Chapter Text
Christopher was only a little bit put together as he rambled on about how he started out with Dot Labs, using wide gestures with his hands, and frequently readjusting his crumbled-up pajamas. Tim followed after him and his poodles with a grim face. Damian was hard to look at right now, not because Tim believed 100% in the man’s words, but because he knew what Damian was capable of. Because he’d seen it. It was entirely possible that Damian ate a lab’s worth of people, but what was he supposed to think about that? How was he supposed to react? The vigilante in him wanted to do something about it, but Tim had no interest in straining a tight-knit relationship.
“That’s when I discovered the true purpose of our lab—creating metas.”
“What?” Tim regretted letting himself get distracted. His mind had been wandering. Had been, ever since he’d hopped off his motorcycle. They’d driven a long while to reach this place—a patch of land on the outskirts of Gotham. There were no buildings or anything remarkable to be seen. Only sad shrubbery and dead trees. They didn’t look all that much better with a light shined on them.
“I didn’t realize the extent of what we were doing until much later,” Christopher confessed, “but there was one high profile subject that was considered very dangerous to interact with. He could only be contained within his room, and that was because he had no control over his powers. To reign him in, we needed to bond him with something in the physical world. And I mean that quite literally.”
Christopher stopped and pointed at a dead log on the ground.
“There it is.”
Tim pointed his flashlight at the log and saw nothing out of the ordinary. He supposed that Christopher was talking about something he’d either buried or hidden within the log itself.
“What am I looking at exactly?” Tim asked.
Christopher decided that pointing wouldn’t be enough and approached the log. He nudged it a bit with his hand, and when that didn’t do anything, he attempted to wedge his hand underneath it. That also didn't work. He started digging at the ground. “The time capsule. For the dampener.”
“The dampener. The person you bonded with Damian,” Tim realized. “You said he couldn’t control his powers prior to that?”
“He had a hard time creating a corporeal form. He was a mass of shadows before the dampener was introduced. Only then could we begin proper experimentation.”
Tim swallowed as he watched Christopher work. It felt like there was a rock in his throat.
“How did you acquire the dampener?”
Christopher paused briefly.
“Well,” he attempted to recall, “if I remember it correctly, the dampener stumbled upon us.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes, he broke into our facility, but he was eventually captured.” Christoper frowned in concentration. “I don’t really remember what we did to bond him together with ‘Damian,’ as you call him, but I remember that he almost escaped. I was the one who came across him when he was trying to flee. I couldn’t let him leave with everything he knew.”
“What did you do to him?”
“I took him to my colleagues, and we decided we needed to get rid of him.”
Christopher realized what he’d just said and immediately played it off with a nervous laugh.
“Safely, of course,” he remedied with a stumble.
It sounded like a big fat lie to Tim, and it must have sounded worse to Damian. Damian snarled and stepped loudly on a twig. Christopher flinched visibly.
“Look, I’m the reason they just erased his memories instead of killing him,” Christopher insisted. “I couldn’t handle knowing what I knew. I didn’t want to be responsible for killing someone. I didn’t sign up for any of that. If I’d known what I’d be doing, I never would have joined Dot Labs. I would have done something else.”
Tim realized then that maybe Damian hadn’t senselessly eaten a bunch of people if they’d been willing to kill him from the get-go.
“Once the dampener was removed, they took away the only thing keeping ‘Damian’ collected,” Christopher said. “A scientist pushed him too far and attempted to experiment on the strain of their relationship. That’s when—when—”
“I thought they killed you.”
The voice that Tim heard had him whipping his head around to stare at Damian.
What he’d heard was very clearly a little boy, and it didn’t sound like something from his memories either. He stared at Damian with open bewilderment, but then he furrowed his eyebrows. Had he hallucinated it?
“Damian?”
Damian opened his mouth and nothing comprehensible slipped out.
I couldn’t have just imagined it, Tim thought, I really did hear him just speak now.
“There it is!”
Christopher squeezed out a crushed time capsule, a plastic tube that was caked with dirt, and it looked as if it were colored brown. Tim realized otherwise when Christopher dusted it off. It used to be green at some point.
“Liquid memories!” Christopher insisted. “You’ll have to find the dampener yourself, but once you locate him, have him drink this up!” Christopher got up and handed Tim the tube. His poodles trotted over to sit on each side of him. “He’ll know more than me, once he gets everything into his system.”
Tim realized he was holding his lost memories in his hands.
He was holding a piece of the puzzle.
“Damian?” Tim asked carefully. “Could you hold this for me?”
Damian agreed without question, grabbing hold of the tube, and then absorbing it into his skin. Tim knew he’d keep it safe.
“Why didn’t you reveal this information to Batman?” Tim asked. It was important information to understand, and he ought to know before there were any partings. “Why did you only give him information on Bruce Wayne’s son?”
