Part 1

The Red Hood skipping out in the middle of a fight hardly raised a red flag in the Bat Cave. Brown was the first to question the lack of activity in the other vigilante's sector after a few nights, and her concerns were promptly dismissed by the powers-that-be. Damian had scoffed too, but then the girl disappeared her second night investigating alone.

Even Damian would feel a sick sort of shame when they found out that Tim Drake had been the first to go missing weeks beforehand.

Father believed Todd to be responsible. Damian was confined to the house while both of the Batmen scoured the city for the whereabouts of Red Hood and other former-Robins. It had chafed, but Damian was maturing enough to obey for a short time period. At least until Todd could be located, an irritated Damian figured, but never had the opportunity to prove.

Colin's foster parents had called not long after Brown disappeared, inquiring about the red-head's whereabouts from the only friend Colin had. Damian had no answers for them.

Grayson tried to reason with Damian's father then; even granting the potential back-sliding, Jason had no reason to take a random teenager off the streets. But Father was stubborn, and it took the undefeatable Black Bat calling in a report of being attacked by League-resources to convince the man to investigate other possibilities.

Grayson left Bruce to his theories, packed up Damian and took the twelve year old to Donna Troy for protection.

"No one knows, Li'l D," his brother had promised with a grin. "Donna and I are the only ones who know you're here, and you'll be the only one who knows where I am." That information had been whispered into Damian's ear with an exaggerated embrace and a completely unnecessary hair ruffle of affection.

Dick disappeared three days later.

Hiding in the Clock Tower to stalk his one-time lover had not been a particularly brilliant plan, but it was the last thing Dick Grayson ever told him, and that knowledge damned Damian in his Father's eyes.

Damian had no choice but to run, and once he did . . . Talia had him.

No, Talia had him before that. Damian just didn't realize it until he was standing in his mother's favorite retreat surrounded by the missing (sans Colin—Damian wouldn't learn of his friend's fate until later). Damian didn't understand until his mother began to explain what she had done, what Grandfather had somehow overlooked—no, permitted by taking no action for or against. The fragile truce between Ra's and Talia was no excuse for the things his mother had done.

"It was so easy, darling," she explained, looking for all the world like a classical Madonna figure with Benjamin clasped sweetly in her arms. "So easy to scoop out their . . . personality. Their troublesome willpower."

They stand at attention, lined up by size and dressed in the dark uniform of a common ninja. His siblings, friends and enemies who have never stood completely united—not even once—are silent. Old squabbles have been forgotten, and Damian looked to his mother for an explanation that made sense. All he got was poetic propaganda.

"They've been rewritten, and now . . ." she smiled at him benevolently. Talia's once-disgust was obscured by satisfaction and pride. She honestly considered this a gift. "Now, they are acceptable companions, my son."

"Tt—you are describing a lobotomy, Mother," he had scoffed, uneasy in the presence of a silent Grayson. "What use would a lobotomized patient be to the al Ghul?"

"Yes and no," Talia returned. "Science is not the only means of correcting humanity's faults. You should know these things, Damian."

"They would fall apart without automatic bodily functions," Damian argued, sharply. Magic had a cost that not even the Lazarus Pit can circumvent entirely. "Even the most diligent of minders cannot verbally command every breath, step, and bowel movement. Decomposition would be apparent by this stage," he concluded, watching hungrily for any sign of weakness on his mother's face.

"Do you truly think the sciences and magics are so limited?"

"Tt—they are merely hypnotized . . . nothing more."

Talia raised one delicate eyebrow, and there was no further banter—just the cold ugly facts of a functioning body capable of the famed quadruple somersault without the troublesome heroics of which Talia so disapproved.

Damian still hadn't believed her until she set the puppets on each other. Until Drake's hands were locked around Grayson's throat, and then Damian couldn't get between them fast enough, his high-pitched refusal earning the same obedience as his mother's commands.

It seemed as if Damian would never escape the legacy of the al Ghul name.

Damian was a terrible caretaker even by his own reckoning. He had never been in charge of keeping something alive in his life unless one counted Grayson who had possessed no survival instinct whatsoever. Damian didn't count Grayson—primarily because Pennyworth was the one that kept Batman and Robin from imploding or exploding (or both). There was no butler to turn to in the League of Assassins.

Damian would have to suffice.

If his behavior satisfied his mother, then a daily allotment of the pills that kept his siblings alive were provided each morning. Without the pills, the others would slip into convulsions and eventually die as Colin had. The venom had altered Colin's metabolism, Damian knew and attributed the failure of Mother's plan in the redhead's case to that fatal flaw . . . but only after seeing Colin with his own eyes. Video footage could be altered, Mother's account seemed unreliable, and Damian had refused to accept his friend's death until convinced by his own senses.

No amount of apologies could bring that erratic venom-driven pulse back.

With the loss of Colin, Damian guarded the former Robins fiercely. He designed his own security, maintained the weapons used by any of them personally, and tasted every dish of food delivered to his quarters. It wouldn't stop Talia if she truly wanted them dead; she could just as easily poison the medication that Damian dared not interfere with or simply withhold the pills. However, there was so little that Damian was capable of doing; he needed to do this small thing.

He had to do something.

Damian had immediately purchased high-class clothing in colors that he knew the others had favored, marking their status as part of Damian's retinue, replacing and updating that clothing as necessary. The former-Robins were not common ninja, expendable and unremarkable. They were his father's chosen-children, siblings that Talia would not acknowledge (that Damian had once refused to acknowledge). They were his. Damian would have them in what comfort he could manage.

Pennyworth had encouraged him to read of Kings that made themselves less than their subjects, serving the servants, and earning the devotion of their followers. Damian thought it to be bad politics, but he had seen his Father in those pages. Grayson.

He thought that mimicking such selfless behavior might make up for the things he couldn't change . . . or at least be a pleasing emulation of his mentor. So Damian continued Todd's habit of dying the ginger hair dark (for Todd's comfort, not because the reddish roots reminded him painfully of Colin). He paid a servant to teach him how to braid Brown's hair, and Damian always cared for every injury with his own hands.

Two scant months of penance paid. An eternity to go.

This is what the other Robins remember.

This is what Steph remembered after everything.

Steph had the most mental command and interaction just before breakfast and the daily dose of Talia's zombie drug. Even though she was merely an observer in her own body, she could reassure herself about the others continued-safety in those early morning hours.

The first thing that Damian did every morning was brush and braid Stephanie's hair. Every morning, the sexist little brat sat down and tended to the long hair that Damian had always considered an inconvenience and a hazard. He never cut it short as he had so often threatened in the Cave so briefly shared, and he never left it the wild bush that Steph usually woke up to prior to Talia's interference.

Steph had never taken that kind of pride and care in her own appearance; balancing efficiency with presentation was a must in their line of work. Ponytails and messy up-dos are a girl's best friends after all. After Cass of course.

Even after two years of reenacting Rapunzel on a daily basis, Steph still couldn't make up her mind. When the opportunity finally came, should she kiss the kid or steal his sword to cut her hair short again in a grand gesture of independence?