#and it lessens when he gets older and understands his father's moral code is not the End All Be All

[lusilly]

home safe and tucked away

Set between the onset of Damian’s illness in Orange Juice and a year-ish before Damian asks Bruce about Talia directly in Victis Honor, this is a wee mini fic concerning Damian’s state of mind when he’s ~15 years old, and finally gaining the vocabulary to call things he’s been through what they are. It’s also a glimpse into how Bruce is trying very hard to be a good parent, but he has no fucking clue how to do it. (Alfred’s better at it though.)

In which Talia wants to see Damian, and Bruce will not allow it, and Damian knows, despite himself, that he should not want to see her.

Title from “Broken Crown” by Mumford and Sons:

Touch my mouth and hold my tongue I'll never be your chosen one I'll be home safe and tucked away Well you can't tempt me if I don't see the day

           Bruce’s phone rang at breakfast.

           It was nearly two, but Bruce and Damian had only just returned from an extended mission in Hong Kong, and adapting back to their native time zone was slow going. For the sake of uniformity, Alfred declared long ago that breakfast was to be the first meal eaten upon waking up, no matter the time. So this was breakfast, full of protein and carbohydrates to keep the stamina up through long nights. Batman and Robin had been gone some time from Gotham, and therefore Alfred knew Bruce would intend to patrol until dawn, as if to make up for his absence.

           It was a meal mostly in utilitarian silence, apart from Damian answering when Alfred asked how Cassandra was doing out there in Hong Kong; Bruce grunted once in assent when Damian asked if he thought Cass really was planning to visit home in September. “Maybe we can go to Disneyland again,” he said, referring to his trip with Cass to Disneyland on his twelfth birthday as a joke, but his tone sounded only artificially derisive. Alfred sensed he would very much like another visit to an amusement park with his adopted sister.

           After a few more minutes of silence, Alfred asked Damian how the Titans were doing; Damian coughed slightly, swallowed his bite of beans on toast (a British taste Damian had somehow inherited, though Bruce had never warmed up to it), and replied. “Doing well,” he answered, nodding. “Lian tried to organize a mission last week without me, though I heard it didn’t go anywhere.”

           “Of course,” answered Alfred, with measured tone. “How could they think to embark upon a dangerous mission without their fearless leader?”

           Despite a small roll of his eyes, this clearly stroked Damian’s ego, and he allowed himself a small grin. “No,” he remarked, with a generous shrug. “I say if Lian wants to lead them so badly, so be it. She may not be the strongest, physically speaking, but she certainly is the loudest.”

           With a twinkle in his eye, Alfred asked, “Isn’t Wally West’s daughter also on that team? If I recall correctly, in your brother’s time he was always the one with the biggest mouth.”

           The hint of a blush might’ve entered Damian’s cheeks. “Yes, well,” he began, “Iris doesn’t need to be our leader – tactically speaking, I wouldn’t waste her magnificent power by keeping her tied behind the controls-”

           A loud, shrill ringing interrupted Damian’s conversation. Both he and Alfred glanced towards Bruce, who set down his fork and produced a sleek black cell phone from his pocket.

           “Is it Miss Vale?” asked Alfred, with some interest. “She’s been calling the house for the past week about the gala you missed.”

           Bruce squinted down at the screen, as if through spectacles he wasn’t wearing. “Don’t recognize the number,” he murmured. He hovered his finger above the Answer bubble, then hesitated. To himself, he muttered, “What would Bruce Wayne be doing at two PM on a Tuesday…?”

           There was a moment’s pause; shrilly, the phone continued to ring.

           With a hint of scorn, Damian offered, “…Having breakfast?”

           Bruce looked at his son, blinked, and then a hint of a smile tugged at his lips. He instantly assumed an affected character as he answered the phone, leaning back in his seat. “Yello!” he said, in that tone of voice Damian could hardly even recognize as his father. “Brucie speaking, who is this!”

           There was a flicker of something, and then he got to his feet. “Oh, yeah,” he continued, to whomever was on the other line. “Yeah, yeah, sure thing. No problem. You betcha.”

           At Damian’s look, Bruce gave a vague wave of his hand to indicate, Just a second, and left the dining room out of the tall door which led to the hall to the drawing room. The dining room was left once more in silence.

           Damian watched the door for a moment, fork in hand. Then he looked back at Alfred.

           “No,” said Alfred firmly, reading the expression on the boy’s face. “Finish eating before you bother him.”

           “That wasn’t some reporter,” said Damian.

           “An old flame feeling neglected by the playboy billionaire, then,” said Alfred simply. “He left so as not to spare you the embarrassment of listening to him lie to some poor young woman, in all likelihood. You should be grateful.”

           “You saw his face,” said Damian.

           “I see his face every day,” replied Alfred. “A look of mild disturbance is not unusual. In fact, it would be more unusual to see him without it.”

           Damian looked back towards the door. “I’m going to go see who it is,” he said.

