#yknow i actyally dont have idea.for that

[cursedzucchini]

Dp x DC prompt #whatever

Guys this has been rotting in my brain for the past month and i think it has lots of potential.

So basically Danny & Damian childhood friends.

Somehow, someway (maybe after five years old Damian kills one too many instructors, which are irreplaceable, maybe his arrogance causes one too many failures) Talia convinces Ra's to put weekly 'play dates' with the other league's children. These play dates are supposed to show Damian his superiority over them, but also make him care for his future subjects.

What the two didn't account for, was, well... Children.

Damian wasn't the mildest child, not was he trying to be likeable. He didn't see the point. And when you add their parents repeating over and over again how important the new child is.. no wonder all of them were scared to even look at him.

The chosen child himself was quite happy with this development. He didn't want to be there in first place, especially because he was specifically forbidden from cutting down any annoyances. So it was a good thing none of them dared to come to 10 meters radius to him. He didn't mind the children immidietly bursting into tears, when they lock eyes. He didn't feel angry, because these weren't even children of any important people, with no obligations to be nice to him, and they didn't even dare to breath in his vicinity (seriously, a boy passed out because he didn't wish to breath when Damian was sitting few spaces next to him. It was ridiculous).

He didnt feel like an outsider, he felt like their leader. He didn't feel loneliness, he felt proud. He didn't, he did.

So.. when a child, always sitting in a corner staring at the sky, was cornered by several of the other children, he didn't do anything. He was someone they should follow, he did not owe them to solve their petty rivalries. (Even if they insulted the child for their expressionless face, for being unable to recognize their imaginery rules of some bigger game, for being different. Even when Damian started realizing with more and more terror, this would be him, if he wasn't All Ghul)

...

...maybe he should establish himself as a good leader, by helping them. This once at least.

Damian walked closer, only wanting to discuss whatever bullying problem was happening, but the moment the children saw him, they ran. Well, most of them at least.

Danyal was the child of some lower member of the league (maybe even someone who was under their protection, doesn't matter). He was a very quiet, some would even say antisocial. He would spend all his time staring at the stars and not mingling with his peers. He didn't often wore any sort of expression, but once Damian spend more time with him (unwillingly might he add, even if it was him who looked for the other boy, and maybe it wasn't unwillingly, but that's not something he wants to think about. Ever), he realized, Danyal was full of them. Every time he talked about the stars, mentioned the new book his parents gifted him, and as the time went, when Damian himself was mentioned, the demon's heir couldn't help but think the older boy would burst from them.

Damian still wasn't quite sure why he was hated by their his peers. He knew some people would find Danyal strange, but he didn't quite understood (wasn't he the same? Why was he brilliant perfect amazing but Danyal strange idiot weird?).

But what he did know for sure, was that Danyal was his. He was his subject, someone he took under his wing to protect, and in exchange, Danyal would look after him too. It might be helping him out with any assassination attempts, or telling him the stories of space, when the younger boy couldn't force his tongue to form words.

Or at least he had been.

The family Danyal was from was poor. So when one of the tougher times came, it wasn't strange one of their children had to go. And what choice it was, picking between healthy beautiful children and a 'ghost living in a body'.

Only Damian hated it. He didn't understand. While yes, Danyal was his subject, he had many of them. If he wanted to be a good leader, he can't just focus on one them. That would be unfair. He saw this choice being made so many times and he was never bothered by it, so why now—

In the end he never discovered the answer. He locked the question deep inside his chest, inside his heart, where nothing could ever reach. He was Al Ghul, he was too great to be caught of guard and be strucked in it.

So when years and years later, when he was already living with his father for some time, he saw a black haired, blue eyed teen with tan skin, and the same grin his friend subject had, of course it was natural he knocked him out and brought him into the manor.

Not because he missed Danyal or anything of course. He had to... Check if this was some sort of plot of his Mother. Naturally.