Archive of Our Own ^beta

The light is brillant, strangely purple, and fucking hurts.

It’s a shock, it feels like each never ending is on fire, like something scraped over the fine catgut wire of a bow. It frays them, it leaves powerful tingles of pain, it lasts a lifetime, it lasts only a second.

Tim throws up.

Which is weird.

He doesn’t remember eating recently enough to have anything come out of him that isn’t bile.

His back hurts. His hands hurt. His eyes hurt-

Everything is fuzzy in a soft sort of way, an out of focus way that Tim only knows from being concussed. Everything hurts, and everything is wrong. He can barely feel his legs, he knows he’s got to be losing it because the whole world is suddenly soft and easy why isn’t there-

What is happening?

He stumbles, oh god why can he barely feel his fucking legs? He's trying to press the panic button on the monitor of the cave.

He just hopes he isn’t dying-

Oh god, Damian. Where is Damian? Why can’t he see anything clearly? Where is the little brat? Damian had been by him in the cave when everything had exploded, they had been arguing like always when the two of them had gotten the punishment to go clean the trophy room, stop yelling at each other, stop being at each other's throat for two minutes and go clean the goddamn trophy room-

They had been cleaning, got into another knock out drag out argument, and it had come so close to blows and they had been screaming more than cleaning and-

The stupid fucking shoe, in the magical section- exploded out-

Tim throws up again as he stumbles around, desperately tying to find out if Damian was still fucking alive-

The only reason why Tim stops his determined stumbling is because he literally trips over something.

Something warm, and large, and gagging. Screaming out in high pitched keens, thrashing with long limbs.

They tangle together, their only weapons are their own fingers, clothed in soft cave clothes and socks, no armor to be seen, no steel and no staffs and no swords. Tim quickly realizes that he’s smaller than the person who he’s fighting, and not in the usual way.

Normally he’s thinner, having shot up when he hit twenty in one final long growth spurt that put him towering over most people, but still about as thin as a light pole.

Now he’s not only smaller, he’s a lot smaller,

Something is wrong.

Something is very wrong.

Tim feels somebody grab his collar and yank back, his shirt constricts around his shoulders, around the high collar on his neck-

Tim was wearing an open, deep neck quarter sleeve, why can he feel a different shirt on, who changed his clothes, why is he wearing a different shirt-

“Stop!” That’s Dick, he’s yelling, screaming, right at Tim’s ear, holding Tim in a vice? Impossible Tim’s taller than Dick, Dick shouldn’t be able to hold him so squarely to his chest. “Damian! Stop!” Why aren’t the sharp, loud words hurting?

Tim stops fighting, clawing at the air, gasping, trying to fight in a single breath, is this a panic attack?

Dick holds him close, secure … off the ground?

Tim tries to focus, the world is so, so fuzzy, so soft, the details right in front of him are so sharp, but not painfully sharp? What is happening?

Tim looks down at his hands, holding onto Dick’s arms that are wrapped around his shoulders. Hands that are small, dark, and covered in little scars.

It hits him, where he has seen these little hands before, so dark and small with short strong fingers and bitten off nails.

“Oh fuck.” Damian’s voice echoes from Tim’s own throat. “You have got to be kidding me.”

--

Damian isn’t sure why the fuck his eyesight is suddenly so good, but he’s not going to complain about it.

Apparently, the placeholder is good for something after all.

The downside to having the eyesight of a goddamn eagle, is, apparently, everytime the smallest sound happens Damian wants to cry about it.

Odd, Damian knows that it’s just Todd, talking to Bruce about what had happened down in the trophy area, but everytime Jason clicks his chs too hard, or snaps a tee sound Damian feels like crawling out of his own skin to get away.

It’s also strange, suddenly, being tall.

Damian looks down at his own body, still held so securely in Grayson’s embrace, and feels like today has just gotten so, so fucking strange.

Apparently, who would have known that Father kept a tried and true magical artifact in the trophy room? A shoe from the 1990’s (Air Jordan?) that had been cursed (blessed?) by a burgeoning, unpracticed wizard wannabe to ‘make them experience a mile in my shoes’.

Apparently the wizard now worked in IT, was totally rehabilitated, practicing only simple white magic, and had a kid.

Doesn’t do Damian much fucking help now, does it? Trapped in Drake's body and feeling like he’s only ten seconds away from tears. Everything is so bright, so loud, so crystalline clear that it makes Damian want to curl up in the dark and never come out. Why is he so tired? He doesn’t physically feel anything but fine but even standing up and having to be here makes him want to die, throw things, scream.

