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Damian has neared the end of his list of options. He hates that it has come to this. Unfortunately, everything he’s tried on his own has failed and he requires the assistance of another capable of deductive reasoning and willing to trust his observations. It’s a vanishingly small list.
Father heard him out and immediately began asking him a hundred questions Damian didn’t know the answer to before running off to talk to his allies. Damian hadn’t heard back from him. Richard heard him out, but also spent far too much time fussing over his wellbeing instead of solving the task at hand. Brown thought it was a prank, Cain didn’t have anything useful to contribute, and Todd only advised him to ‘groundhog day’ it.
The movie was unhelpful. Damian is not trying to win romantic affection. He is trying to stop from losing his mind—no longer a hyperbolic statement. It has been nearly two months and the novelty has long wore off into dread.
He keeps waking up to Tuesday.
Damian clears his throat. His target has noticed him—Damian saw the minute tensing of muscles and the way the chair swiveled to better watch him from the reflection on the screen—but continues to ignore him. Damian’s fingers tighten before he deliberately uncurls them.
“I require your assistance.” The words come out easier with the benefit of practice and the knowledge that no one will remember them tomorrow. Today. Tomorrow-today.
His target snorts and does not turn around. Damian breathes in and out and holds onto his temper. It is strangely easier now than it was on Monday.
“It is…important.” Still no response. Damian considers how low he’s willing to sink, and reminds himself that if it goes badly, Damian can simply skewer him and try again tomorrow. It’s not exactly a cheerful thought. “Please,” he adds.
Drake slowly spins around, eyes already narrowed. “Who are you and what have you done with Damian al Ghul?”
Juvenile. Damian resists the urge to huff and crosses his arms. “Time has gone awry. I keep repeating this same day.”
Drake arches an eyebrow. “Prove it.”
This is the easy part.
“You’ve been up all night working on a case involving the Riddler and the slides for Wayne Enterprises’ new green initiative. Pennyworth will punish you by giving you decaf with breakfast, causing you to nearly fall asleep in your office and present the board with an initiative to defeat the Riddler using biodegradable tableware.”
Drake looks mildly perplexed. Damian notes the distant sound of the clock opening.
“Pennyworth has come to call you to breakfast. He will express disappointment that you’ve been up all night, you will lie, and he will not puncture your denial. Because I am also here, he will not leave until both of us accompany him up so as to prevent further bloodshed.”
Drake’s eyebrows have raised so high they’re in danger of creeping off his face, but any response is stalled by the appearance of Pennyworth.
“Master Tim,” the butler says, mustache twitching disapprovingly, “have you been here all night?”
“No,” Drake says slowly, staring straight at Damian, “I just came down.”
“I see,” Pennyworth says evenly, eyes narrowing. His gaze catches on Damian and widens. “And Master Damian. Breakfast is ready, if you allow me to accompany you both upstairs.”
Drake’s face goes blank. He swivels around and opens up a slide deck with the Wayne logo in the corner, before cursing under his breath.
“Master Tim?”
“Sorry, Alfred,” Drake turns around and gives him a slightly sheepish smile. “Damian is running something by me about his latest case. We’ll be late to breakfast.”
Alfred’s eyebrows raise in patent disbelief but, unlike if Damian suggested it, he leaves it unchallenged. “Very well. I am glad to see you both are capable of working together. I will keep breakfast warm.”
“Thanks, Alfred!” Drake keeps the smile up until Alfred vanishes up the stairs at which point he saves all his open files and whirls around to face Damian directly.
“You believe me.” It comes out like a question despite Damian’s best efforts.
“Pretending to be trapped in a Groundhog Day is more Jason’s or Stephanie’s idea of a prank,” Drake dismisses. “I am surprised you came to me. Was I the last choice on your list?”
Oracle is unreachable. Grandfather has forgotten more things than Damian has learned, but Damian is uneasy with the idea of handing something so valuable to him. Drake, at least, will not use the idea of the loop to take over the world.
“Of course,” Damian responds instead, because that’s what is expected of him. “Will you help or not?”
“Just for that, I want to make you ask nicely—” Damian bristles, he said please of all things—“but we’re on a time limit. When does the loop reset and when does it start?”
“Eleven fifty-nine every evening. I wake up in my bed, at my six o’clock alarm, every Tuesday.”
“How many Tuesdays?”
“Forty-five.” He has drawn tally marks on his thigh, where no one is likely to accidentally spot them.
Drake pauses to shoot Damian a strange look—on anyone else, he might call it sympathetic—before continuing. “Are you the only person in the loop and can you carry over anything between loops?”
“As far as I know, I am the only person,” Damian responds, and hesitates—when he told Richard, the man started fussing, but this is Drake. Drake doesn’t care. “My injuries carry over.” He rolls up his sleeve to reveal a healing wound on his right forearm. “This is from patrol ten Tuesdays ago.”
