only one; my family often perceives me as being insufficiently affectionate, even when I am not."
"Yeah, you can get prickly," Maya says as she removes her hands from her face.
Damian presses his lips together. He did not hope to hear her agree –
"Hey, it's not a bad thing," Maya continues. "I mean, I'm sure I get prickly too. Just in a different way."
"And what way is that, Ducard?"
Maya steps away from the sink and Damian is almost regretting the question – he can't tell if she's fighting the truth serum.
"Don't answer that," Damian says.
"I'm actually trying to think of how to say it," Maya says. "Not like I'm feeling compelled to – I mean, I don't know, it's hard to describe how it feels – "
"Why don't you describe it, then," Damian says. He figures that if the pause was due to feeling compelled to answer the question, another one might override it.
"Like it's still warm and mostly things just seem a little bit more confusing. I wasn't really expecting that."
Damian nods. He was expecting to hear something like that. "It lowers inhibitions," he explains.
"So what, is this like being drunk but for kids?"
Damian laughs, as he assumes she was telling a joke.
She is not laughing.
"I wouldn't know," he clarifies. "The adults in my family drink seldomly or never. Being at reduced mental and physical capacity in public would be a bad move."
"And I'm guessing for assassins, it'd be even riskier," Maya says.
Damian nods slowly, but doesn't say anything else. He breathes deeply, trying to assess his state.
The serum feels weaker than last time, that's good. Last time, at this point, he had been sweating and trying to avoid the questions – the safe for truth serum questions, such as 'is the sky pink' – but this time he still feels he could lie.
It is getting harder to... phrase things correctly, though. He keeps feeling the question bubbling in his throat, the what's wrong, why did you actually come here, what's actually bothering you?
He needs to think of a good, obligation-free way to get it out before he loses control of it.
"I initially presumed you were bored," Damian says carefully, "but careful analysis suggests something may have happened. I don't think that you should tell me what happened. I'm just pointing out the evidence which suggests that you are – " he's going to be accused of being stuffy again, but he can't help it if he's trying to be precise and obligation-free " – engaging in activities in which you would not usually engage. What's five plus five, Maya?"
He threw in the last thing so she had a question to answer, if she was feeling compelled to answer, and she immediately says, "Ten."
Maya rubs her face. "Uh, Damian, you're kind of confusing me."
Damian nods yet while pressing his lips together in a thin line. He doesn't want to try elaborating again.
Maya walks over to where she set her gear and grabs her sword handle. She swings it through the air and the blade comes out.
At least truth serum didn't harm your physical reaction timing as much as alcohol did, or she might hurt herself.
"Your swords are ingenious," Damian says.
Maya smiles. "I know they are. I should make you one."
"That is a kind offer, but it is simply not necessary."
"Nah, as a birthday present," Maya continues. "You're turning thirteen soon, right?"
Damian shrugs. He doesn't know how to count his age. He spent nearly a year dead.
"My birthday is approaching, yes," he says.
"Then you can have a sword that fits on your utility belt," Maya says. "I just have to figure out a good power supply."
Damian waits. He doesn't want to say more for fear of prompting her to talk when she doesn't want to –
but he also can't tell if half the point of this was to try to force herself to talk.
Maya sighs and slashes the sword through the air once more before deactivating it.
"My mom wants me in school next year," she says.
"That's excellent, Maya," Damian says, because he assumed it would be excellent for her. He thought she wanted to do regular civilian activities –
but when he looks at her face, she does not look like she believes it's excellent. Her black eyes are wide as if from fear – more so than he's seen from any combat situation.
"Maya, I thought you wanted a regular life – " Damian starts.
"I know," Maya says, and her voice is pitched uncomfortably high and she swallows and says, "I mean yeah I know that it should be cool. And it'd be nice to talk to more than just one or two kids my age."
It hadn't occurred to Damian that Maya's socialization was as inadequate as his was. She seemed so much more normal.
Maya bits her lip.
"You should have had this conversation when your judgment wasn't impaired," Damian says. "Then you could decide how much to say – "
Maya holds an open hand up to stop him from talking.
Damian says the sarcastic commentary he assumes she would, were that she capable of sarcasm right now: "You're going to tell me that nobody likes an I-told-you-so-er."
Maya rubs her face and grimaces and then says, "I'm Nobody." And laughs at her own joke.
Damian laughs too.
Maya leans against the table their gear is on and looks away. "Nah, I would have already tried to brush it off with a joke or something otherwise. Or I'd feel like an asshole. I mean I do feel like an asshole – "
Damian chooses not to ask her why, even though he wants to. He bits the inside of his cheek and keeps waiting.
"I don't know, my education's all over the place. I'm really good at engineering and all the stuff you need to make my tech – but whatever books kids normally read, whatever history kids normally learn – "
"Ducard didn't teach you that stuff," Damian states.
Maya tenses slightly. Damian still can't see her face, but he also knows better than to walk around and look at her when she's looking away.
"I don't know," Maya says, "I mean I had some education it's not like he was leaving me for the wolves. But I don't know how to go about it in a normal kid way. You know, if we watched like, Star Wars or something, he always liked it better if I analyzed it. He didn't order me to or anything, it wasn't like the League, but if I said 'you know, it's kind of dumb to use two-dimensional battleplans in a three-dimensional battlefield – ' "
Damian switches to biting his knuckle to avoid laughing. Stupid truth serum.
Maya turns and looks at him and asks, "What?"
Damian resists for a moment, just to make sure he can, and then says, "I'm sure that if Ra's Al Ghul watched movies, he'd have done the exact same thing."
Maya smiles slightly.
"I understand," Damian says. "You're worried you won't be perceived as a regular child."
Maya sighs, blowing her hair up. "So you can see why I wouldn't have talked about it otherwise."
Damian shakes his head, because he can not.
"I already have an easier time looking like a normal kid than you do, I didn't want to complain to your face about it," Maya says, and then cringes. "Okay, this was a bad idea."
Damian doesn't know what to say. He's aware of the fact that he wasn't perceived as a regular child on the mission that did take him to a regular school. The one to Gotham Academy. His only terms of the mission were that he would not be forced to act as such.
But still, it was possible to establish rapport with one of the children there. "I doubt that you will have too much of a difficult time," Damian says.
Maya shrugs. "It's dumb to get worried about, anyway."
"It's not dumb," Damian says, a bit emphatically.
… perhaps too emphatically. He doesn't want it to seem like that big a deal.
But he persists: "It's understandable. Your mom, civilians – they think we got all this training for free, but we didn't. We just missed the civilian lessons they had over a decade to perfect, so now it's obvious for them but not for us."
… Maya is right, taking the truth serum was a mistake. He...
He doesn't regret his training. Saying so is foolish.
Maya steps towards Damian. Damian holds his hands up in a fighting stance before realizing she's trying to hug him.
He allows himself to blame the lowered inhibitions of the truth serum for it and hugs her back. Even if the evidence for that is thin.
Maya steps back. "Man, I ruined your counting day," she says.
Damian shakes his head. "Inventory is boring, anyway. I'd much rather spend time with my sister."