“- they were just clawing the shit out of each other.” Todd is saying, holding tight onto Damian’s (Tim’s?) elbow and chatting with Bruce. “Fighting, on the floor, rather badly.”

Bruce just hums, it makes the hair on the back of Damian’s neck stand right on end. The panic flushes through his system, his breathing gets heavy and hard.

“We think they were disoriented from the magic, the damn shoe still seems to have some juice in it after all these years, you really need to get rid of that fucking thing.” Todd continues on, Damian fights a twitch at every other word.

Drake, In Damian’s correct body, hangs limp in Graysons hold, squinting and looking around, not bothering to fight his way to the floor and stand like a dignified person would.

“We need to get rid of that damn thing.” Todd continues, to Bruce’s contemplative face. “It’s caused more problems than it’s worth-”

“Why can’t you see?”

Everybody’s heads whip to Drake, to Damian’s real body, who is still sporting Damian’s usual grumpy expression.

The attention doesn’t seem to phase him, however, he still hangs limp in Grayson's hold, looking around the cave like it’s personally offended him.

Damian scoffs, a sound that’s distinctly different when it comes from Drake’s large front teeth and not his own, “Just because you have strange weird sniper eyesight doesn’t mean we all have it, Drake.”

The cave starts up in a cacophony of noise, all at once, everybody’s talking, it's echoing off the cave walls, the way the sound bounces around makes everything hell.

Damian feels his body twitch, can feel the heat behind his eyes, the constricting of his chest-

“Stop!” Comes a shrill, pitched voice, the spillover of noises all at once quiets, looking back to Drake, where he’s now kicking around, pushing at the hold that traps him.

Grayson lets Drake go, putting Damian’s body carefully on the ground and allowing Drake to charge over to where Damian is trapped by Todd’s hand on his arm, pressing down too tightly, holding too restricting-

“You need to go to your room to calm down.” Drake tells him, his voice is low, quiet, and finally there's a sound that doesn’t make Damian want to scream.

Damian scoffs again, why does the sound hurt? “I am calm.”

Drake’s eyes narrow even farther, they’re almost closed with how far down the eyelid is. “No. You’re not. I know what I’m like, you know what you're like. You know you can’t see worth a shit and have limited feeling in your limbs-’

Sound picks up again, all at once.

Damian can’t help his reaction, his eyes squeeze close, he curls just a hunch, he flinches.

Drake continues to plow forward, uncaring of the reactions of everyone around him, still focused on just Damian, “I know that I get overstimulated, was close to a meltdown before this, and I know when I need to separate myself from a situation. You need to go to your room and sit quietly, I promise.”

“I can feel my own limbs just fine.” Damian grinds out, it feels like he’s pulling his own teeth out as he says it. “I can see just fine too, just because not everyone has your vision-” “I wear contacts Damian.”

Todd, Grayson, and Father are all still talking, but focusing on one conversation is easier.

That’s … that’s not possible, Damian knows he can see, has been able to see his whole life. Grandfather had commended him on his ability to see things in the dark, Mother had commented he has a sharp eye for movement.

Damian can feel it when it snaps, something in his chest. The control, maybe? The need to stay safe and sane and controlled. The fragile hold onto the perception of the world around him.

Damian can feel his control snap, in his chest and he loses it.

--

Damian is in his room, calming down, wrapped up in blankets and trying to stop shaking.

Tim feels sort of bad, but he did warn Damian to go somewhere he needed to calm down.

Everyone had rushed Damian into his room and his shower once the kid had started crying, ugly gasping tears when wearing Tim’s face, pale skin going blotchy and thick globs of saltwater dripping from his chin.

Bruce is calling somebody- the optometrist?- from the other room and Dick and Jason sit on the couch next to Tim (in Damian’s body) and they talk about what's going to happen.

Tim’s sort of amazed that, aside from the constant low level pain in his back, the numbness of his limbs and the fuzziness of his vision, it’s rather nice being Damian.

There’s … a sort of ease around the world, a sort of relaxed kind of simple thing, his brain can focus so easily-

(There’s also anger here, simering under the surface, sparking up and throwing itself at the walls of Tim’s control. It’s so strange, being in somebody else’s body, experiencing life how they experience it.)

“Are you going to go to school tomorrow?” Jason asks, genuine. “The magic only lasts for three-ish days, it’s thursday, so by sunday you’ll be back to normal, but that means one day of school. Think you can swing tenth grade?”