He doesn’t mention the near-constant exhaustion. He’s gotten used to it.
“And it looks ten days old,” Drake says, staring at it. “Presumably you’re aging in line with your relative time too.”
Damian didn’t think about that. Damian might die of old age, trapped in a Tuesday that never ends.
“I wonder if the rest of us are aging with relative time,” Drake mutters, turning back to the computer and tapping out a message. “The speedsters might know.”
“They do not respond,” Damian interjects. “Father went to talk to them and didn’t return.”
“A side effect of the loop, or is something else going on?” Drake ponders out loud. “Well, in any case, I haven’t noticed any strange, unexplained bruises or cuts, so it’s likely we reset and you’re the only one that carries forward.”
Damian wonders what the reaction will be when he wakes up visibly older. If, when he dies, the loop will continue, trapping his family to wake up to his dead body every single day.
“Anything else strange about the loop? Things that don’t change if you try to change them, anyone acting strangely, any boundaries you can’t cross?”
“Nothing.” Damian’s done his best to effect changes, from the small to the large, and observed the cascading consequences, but no matter what he does, the world blacks out right before midnight and resets with him in his bed.
“Hm.” Drake’s face goes shadowed and still as he internally deliberates. Damian doesn’t mention how similar he looks to Grandfather when he does. “Well, I guess we have to go back to the start.”
“What?”
“We’re going to rerun your very first Tuesday.”
“This is a colossal waste of time,” Damian grumbles, slouching further in his seat as Drake inches forward in rush hour traffic. Pennyworth was nothing short of staggered when Drake offered to drop Damian off at school on his way and Damian took him up on it; he likely expects there to be violence. Damian cannot say he isn’t considering it. “I’ve rerun my Tuesday forty-four times.”
“And now you have a set of fresh eyes to help you,” Drake says. Damian eyes the energy drink in his hand and hmphs. Fresh indeed.
“I hardly thinking sitting in school for eight hours is a productive use of time,” he grumbles.
“Don’t be ridiculous, you’re not going to class,” Drake scoffs and makes an obscene hand gesture at the car next to them. This, of course, leaves no hands for the wheel, not that it appears to concern him. “I just want you to retrace your steps so I know what to ask.”
“A pointless endeavor,” Damian mutters.
“Well, you’re not exactly giving me much to work with, brat,” Drake rejoins easily, and Damian subsides. He’s well aware of that. It’s what happened with the others too—Damian doesn’t have the information to break himself out of the loop, nor the information to assist someone else in breaking him out, and—“and if it doesn’t work out, just let me know tomorrow-today and I’ll try something different.”
Damian squints at him. Drake doesn’t even glance at him, like he said nothing odd at all, like the prospect of continuing to assist Damian for multiple days is something that can be waved aside as incidental.
Thankfully for Damian’s overtaxed reasoning capabilities and the structural stability of their vehicle, they reach Gotham Academy without further incident. They’re early, so Damian can sneak Drake in without any notice as he goes over his class schedule.
It isn’t difficult. He’s attended class in at least half of his loops, and while he was deliberately trying to cause chaos and incite violence in three-quarters of them, he remembers the first day because he was disconcerted by its second occurrence.
“Homeroom with Mrs. Deirdre,” Damian recites, leading Drake through the empty hallways. “Biology with Ms. Ferguson, double period Chemistry with Mr. Woltz. Lunch, then Math with Mrs. Wallace, French with Madame Moreau, and Art with Mr. Steinbecker.”
“Man, Wallace is still teaching?” Drake muttered, poking his head into Damian’s class. “Does she still make you write out every single tiny step?”
“Yes.” Damian’s face twitches in a frown. Math is even more a useless subject than the rest of the insipid classes he takes at this insipid school.
Drake goes up and down the classroom and, as predicted, finds nothing.
“Anything strange or out of the ordinary happen during your day? The first day, I mean,” Drake asks as Damian leads him to the chemistry labs.
“There was a surprise quiz in French, but Madame Moreau hinted last week we would have one,” Damian says. Drake mutters quelle surprise under his breath. “We continued with plant anatomy in Biology and we did pH tests in Chemistry.”
The chemistry lab is locked, not that it stops Drake, but it is similarly deserted. No sign of anything out of the ordinary.
“And in Art—” Damian stops, face warming. He doesn’t want to say it. Not to Drake. He hasn’t told anyone across forty-five days—first because he wanted to tell Richard before anyone else, and then because he told himself he would tell once it was actually Wednesday.
“In Art what?” Drake asks, straightening from his inspection of the cupboards.
“Nothing. It’s unimportant.” Damian walks briskly to the door. Unfortunately, Drake catches up to him.
“You never know what could be important,” Drake retorts as they head to the east wing. “Just tell me.”
“It’s not—”
“Damian,” Drake says sharply in the tone of voice one would use to say demon.