           “Master Damian, please,” said Alfred, placing one hand firmly on Damian’s shoulder, gently keeping him in place. Meeting Damian’s gaze, Alfred said, “This relationship you are both trying so hard to foster – it must go both ways, you know. He allows you your privacy, and you must allow him his.”

           “It’s a call on his unencrypted phone,” Damian pointed out. “There’s nothing private about it.”

           “He left the room.”

           “So?”

           “So clearly he would prefer if you did not hear his conversation.”

           “He’s the one who answered his phone at the table.”

           Alfred watched Damian for a moment with narrowed eyes.

           Then he sighed and gestured towards the door, turning back to his own plate of food. Without hesitation, Damian got up and went to the door, opening it quietly and slipping out quickly so that his father wouldn’t notice.

           Bruce was in the drawing room adjacent to the hall where Damian now stood. Damian sidled up against the wall, moving as close as he could to the large open entrance to the drawing room. From the first sounds of his father’s voice, Damian could tell that he was facing away from the entrance, his voice bouncing against a wall. Cautiously, quick as a knife, Damian glanced around the wall to peek into the room.

           Bruce stared out of a square window at the summertime heat drenching the grounds. One arm was folded across his chest in an oddly defensive position, supporting the elbow of the arm which held the phone.

           “No,” Bruce said lowly. This was not the same voice with which he had answered the phone: this was the voice Damian had come to associate with his father in their most genuine moments. Too hard, too quiet to be the Bruce the press knew, and yet gentle enough so as to not sound like Batman barking orders.

           Damian strained his ears.

           “No,” repeated Bruce, with a little more emphasis this time. “What makes you think I would allow that?” A pause. Disdainfully, Bruce said, “Don’t flatter yourself.”

           A longer pause. “Because it’s not about that,” Bruce continued, with some venom. “It’s about what you’ve done to him. Don’t do this with me,” he warned whoever was on the other line. “I don’t know how you got this number, or how you think this is in any way appropriate, or what you’re planning that you want him back so badly, but I can tell you it isn’t going to happen.”

           Damian’s heart rose into his throat and he froze, suddenly realizing who was on the other line.

           “Don’t call again,” said Bruce, and then the other room plunged into silence. For a moment nothing happened; Damian imagined his parents both frozen, mirror images of one another from thousands of miles away, still and quiet and staring with burning eyes at the phone in their hand.

           When Bruce began to move again, Damian thought about slipping away, back into the dining room to take his seat beside Alfred and pretend he hadn’t just heard such damning evidence of something he’d convinced himself would never happen again: his mother wanted to see him.

           But despite himself, he couldn’t come up with a good reason to move. So when Bruce passed the threshold back into the hall, and turned to find Damian standing there with his back against the wall – the look in his eyes a little bit defiant, a little bit shocked – Bruce stopped, and he looked at his son, and if Damian were less upset he might’ve seen the flicker of regret in his father’s expression.

           As it was, Bruce watched Damian for a moment. “I suppose it’d be too optimistic for me to ask you to pretend you didn’t just hear that.”

           Grimly, Damian nodded.

           “Any chance you’d believe I was talking to Dick?”

           Damian didn’t even bother responding to this. When he spoke, his voice, though low, slapped across Bruce’s face as sharp and stinging as a cold wind off the bay. “Is this the first time you’ve heard from her?”

           Bruce almost cocked his head. “In some time, yes.”

           “What does that mean?”

           Bruce didn’t answer.

           Again, Damian asked: “What does that mean?”

           “She’s made contact,” answered Bruce lowly, with more spite than reluctance. “This is the first time I’ve spoken to her directly.”

           “She wanted to talk to me,” said Damian bluntly.

           “No, she didn’t.”

           “But she wants to see me.”

           From the window in the adjacent drawing room, sunlight spilled out into the hall, draping Bruce in peculiar light. He looked tired, and older than Damian saw him in his mind’s eye, when he closed his eyes.

           Quietly, Bruce replied, “She wants you back. There’s a difference.”

           “She’s the one who left me with you to begin with,” said Damian immediately, cutting through Bruce’s words like glass. “Why would she want me back now?”

           Again, Bruce said nothing. He gave a shrug, cell phone still in hand. “I don’t know,” he said, honestly.

           “You haven’t asked her?”

           “You think she’d tell me the truth?”

           “I don’t know,” Damian shot back. “You’re the one who used to love her, not me.”

           While it was true enough that Bruce did once love Talia, it was a lie that Damian never loved his mother. Bruce knew this: he did not know if Damian did anymore. Lately, if he ever talked about his mother it was with genuine disgust in his voice. As a younger child, Damian had maintained a sort of snooty reverence of his mother, some assurance that she was still somehow better than any of his father’s family in every possible way. And yet, within the past year, this had disappeared, and suddenly he spoke of her with venom on his tongue.