Christopher answered without a waver in his voice. It was the most collected Tim had seen him.
“I have a son too.”
It implied everything Tim needed to know. Christopher had a son with his wife, who, despite being absent from the home, must still be involved in his life, and with the birth of a son, Christopher must now comprehend the pain of potentially losing one.
Tim puts a hand on Damian’s shoulder before he can think about it and then he squeezes it.
“Damian is Bruce’s son, isn’t he?”
Christopher’s momentary silence is all he needed to hear. Tim felt breathless and maybe, if he weren’t trying to keep himself on his feet, he would have fallen over. It had to be some kind of cosmic joke. Damian, his shadowy follower, wasn’t actually an eldritch creature, but a real human being. The very human being his father had been searching for as long as Tim had known him.
How the hell am I going to break this to Bruce?
After a few more questions, Damian melted back into shadow and Tim tailed Christopher home. Just to make sure he made it back securely. Then he managed to drive himself back to Stephanie’s, but he had a hard time even reaching her apartment. He had to pause and sit down on the stairs. Just to think.
He did think. He thought a lot before laughing nervously. A hysterical giggle told him enough about his mental state. He needed some sleep. There was no way he was going to process this all in a single night.
“That’s why—” Tim tried to finish an incomplete thought aloud. It was a difficult endeavor. “That’s why I felt connected to you. That’s why—that’s why it feels wrong when you’re gone.”
There was no answer from Damian. Tim knew he was listening though.
“Could you come out? Please.”
Damian didn’t reply immediately, but after a minute of waiting, he must have taken pity on Tim. He rose out of the ground and stood in front of Tim. A few steps below him, but close enough to keep eye-contact.
Tim swallowed.
There was a human underneath all that shadow.
A child.
“Gods, all the things they must have done to you,” Tim whispered hoarsely. “I don’t even want to imagine it. How did you—how did you become like this? How could Raven and Cassie have gotten it wrong?”
Damian stared at him.
“You’re my little brother,” Tim realized.
Damian said nothing, neither confirming nor denying the fact, and Tim wished that he’d say something. Even if it was just one those little noises of his. Tim opened his mouth to say more, to prompt some kind of reaction out of Damian beyond standing there, but then Damian jolted and looked over Tim’s head.
“What the hell did you just call that thing?” Jason asked.
Tim twisted himself around.
Stephanie poked her head out from behind Jason and pressed her lips together. She gave Tim an apologetic look. I didn’t invite him she mouthed. Jason stood imposingly before her, arms crossed, and brows furrowed.
Damian hissed at him, and Tim turned around again to see him melting into the shadow.
“No, no, no,” he pleaded, throwing his arms out to grab him, to keep him from leaving, but Damian melted away before anything could be done. Tim stared out at where Damian had been standing, heartbroken that he’d left so quickly, but his heartbreak turned into irritation when he remembered who’d stolen this moment from him.
“Are we going to talk about that creature we just saw?” Stephanie asked.
“He’s not a creature,” Tim snapped.
“No, he’s just an entity that you were forcibly bonded with,” Jason scowled.
Tim blinked. That took him aback.
“What—?”
“We didn’t find anything on Bruce’s kid, Tim,” Jason said, “but we sure found out a lot of information about you.”
Tim was at a loss of words.
“Come on,” Jason growled, “we’re going back inside Steph’s apartment.”
“Huh—” Tim was dragged off the ground and pulled upward by a hand on his arm. He stumbled up the stairs as Jason tugged him upward. “Jason?”
“You’re always getting yourself into trouble,” Jason lectured. “Why wouldn’t you say anything about your history with Dot Labs? Why didn’t you mention this before we had to pry it out of an old, dead computer?”
“Jason,” Tim attempted once more, “give me a chance to explain.”
“I’ll give you a chance after we get rid of that thing holding onto you.”
“What?” Tim’s heart raced. “Damian?”
“Erm, Jason,” Stephanie began, “maybe you shouldn’t be too hasty."
“Zatanna will let us know,” Jason said, self-assured, and that was when they entered Stephanie’s apartment. Tim was not happy to see Zatanna there. He was not happy at all. No, in fact he was very angry. How could Jason just grab him and drag him all the way to Stephanie’s apartment? How could he make a bunch of assumptions based on half-discovered data?
“You don’t know anything,” Tim snapped, slapping Jason’s hand away after a sharp tug, “and if you did, you wouldn’t be doing what you are now.”
“I know enough to figure out that you don’t have a choice in this ‘relationship’ of yours,” Jason snarled. “We’re going to get that thing out of you, and we’re going to make sure it doesn’t stick to you again.”
Tim was infuriated. He stepped into Jason’s space and glared at him. Jason might be taller than him, but Tim wasn’t intimidated in the slightest. He could take Jason on. And he would if he had to. He’d take down every person in this place. The mere idea made of having Damian removed made him vengeful.