Damian takes a deep breath and calms himself. He can always stab Drake later and no one will know. “There’s an art exhibition happening at Gotham Museum later this month. Mr. Steinbecker told me that my piece was accepted for display.”
Drake is silent for a stretching moment. “Of course it was,” he says finally, “you’re a great artist.” Damian scowls at him, unsure what to make of the statement. “It’s unlikely it had anything to do with the loop. Was there anyone that stood out to you? Any strange incidents, suspicious people, acts of violence?”
“Nothing the first time,” Damian thinks back. The only thing unusual had been his joy at the acceptance into the exhibit. “Though my classmates remain, as ever, ridiculously easy to manipulate.”
It only takes two sentences, a sneer, and a single thrown bowl of salad to incite a food fight.
“I’ll bet,” Drake snorted. The camaraderie lasts them through the rest of their exploration of the school and they sneak out as students filter inside.
“Father will get a call if I don’t attend classes,” Damian points out, but he follows Drake back to the car.
Drake waves him off. “I’ll text him that it’s an emergency and I need your help on a case, he can call you out.”
Damian wants to point out that this will hardly deter Father, but he ends up in a jaw-cracking yawn instead. Gotham traffic remains as gridlocked as ever, and Damian rests his head against the window and closes his eyes briefly. Drake has yet to come up with a theory and Damian has answered all his questions, surely a quick moment to refresh himself against his ever-growing fatigue is not too much to ask for.
He hardly remembers falling asleep.
When he wakes up, it’s not in a familiar location. Damian has practice with this, so he wakes immediately and quietly, cracking open his eyes to determine where he is. Artificial light equals no windows. He’s on something soft, but not a bed. Cushions. A couch. He doesn’t appear to be bound and he feels awake and alert. Someone is close by—Damian can hear their muttering, and the clacking of laptop keys. The room smells of coffee.
It’s that fact that makes Damian push up, hand nearly sinking into the couch before he gets himself all the way up. He isn’t drugged, so the idea that he fell asleep in Drake’s car—and stayed asleep while the boy brought him to wherever they are right now—is both embarrassing and bewildering.
He didn’t realize he was this tired, to fall asleep in the middle of a mission. “There’s some water bottles and a fruit bowl on the table, help yourself,” Drake says, not looking up from his laptop. “You’ll have to wait for lunch, I just ordered it.”
“Where are we?” Damian stands up to grab a water bottle. Sealed. He glances around the space—it looks remarkably like the Batcave, except that it isn’t a cave.
“The Nest,” Drake answers, finally peering over his laptop. “Or Crime Alley, if you’re asking for physical location.”
Damian cannot help his eyebrows creeping up. He has never seen Drake’s lair before—as far as he’s aware, it’s an invitation rarely extended. If Drake wants to team up, he comes to the Batcave, not the other way around.
He marks a mental note to remember this if future Drake needs further proof and turns back to Drake. “Why didn’t you wake me? We’ve lost several hours.”
“No offense, but you looked like you needed the sleep. Your dark circles have dark circles.” Damian grits his teeth—this is Richard all over again, and he hardly expected it of Drake, but he cannot—“And I used the time to formulate some theories. Bart got back to me too.”
“And?” Damian demands, dropping the argument. “Can they fix it?”
“Well, the long explanation is too complicated for me to explain without a relativity textbook, but the short explanation is no, it’s not the speedforce, it has to be magic. I’ve also contacted Zatanna, who’s not available to come and consult personally right now, but if you contact her tomorrow-today earlier in the morning, she might be able to help.”
Damian has to fight the urge to collapse at the news. It isn’t a solution, not yet, but it’s a direction, one more than he had yesterday. Drake diplomatically ignores Damian’s display of weakness as he staggers back over to the couch and focuses on breathing properly.
He won’t be trapped like this forever. He’ll get out.
“She did have a few suggestions,” Drake says after a tactful silence. “Since there’s been nothing unusual about your day, you might’ve been caught in the area of someone casting the spell. So retracing your steps and figuring out if anyone is acting oddly is our best bet.”
Damian thinks back to the days he’s run over and over and over. Nothing jumps out. “No one at school,” he says, because he might not personally know everyone there, but he’s incited enough chaos over a couple of loops that something would’ve stood out.
“And after school you came home, right?”
“Yes. Pennyworth was at home. I called Richard but he didn’t pick up. Father came home from work right before our patrol, and it was quiet. The others all checked in at times during the night. It can’t be any of them.”
“And Oracle’s been up on the Watchtower for the last couple of days, fixing their systems,” Drake sighs before his phone pings. He checks it. “Alright, break for lunch and then we’ll go over your patrol route.”
For once, Damian doesn’t snipe about Drake calling the shots. He feels better-rested than he has in days and, more importantly he feels hope. This can be fixed. He will wake up tomorrow, and it will be Wednesday.