           This had coincided with an official diagnosis earlier this year of PTSD, though the details of this Damian refused to share with his father. Alfred had spoken to Damian’s therapist, but Bruce had chosen not to be a part of that conversation. Somehow, though it wrenched with pain at his heart, Bruce knew that he did not want to know. Then there had been that college-level psychology course Alfred had been coaching Damian through, and the particular interest Damian had demonstrated in abnormal psychology, which had extended the course through summer. Bruce didn’t like the snoop on Damian’s education because he knew from firsthand experience that the Batman checking in on schoolwork only heightened the pressure his sons felt, but he had taken noticed of some of the books Damian ordered with Bruce’s credit card; textbooks, mostly, but buried among them were a number of self-help books. Those on healing; on trauma; on recovering from parental abuse.

           The word frightened Bruce, if he was honest with himself. Sometimes when he could not sleep he sat up through the early hours of dawn and scoured through his memory, searching for moments when his methods of raising a child became too extreme, too dangerous. Instances came to mind far too easily. There had been worse moments with the other boys, that much was clear to Bruce – he had learned, eventually, that a child was not the same as a soldier – but it had scared him, looking up those book synopses on Amazon, wondering of which parent Damian thought when reading them.

           Bruce gestured towards the door to the dining room. “Can we go back to breakfast?” he asked.

           “You owe me an explanation first,” Damian replied stonily, arms crossed over his chest.

           “I don’t have much of one to offer,” Bruce said smoothly. “And, unless you object to Alfred overhearing our argument, I’m sure this would be better for the both of us if we could return to our meal.”

           Heatedly, Damian began, “I never said this was an argument-” but his tone betrayed him, and Bruce gave him a mild, pointed look.

           Again, Bruce gestured towards the door. For a moment he didn’t think Damian was going to budge. Then Damian let out an angry little breath, and turned around to head back to breakfast. Bruce followed him, gently placing a hand on his son’s back. Damian shrugged him off, but not violently.

           In the dining room, Alfred sat reading the Gazette. “Thank you,” said Bruce, as both he and Damian took a seat, “for encouraging my son’s misbehavior, Alfred.”

           With a slight shrug, Alfred replied pleasantly, “You are the one who answered his phone at breakfast, sir.”

           Though he seemed more upset than angry, there was still genuine rancor in Damian’s words as he demanded, “How is it misbehavior to want to know what my mother is saying about me?”

           Bruce reminded him, “You didn’t know it was your mother when you followed me out of the room.”

           “I knew it was someone.”

           “Damian, of course it was someone-”

           “What did Talia have to say?” asked Alfred mildly, interrupting before either father or son could make the situation worse for themselves; then, on second thought, he added, “Though I don’t expect it to be happy news, I am unquestionably glad she has resorted to normal means of communication, rather than notes left cryptically in burnt-out apartments, or else messages sent by way of assassin.”

           Damian’s gaze snapped up to Alfred, eyes wide and vicious. His nostrils flared slightly. “You knew?” he asked. “You knew my mother was trying to contact me?”

           “Not you, Master Damian,” replied Alfred, reaching out to pat Damian’s hand reassuringly. He flinched away from the touch, which instantly alarmed Bruce: when Damian’s sensitivity to touch flared up, it typically meant they were approaching a genuine full-blown episode. “I believe she had a question for your father.”

           Damian looked back to Bruce. “About me.”

           “Parents often talk of their children,” Alfred said, with no hint of malice. “It is not as unusual as you seem to think, Master Damian.” He reached for the milk jug just past Damian, found it difficult to handle properly – though he wouldn’t admit it, arthritis was beginning to riddle his joints, particularly his fingers and hands – and after one moment, both Bruce and Damian reached out to help him; Damian grasped the thing first, and refilled Alfred’s glass.

           “I have a right to know what she says about me,” said Damian, setting down the jug. His tone was lower now, more in control; Bruce watched him carefully, searching for any small betrayal of a compulsion, of his OCD working him up into a frenzy.

           Alfred took his glass and sipped at the contents thoughtfully. “Why?” he asked.

           Damian stared at him. “What do you mean, why?”

           “I mean,” Alfred replied, with a shrug, “why? Do you want to know what she says about you? Do you think it will make you feel better?”

           “I – if she wants to see me-”

           “Do you want to see her?”

           Angrily, Damian retorted, “Of course not!”

           “Then why does it matter?” Alfred insisted. “For all you know, she wants to recruit you into her various assassin-filled organizations, because one of your teachers has been killed and she now has an unoccupied space she must fill. Or otherwise,” he continued shortly, “perhaps she would like to invite you into her home for a sixteenth birthday celebration.” He paused; then, again, he asked, “Does it matter?”

           Damian watched Alfred with weary eyes for a moment.

           Then he picked up his fork and poked at his food. When he brought a forkful of egg whites to his mouth, Bruce let out an inward sigh of relief: when Damian was at his worst, he couldn’t even touch food. This was a good sign.

           Bruce too resumed his meal, though cautiously, glancing in between Alfred and Damian. After so long Bruce assumed Damian had decided to leave Alfred’s question unanswered, Damian surprised him by speaking.

           “No,” he murmured. “I guess it doesn’t.”

           They finished their meal in peace.