Tim thinks about it. He hasn’t been to school since he graduated, years ago now, and has never thought about going back. He could physically handle it, sure, but does he want to?

Then it hits him, like a freight train, that he has a meeting with the WayneTech R&D department tomorrow about their budget.

That means that Damian had a meeting tomorrow about the budget of WayneTech R&D.

Not that Damian couldn't do it, the kiddo knows more about business and budgets and spreadsheets and how to work a powerpoint presentation than most people. Damian could flawlessly run a business meeting without breaking a sweat.

But Damian wasn’t Damian right now, he was Tim.

(God, body swapping magic, how fucking cliche. Terribly inconvenient for everyone, isn’t it.)

Tim’s a fuckup. He has to plan social interactions like a battle. He’s got to fight to not thrash out at people whose voices he doesn’t like. He has pains from old breaks and he has to take a thirty minute break every time he talks to people for two hours.

Tim’s brain is broken, or something, he has meltdowns and he throws things and screams and picks at his hangnails until his fingers are bleeding.

Damian could do it, in this body, who’s full of aches and pains and can’t bend at the back very well and has shitty eyesight and can’t feel every finger fully, this body can listen to people talk without wanting to strangle them, and can hangout easily with others.

But in Tim’s?

Tim could barely do it without snapping. Damian might be able to fare a bit better.

They’ve already pushed the meeting back twice, they can’t move it back any further. Shit.

“I guess if Damian has to go to my meeting, I’d have to take his place at school.”

Dick and Jason make a face at that, looking at each other over Tim’s head. Eugh. It’s been a long time since they’ve been able to do that to him. It’s not a fun feeling, being left out of conversations-

But when Tim tries to look up he feels a metal rod in his back stop his full head motion. God damn it.

“We’ll also have to ask Damian.” Dick says, words slow and easy and almost lackadaisical. Tim finds he even hears them differently, now, riding along in a different body. Dick’s words are calming, low and slow and tipped with an edge that doesn’t make him worry that he’s doing something wrong, it’s like listening to Janet sing lullabies all those years ago.

Weird.

“I don’t think he’ll be up to any interaction any time soon.” Tim admits. Meltdowns were never fun, it takes ages to come back from them, after falling down the metaphorical cliff it takes a while to climb back up.

(Which is why it’s better to never topple over in the first place, to hang on that edge all you want, to pull yourself up and over is leagues easier than actually climbing a mountain.)

“We’ll talk to him at breakfast.” Jason decides, reaching over and pulling Tim into a one sided quick hug. “We’ve all had a long day. Learning new things about one another all the time.”

With that, Jason gets up, headed to his own suite.

Weird.

Tim never receives physical affection from Jason, not in the form of anything that’s not rough pushes or shoves.

Dick moves as well, pulling himself off the single loveseat he had been sitting in like a stray cat, He pulls himself up with a single, strange dancer movement, and he’s got a hand on Tim’s shoulder in an instant as they both walk towards the sleeping suits.

Dick hasn’t done the whole ‘hovering big brother’ routine in literal years, not since Tim had left the manor to live with his father after he had recovered from his coma.

Eugh. Tim’s forgotten how terrible it is to be so short. To have little legs that need to take stairs one step at a time, instead of his usual two or three. Damian’s back also sends out little alerts of sparking warning pangs whenever Tim pulls a maneuver that tests the limits of its flexibility, like twisting his hip too far to try and hop to or three steps at once.

Huh. No wonder the little bastard sits and stands so formally, it’s literally the most comfortable thing to do. There is a record in Damian’s medical files about the metal augmentations for his spine after a deliberating injury, but to have it affect him this much is downright crippling. This isn’t better, this is painful, limiting, and Tim is reminded of it every time he moves too far one way or another.

Tim knows he’s not a spring chicken either. With his antibiotics, his bad knees, his bum shoulder, his headaches, his whole broken brain thing.

But this? Tim wants his own problems back. At least he knows how to deal with everything that comes with being him.

--

Damian wants his own body back, he aches for it.

Literally.

There’s no pain, of course, in Tim’s body, but there’s a raging emptiness in his chest that far outweighs any physical discomfort.

When he was first hidden away in his own room like a fading maiden in the middle ages the only thing he felt was a deep set relief, a calm wave crashing over the infected desert in his mind.

Then the wave turned into a typhoon and now he’s left trying to bring himself back to the surface.

It’s hell.