“Standard 6R loop,” Drake muses, peering at the shipping containers that line Tricorner Docks. “No cases, no stakeouts. You said you broke up a drug deal here?”
Damian irritably points to the exact point. Seeing as it’s the middle of the day, the only people around are curious dock workers. He pushes the sunglasses up further.
“Nothing strange here,” Drake concludes finally and Damian inwardly groans as he follows him back to the car. There are six points of interest Damian marked on the patrol map from his first loop and Drake is insistent on revisiting each one.
Two drug deals Batman and Robin interrupted. A mugging. A bakery robbery that he foiled. A rescue. And a hidden cache of unlabeled toxin.
“We are wasting time,” Damian hisses, stabbing a fork into the over-sugared concoction Drake ordered for him at the corner bakery. “These people know nothing of use—”
“Eat your sugar and drink your coffee like a good little boy,” Drake mutters under his breath, before smiling winsomely at the café owner. “This place is truly fantastic—I hope you haven’t had any trouble with that string of robberies going around!”
Damian snarls and glares at his drink. This is pointless. Recruiting Drake was pointless. All Damian has accomplished is being jerked around the city at the older boy’s whims. And he’s able to lord over the fact that Damian came to him for help.
Damian considers his fork. Too blunt. The mug of coffee—if he breaks it just right, he’ll have a shard sharp enough to slice across a throat. He can even throw the coffee first, and let the scalding liquid give him enough time to prepare the strike.
The mug of coffee is slid away from him. “I can tell when you’re plotting murder, you know,” Drake chides. “You have a very distinctive expression for it.” Damian glares. “Out of curiosity, how many times did you kill me across forty-five Tuesdays?”
The curve to his lips indicate it’s a joke. The flatness of his eyes indicates it’s not.
“Once,” Damian says coldly. “But that’s the wrong question.” He gets up, leaving the cake behind. “You only asked me how many times I succeeded.”
The sun has begun to set when they reach the marked alleyway in Burnley. It’s across from a park and there’s plenty of foot traffic as the workday winds down. Drake blocks the mouth of the alleyway as Damian bends down next to the dumpster.
Damian pretends it doesn’t raise his hackles to have Drake at his back, watching him in that slow, intent way he’s learned from Grandfather. That look that means he’s dissecting Damian down to individual parts. That look that means he’s finding Damian lacking.
“What are you doing?” Drake asks finally. “There’s no one yet to rescue, you should be here four hours from now.”
“They should still be here,” Damian replies curtly.
“What?” Footsteps hurry towards him. “Are you telling me we just left someone trapped the whole d—”
Drake’s voice cuts off as Damian withdraws the first one from the hollow of the broken basement window. It’s tiny, too tiny to be alone, and so weak it can only squeak. He sets its trembling body down and reaches for the next.
There are six of them. He’s pleased to find them all here. He doesn’t know where the mother is and they don’t look fed. He grabs a box from the stray pile of recycling nearby and focuses on lining it with his sweatshirt as the kittens sway and shake with high-pitched peeps.
“Oh,” Drake says inanely as Damian focuses on transferring all of them to the warm box. There is a veterinarian on the other side of the park. He can drop them off there. The first time, he told her that he’d pick them up tomorrow.
But tomorrow never comes.
Damian heads off with his precious cargo, uncaring if Drake follows. He’s rescued the kittens in forty loops. The five he hadn’t still eat at him, even though he knows he’s holding the exact same kittens.
Once he’s done, he comes back out. Drake is waiting on the sidewalk.
“There is one last place to check.”
Damian pinned the most hope on the cache of toxin. It’s clearly the work of a bad actor and he never got far enough before midnight to actually identify the things. Perhaps it’s magic. Perhaps it’s what’s been causing this whole mess.
“Fear toxin,” Drake says back in his underground lab. “A match to the Halloween strain.”
Damian remembers that, but distantly, unlike the few weeks ago it actually was.
“Probably one of the caches Scarecrow was bragging about, at least until Cass got him in the face.”
Watching Cain fight Crane is always entertaining, mainly because Crane can’t get a rise out of her and it drives him madder than he already is. But the memory can’t dredge up even a hint of amusement, not when Damian is staring dully at his last dead end.
“I’ll run more analyses,” Drake decides, even though it’s useless. It is already eight sixteen. In three hours and forty-three minutes, Damian will wake up on Tuesday morning. “It could still have something to do with the loops.”
“Don’t waste your time,” Damian clicks irritably. Exhaustion presses down on him, heavier, until he has to fight to not let it curve his spine. “Or do. It doesn’t matter. You will not remember this.”
“Damian,” Drake says softly and Damian hates it.