“Whatever you found out on that computer, that’s only half the story,” Tim said with a venomous tone to his voice. “Damian isn’t whatever you think he is. He isn’t a—a—a parasite,” Tim spat that last part out as if it were poison. “He’s a living creature. He’s a human.”
Jason opened his mouth as if to retort but then he closed it. He seemed surprised. Only shortly. He was still defensive. He narrowed his eyes again and then challenged Tim. “Is that what it wants you to think? That it’s a human? After having it meshed into your very being without your say?”
“What makes you think I didn’t have any say?”
“The files, Tim! If you’d seen them, you’d question everything too! Why didn’t you say anything?”
“If anything, I did have a say,” Tim shouted. “Why wouldn’t I? It gave my brother a form!”
“Your brother—?” Jason laughed coldly. “What—”
Stephanie’s eyes darted between the two and then she gasped. “Tim?”
Stephanie might have connected the dots, but it was taking the emotionally driven dunderhead much longer, considering the fact that he was still arguing with Tim, but Zatanna, ever the peacemaker, forced herself between the two and pushed them apart.
“Hold on,” she said, keeping a hand pressed to both men’s chest, “how about we hear Tim out before we do anything else?”
Tim might not remember anything about his time in Dot Labs, so he doubted he could say much upon the subject, even if Jason believed he retained memories of it, but he did know what Christopher had told him. He could share what had already been shared with him.
“It’s Damian, Jason,” Tim said, voice strained with negative emotion, “he’s Bruce’s missing son.”
Jason looked hot-angry in the face.
“That’s impossible.”
“It’s not,” Tim said.
“You told me it’s an eldritch creature.”
“That’s what I thought, but I was wrong. I have amnesia Jason. I don’t remember anything that happened in Dot-Labs, but after doing some investigating of my own, it’s all very clear to me now. I didn’t go into Dot-Labs just for the hell of it. I went because I was looking for someone, someone very important to our family.”
Jason was not ready for whatever Tim was saying to him because he looked visibly upset. This was just as a sore subject to him as it was to Bruce.
“Damian isn’t an eldritch creature. He’s a human,” Tim insisted. “He’s Damian Wayne.”
“Is that what he wants you to believe?” Jason asked.
Tim almost groaned at how stubborn Jason was being, but then Zatanna mumbled something under her breath and surprised all of them. Damian was the most astonished, ejected out of Tim’s shadow without his consent, and he whirled around like a criminal on trial. As he attempted to crawl his way back into Tim’s shadow, he was blocked off by an invisible barrier. Distressed, he twisted and snarled at Zatanna.
Zatanna ignored him and reached out abruptly. She grabbed his arm and—
And shadow crept away for flesh.
Damian attempted to snatch his arm away as an entire arm was revealed, stopping only at his shoulder. Zatanna pressed her brows together as she focused, but the shadow didn’t creep away any further. Tim wanted to smack her hand away for handling Damian so roughly, feeling an inhuman urge to protect him, but his eyes couldn’t move away from Damian’s skin.
Damian wrangled himself around, but Zatanna was having an easy time of keeping him above ground.
“Looks like you have the right of it, Tim,” Zatanna said. “There’s a human underneath there.”
“How are you doing that?” Tim asked. “How did you make his arm appear like that?”
“Magic,” she deadpanned.
Jason seemed to have the strongest reaction, backing up to collapse against the wall, holding a horrified hand over his mouth, and Stephanie looked like she wanted to escape the room entirely. She was sick in the face.
“He—He’s really—?” Jason’s muffled voice wasn’t difficult to understand.
“Could you stop holding onto him so hard?” Tim snapped. “Let him go.”
Zatanna held her hands up in the air in surrender, releasing Damian, and Damian instantly attempted to leap back into Tim’s shadow, but he couldn’t. After several failed attempts, he scrambled to press himself into Tim’s side. Tim automatically wrapped an arm around him and squeezed him in. There were only enemies here.
“I don’t know if he really is Bruce’s son,” Zatanna began, eyeing Tim with interest, “but he’s not a monster or an evil entity.”
“Of course he isn’t,” Tim said with another snap, “is it that hard to believe me from the get-go? I’m a detective for crying out loud. Do you think I just came across this situation by circumstance? No. I deliberately sought it out. Damian is the baby we’ve been looking for, and he was experimented on, just like me.”
“Tim,” Stephanie said, sitting herself down onto the couch to collect herself, “are you being for real right now?"
Tim didn’t want to sit down himself, far too intent on keeping Damian in his side, but that didn’t mean he was incapable of providing context.
"Yes,” he said, maintaining only a little bit of cordiality because he was talking to Stephanie, “I am."