“It doesn’t,” Damian is standing, spitting out his words, “none of it matters, I could skewer you right now and it won’t matter! I did it,” Damian stalks forward, “I took out my sword and I started killing and I didn’t stop until there was a mountain of bodies under my feet. I did my grandfather proud.” Drake doesn’t back away, watching with a calm that infuriates him. “And none of it mattered.”
Damian had woken the next morning and been greeted warmly by Alfred and Drake had stumbled blearily in like Damian hadn’t just spilled his guts and Father joined them with a smile. It was that loop that made Damian first ask for help.
“We’ll figure out how to end it,” Drake says, still soft, still even.
“How?” Damian nearly shouts. “We walked through my entire day and there was nothing of relevance! If I was caught in a spell, it was by someone who I passed only by chance, and it will take me a million more loops to track down everyone in Gotham, by which point I will be dead!”
The silence rings after he finishes, broken only by his heaving breaths. His surroundings are blurry and when he touches his fingers to his face, it comes away wet.
Damian on Monday would never have been caught in a situation where he cried in front of Timothy Drake. Damian several Tuesdays ago would’ve skewered Drake simply because he could. Damian today takes two steps back and collapses into the couch.
No one will remember this tomorrow.
He stares dully up at the ceiling of the Nest, several stories above him, and contemplates the situation. It might not be a million loops. Damian can acquire access to Oracle’s system through the Batcave and narrow it down to the thousand or so people crossed paths with. Perhaps he can contact Zatanna early enough to have her arrive and trace the spell.
Or maybe, it is time to call Grandfather.
“Damian,” Drake says slowly. “What if it happened on Monday?”
Damian clicks his tongue. What is that supposed to mean?
“The spell,” Drake clarifies. “It took effect on Tuesday, but it could’ve been cast on Monday.”
Damian slowly sits up. Drake looks at him, tentative hope in eyes that Damian watched go dull and dead. It is a stupid idea. Drake is grasping at straws. If they are to seriously entertain the idea that the spell can be cast in advance, then there is no shortage of time when Damian could’ve been exposed to the spell across his eleven years of life.
“I do not recall exactly what happened on Monday,” Damian says instead.
Drake nods. “It’ll be hard to reconstruct your whole day and we don’t have much time left—” 8:27, the clock blinks—“but we have enough time to run through your patrol route. I’ll pull up the logs.”
It is a stupid idea. But Damian has three and a half hours to waste anyway, and if he skewers this one, he doesn’t know what to do instead.
“Okay,” Drake says grimly at a half past eleven. They’re perched on a high-rise in Diamond District and have spent a considerable portion of the evening ducking Batman, who appears to be under the mistaken impression that one or both of them are being mind-controlled.
Damian is used to this. Of all the commonalities he’s observed over the loops, the tendency of Batman to attribute Damian’s actions to an external source is the most predictable. It’s almost tedious.
“We don’t have much time left,” Drake says. “So here’s what you’re going to do. When you wake up tomorrow-today, find me first. Give me the code—actually, wait, I’ll just write it down for you.”
“What makes you think I desire your assistance any further?” Damian sneers. “This day was a complete loss. I didn’t even get to maim you.”
Drake holds out an expectant hand. Damian glowers but hands over his own, yanking his sleeve up to bare his arm.
“Tell me that it’s magic,” Drake instructs, scrawling a long sequence of numbers and symbols on Damian’s arm. “Contact Zatanna immediately, and say that we already tried running through Tuesday and Monday evening and we didn’t find anything. Get Oracle’s database to cross reference any likely persons of interest with your path. And—”
“Shush.” Damian holds a hand out to stop him. There’s a gunshot from the alleyway several stories before them, and they both peer over the edge to spot a mugging in progress, though the victim seems to have a gun as well.
It doesn’t matter, not when there’s less than thirty minutes to the reset, but both of them swing down nonetheless. Drake handles the two gang members on the left, Damian the one on the right, retrieving the stolen purse before viciously kicking the man in the kidney.
“Are you well?” Damian brusquely asks the mugging victim, proffering her purse. She looks rather ill as she stows her gun away and Damian hopes she won’t vomit on him. He edges slightly towards Drake. “Do you require an escort?”
“I’m fine,” she mutters, hardly even looking at them. Her face is sunken and she sways as she attempts a step towards the mouth of the alleyway.
“You are clearly not,” Damian says curtly. “Sit down. We have already informed the police. They can provide you with a ride home.”
“No, there’s no time,” she says, barely acknowledging him as she raises her wrist to squint at her watch. The sleeve of her shirt pulls oddly at the motion. “No time.”
She keeps walking, brushing past him like he’s not there. Like he doesn’t matter.
Damian glances briefly at Drake, whose lips are pursed. “Yeah,” he confirms, “I saw it.”
The woman’s arms are covered in ink, faded and fresh pen marks scrawling incomprehensible gibberish all over her visible skin.
There are twenty-three minutes to midnight.
They follow the woman to her abode, both her and Drake anxiously checking their watches. Damian focuses on committing everything about her to memory. They could be wrong, she appears more like a delusional vagrant than their magic user, but they still watch as she stumbles down the basement steps to enter the lower level of a townhouse two streets away.
Damian’s Monday patrol passed right over this section.
“Fourteen minutes,” Drake says, focused and intent. “How do you want to play this?”
Damian takes a second to recover from the fact that Drake is asking him. “I want this to end,” he says harshly.
He is tired of waking up to Tuesdays. He is tired of wondering how long he can be trapped in tedium before he loses his mind entirely. He is tired.
Drake merely nods. “Watch out for other magic,” he warns before they slink into the alleyway.
There’s a side entrance and Damian fiddles with the lock until it gives way. The steps are creaky and he places his feet carefully, Drake following him silently. They enter—it appears to be a laboratory of some kind, albeit organized without any rhyme or rule. A centrifuge lurks in a corner, with a table covered in what appears to be vials of congealing blood. A microscope sits on the other side. A whiteboard is scrawled over with formulas, meandering and looping until Damian cannot make sense of where it starts and where it ends.
The date on the whiteboard is Monday’s.
He splits up from Drake as they walk further in, by silent agreement skirting the giant plastic tarp covering half the floor. The bookshelf Damian passes has titles referencing pathology and blood analysis and ones written in runes that are entirely unfamiliar. One title catches his eye—a book on the paradox of time.
Damian resists the urge to crack it open. There are ten minutes till midnight.
Muttering echoes near the stairs, followed by tapping and cursing. “No, no, no,” comes the aggrieved sound where their target is hunched over a laptop running what appears to be an advanced simulation software. SUCCESS %: 20.3 blinks on the screen. “No, damn you, this was supposed to work!” she snarls at her screen, before picking the entire thing up and flinging it against the floor. “I wasted a week on you!” she yells as the laptop shatters into multiple pieces.
One piece skitters all the way to Damian’s boot.
The woman follows the trail until she meets his gaze, blinking dully. “Robin,” she says in a tone of faint surprise. Drake is out of her direct view so Damian steps forward, jaw tight. “Did you—I said I didn’t need an escort home.” The woman blows a sharp breath and checks her watch. “Eh, not that it matters.”
“Why?” Damian asks, sharp and jagged. “Because everything will reset at midnight?”
The woman freezes. It would be comical, her shock, if Damian isn’t boiling with rage, with the emotions he’s battled for forty-five days, stuck in a loop no one else seems to notice.
“Were you expecting no one else to discover your dastardly plan?” Damian snarls, wrapping a hand on the hilt of his sword. “What are you plotting? The downfall of Batman? A takeover of Gotham? Or are you in league with a Rogue to gather intelligence and—”
“No!” the woman cuts him off, indignant. “I’m not—I’m not working for someone, and I’m not trying to take over Gotham! I’m just trying to save my sister!”
Damian pauses. In his periphery, he notices Drake halting his flanking maneuver.
“She’s sick, and everyone else has given up on her,” the woman snaps, heavy with bitterness and grief. “There’s no cure and there’s no one interested in finding one. So I decided to do it myself.”
She collapses back into her chair and she looks…small. Damian glances around the room again, at all the evidence of desperation and obsession.
“I just,” her voice wavers as she picks up a pen and crosses out a string of lines on her arm. Closer, and in the light, Damian can make out what look like thousands of ideas, scribbled on and across each other. The only notes she can take with her from one Tuesday to the next. “I just need more time.”
Well. Damian cannot say he doesn’t understand the impulse. If Richard was ever to fall ill to something with no cure, and Father was unable to create one, he’d—well, he’d first sneak Richard into a Lazarus Pit, but there are magic books in his room for a reason. If Damian wasn’t trapped in the loop with her, he might’ve left her alone.
He releases his grip on his sword, flashing a quick signal at Drake to not interfere. “I understand,” he says evenly. “But although your aims are just, your execution leaves something to be desired.”
“Excuse me?” the woman frowns.
Damian raises an eyebrow. “You have failed to consider several significant variables. Firstly, your extension of time is limited, as the only thing you can truly effect is yourself. Secondly, twenty-four hours is too short to be viable—there are surely researchers you are unable to contact and collaborate with because you cannot reach them before midnight. Thirdly, it is far more likely that a breakthrough like a cure can only be achieved after building off of previous tests and results in linear time. You have doomed yourself to a spiral that will fail.”
The woman’s gaping has started to turn into glaring, eyes narrowing and mouth twisting.
“But you can hardly expect to think rationally after several days stuck in a loop,” Damian says reasonably. “So end the loop and we can discuss this civilly tomorrow.”
He can speak with Father. The Wayne Foundation is always interested in funding groundbreaking research.
The woman straightens to her feet, eyes glinting. “I’m not ending the loops,” she says lowly. Drake slinks forward, but his appearance doesn’t even make her flinch.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Damian says, darting a glance at Drake to back off. He can handle this himself, he doesn’t require the older boy’s assistance any further. “If you won’t end it yourself, I will end it for you.”
Something clicks.
He forgot that she has a gun.
“You won’t,” she says as she points the gun straight at him. “If you’re gone, no one can stop me. I’ll have all the time I need. I can save my sister.”
There is nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. His armor cannot stop a bullet at this range. If he dies, there is no reset for him.
He cannot check the time. All he can do is stall and hope that midnight hits before she squeezes the trigger.
“Are you sure that’s what you’re after?” Damian asks coolly. His fingers twitch with the effort to be still as she stares at him quizzically. “More time with your sister?”
“Of course—”
“Because you had forty-five Tuesdays you could’ve spent with her,” Damian says sharply. “And instead, you spent it locked up in here.” Her gaze goes skittering around the laboratory. “Wasting your time to find a cure that does not exist.”
“No,” the woman says, shaking her head. “No, I haven’t, once I find a cure, I’ll end the loops, and I can spend—”
“You don’t believe that,” Damian interrupts. “And even if you do, even if you find a cure, you don’t know how much time you’ll get. Perhaps she’ll die in a car accident. Or crossing the street. Or she’ll have a heart attack. Or she’ll get sick again.” He’s consciously aware of the seconds he’s buying, the seconds that will have to be enough. “And all of this will be for nothing.”
He realizes it’s the wrong thing to say the moment he says it. The woman’s eyes narrow further, her mouth pressing together in a sharp flash of determination. It’s too late to dodge and the bang is loud enough to ring in his ears as he goes crashing back against a shelf.
The first thing he realizes is that he’s not bleeding. There is no sharp burn of a bullet or wooziness of blood loss, only the bruises from the shelf. From the impact, he realizes as he straightens, because he was pushed out of the way.
The woman is standing there, eyes wide, the gun limp in her hand. He doesn’t spare her a second glance.
Drake is sprawled on the ground, one hand cupped to the front of his uniform, where the golden insignia is now red.
“No,” Damian says, though he cannot hear himself over the ringing. “No.” He stumbles forward and drops to Drake’s side. “No—what did you—why did you—”
He puts pressure on the gaping hole in Drake’s chest, an automatic reaction. Drake bucks, and tries to say something, but Damian cannot hear him. There is blood on his lips as well and Damian can feel him tremble as he attempts to suck in breath.
It’s futile. The bullet has most likely torn through his lung and out the other side. It has nicked an artery, given the pool of blood Damian is kneeling in. Drake spasms again, the lenses of his domino mask finding him, before his hand drops.
“No,” Damian whispers. He looks up, half-expecting Father to be there, or Grandfather, or, or someone, someone who can stop this, someone who can tell him what happened, what to do, why—but there is no one there but the woman, ashen and wide-eyed.
Before he can lunge for her, the world turns black.
Damian wakes up to fog. It blankets his muscles and creeps through his mind, leaving everything distant and hazy. He spends five minutes washing his hands before he realizes that they’re no longer covered in blood.
He barely tastes breakfast. It doesn’t matter, he’s eaten the same thing forty-six times. Father is yawning behind a cup of coffee and Drake is clutching his mug of decaf like it will save him. There is no blood on his lips and Damian only registers that he’s staring when Drake scowls back.
School passes in a fugue state. Damian blinks placidly at Mr. Steinbecker when he excitedly informs him that his piece was accepted in the exhibition. He can tell his teacher is concerned by Damian’s lack of response, but the fog cushions him from caring.
What does it matter? The joy has long worn off. The exhibition will never come.
He readies himself for patrol with long-familiar movements. Near the Batcomputer, Drake is complaining about his board meeting. Father’s eyes are twitching, like they always do when he’s trying to be serious but struggling not to laugh. Damian looks away.
They suit up and head out.
Damian moves on automatic, flowing through fights he’s had before. Every movement is economical, and he catches a robber that tries to slink away. Batman gives him a proud head tilt. Damian ignores it.
He hears the faint squeaking as they cut through an alley. Batman doesn’t hear it, because he doesn’t stop. Damian hesitates.
There’s no point, his mind reminds him. He can save them today and they’ll be there tomorrow. And again and again and again, his actions entirely without consequence. Good or bad.
“Robin?” Batman has paused at the end of the alleyway and Damian realizes he’s hesitated a beat too long.
“I heard something,” he says and heads towards the squeaking.
They’re all there, all six tiny little kittens, each peeping and trembling in his careful grasp as he picks them out of the hollow. “I’ll take them to the veterinarian across the street,” Damian says. “You should continue patrol. I’ll catch up.”
Batman considers him for a long moment. “Alright,” he says finally, disappearing in a swirl of his cape.
Damian stares at the box of kittens as he waits for the doctor. He’s already run the considerations of how small they are, what happened to their mother, how long he can foster them, what supplies he needs to pick up. Questions that hang in the ether, waiting for a day that never comes.
He gently brushes a gloved finger over the fur of one little kitten. It’s foolish. Grandfather would’ve called it idiotic, to waste time saving something that can never truly be saved, to place his faith in something as ephemeral as hope.
But isn’t that what Robin is? Isn’t that what they do in Gotham? They try, day after day, to make this city a better place. And even if they fail, if they wake up to the same crime-infested city, they get up, and try again. Because if there’s no hope, then there’s little else left.
“I’ll come pick them up tomorrow,” he promises to the doctor, like he has forty-one times. And he hopes that he can keep it.
Damian takes a meandering route to join up with Batman near the cache of toxins they will find, and he isn’t surprised when he ends up in the Diamond District. What is surprising is the woman sitting on the steps of the townhouse he’s marked.
She looks up when his boots hit the pavement, eyes blotchy and face tearstained. She doesn’t appear to have a weapon, but he still approaches cautiously.
“I’m sorry,” she says when he gets close enough. “I—I didn’t mean to—I didn’t want to hurt you. Or Red Robin.”
“You tried to shoot me,” Damian says evenly.
“I know,” she snivels, hiding her face behind her hands with a sob. “I know. I—I can’t believe I—I’m sorry.” She takes a wavering breath. “You were right. I—I wasn’t thinking rationally.”
“Tt.”
“And—and not just right about that.” She wipes her nose with her sleeve and Damian nearly twitches for a handkerchief. “You were right about time.” She stares at her shoes. “I’m,” she swallows, “I’m going to end the loop today.” More tears drip down. “I just—I just wanted to spend one day with my sister.”
This is the woman that has caused Damian nearly two months of madness. This is the woman that tried to kill him, and did kill Drake. This is the woman responsible for nearly destroying Damian’s will altogether.
By all rights, she should be locked up. She is dangerous and unstable.
“Tomorrow,” Damian says, “talk to the Wayne Foundation. They have research grants for developments in healthcare. I will let them know you’re coming.” It may be too late to save her sister, but forty-five days of dedicated research shouldn’t be lost.
The woman looks at him, eyes wide and shining with hope. “Thank you,” she says, her voice cracking. “Thank you so much.”
Damian wakes to his alarm and immediately retrieves his phone. Wednesday blinks up at him, alien and unfamiliar. He clutches it so hard it creaks and has to take several breaths to compose himself.
“—still think it could’ve worked,” Drake mutters as Damian enters the kitchen, eyeing Alfred suspiciously as he clutches his mug of coffee. “Have we tried sticking the Riddler with a biodegradable fork?”
“No,” Father says, hiding his smile behind his mug. “Perhaps demonstrating proof of concept will go over better with the board.”
“That’s a good idea,” Drake straightens, tapping busily away on his phone. Damian sits down, and hesitantly returns Father’s smile.
“I talked to Selina, and she’ll be back next week,” Father says to him. “And Alfred agrees you can foster the kittens until she gets back.”
Damian has to modulate his beaming grin to something more appropriate. “Thank you, Father.” He remembers his plan to get Father to agree to him keeping one of the kittens, maybe two—it feels like a lifetime ago, but now he can actually put it into action.
“You’re welcome, Damian,” Father says, and Damian can’t entirely fight the grin. He even smiles at Drake, leaving the older boy squinting at him suspiciously.
He will call Richard, to tell him about the art exhibition, and then mention a possible new Wayne Foundation project to Father. The kittens can be picked up before patrol. And—and he doesn’t know what will happen after that.
It’s wonderful.
Damian entirely forgets about the sequence scrawled on his arm in fading ink until Drake corners him in his room after patrol.
“Time travel, multiverse, or time loop?” Drake asks, staring at him intently.
Damian flinches, wondering if he is that obvious, before remembering the sequence. “The situation has been resolved,” Damian says stiffly.
This Drake is not the one that jumped in front of a bullet to save Damian. He’s not the one who died gasping under Damian’s hands, just to buy him more time. He’s not the one that helped Damian solve the loops.
Drake arches an eyebrow. “And when you say resolved…”
Of course he wants further details. Damian heaves a mental sigh. “It was a time loop. Ill-advised magic. It’s ended.” There. He won’t be giving anything else to satisfy the older boy’s curiosity.
Drake looks wary, but not suspicious. “Alright,” he says, appearing to accept Damian’s word. He heads out the door, and then pauses and sticks his head back in. “If you need anything, let me know.”
Damian is left blinking as Drake disappears.
This Drake is not the one that jumped in front of a bullet to save him. But, Damian realizes, he was. And he would be.