Why can’t he claw his way back into his normal resting state? Why can’t he be stable again? Why does everything feel like he’s barely holding onto a raft in a hurricane? He just wants there to be silence.

He wants there to be silence but as soon as it's achieved the silence drives him mad.

There's an emptiness inside of him that the silence soothes, but eats at. Makes it unfold far into an expansive black hole. The silence does nothing but pull him down deeper, so he needs there to be noise but if there's a single noise he’s going to start crying again.

What kind of man can live in his hell?

What kind of man can tolerate this?

Damian wants to sleep, but it's too quiet, it's too loud, the sheets aren’t right, the lightings not right, his brain is too loud, it's too distracted, how does anybody live like this?

He takes a shower, then another. The water is warm, almost scalding, and instead of the normal discomfort that would come from it, it feels wonderful on his skin. Tim’s skin. Disgusting.

Damian doesn’t actually wash anything that’s not Tim’s hair, his hair for now, even the texture feels wrong. It’s spider silk underneath hypersensitive fingers.

Damian wants to scream.

At the end of it all, Damian is wrung out, tired, and he goes to bed with no troubles at all, as soon as he closes his eyes.

(Thank god.)

--

Instantly, as soon as Tim wakes up, he realizes that something is wrong.

It only takes him a full second to realize why things are so wrong.

Everything hurts, anger sits easily reachable under the surface of his emotions like a churning sea.

Tim starts his morning routine, slow and careful, stretching out the tender aching muscles with easy morning stretches, starting in the bed and moving upright as they get more complex.

It helps Tim actually come all the way into the waking world, in his own body. Tim’s always been a slow riser, waking up seemingly at halting inches at a time.

He’s wondered sometimes, idly, what it would be like to be a morning person.

Turns out, with the whole magic body swap situation, he gets to have a feel for it.

And boy, does it feel good after long stretches, slow and lazy and deep.

Turns out, stretching and warmth helps keep the ache away, helps wake up the fuzzy feeling in his limbs.

Tim feels great, wide awake in a way he normally doesn’t get to be until maybe one or two in the afternoon.

At breakfast, he has another problem that he encounters.

“Do I eat Damian’s plate, or my plate?”

Jason, the only other person besides Alfred which is up at the moment, makes a questioning sound in the back of his throat. “What?”

Tim looks down at Aflred’s beautiful breakfast, the toast and eggs and sausage and english muffins and scones and jam. Alfred knows who likes what, and he normally preps the plates in advance to pass them out one at a time when people come down to eat on their own time. It’s easier like that.

But now, it’s only just barely nine in the morning, Tim’s body- Damian?- won’t be down for at least another hour, probably closer to two. Tim normally eats mostly sausage and egg in the morning, keeping it light and non-carb heavy for a reason.

But Damian eats English muffins and jams, along with a smoothie of veggies and fruits. Damian has spoken before about his eating habits, it’s something unavoidable in a house like this. They’ve all got specific quirks and preferences and needs, so it’s a specific diet for each of them.

Like how Bruce needs a bunch of smaller, easy to digest meals due to his various old injuries that damaged his insides so much he’s one wrong punch away from a colonoscopy bag. Bruce tends towards meal replacement smoothies and parfaits. Dick likes savory rich things, with a lot of flavor and a lot of heart. Jason likes simple, likes familiar, and likes easy. Tim likes things protein heavy and light, little to no carbs because his stomach does bad things when he eats too much of them. Cass doesn’t eat bread at all- it makes her break out into hives, and she tends towards simpler easier flavors. Alfred himself is english through and through, he likes the way his homestyle cooking feels and tastes.

So now the problem is-

Damian is vegetarian. Tim is not.

If Tim’s body has too much food in the morning, like Damian prefers, then Tim’s body will throw up. If Damian’s body has meat, like Tim prefers, Damian’s body is going to throw a fit.

An easy choice for Tim then. He’ll deal with being vegetarian for a while. Damian’s body, the body that Tim’s hitching a ride in, is already used to dealing with a certain diet so that’s the diet that Tim will stick to.

“Give me Damian’s plate.” Tim asks.

“He’s not going to eat yours.” Jason tells Tim, already clicking to another news article on the tablet in his hands. “Damian’s gonna throw a fit.”

Alfred places down the plate of jam and muffins and a single over easy egg and a fruit and veggie morning smoothie. It’s nothing like Jason’s sausage and beans and toast and jam, but that’s the point isn’t it?

Tim smears the blueberry jam onto the muffin, the scrape of the toasted crumbs isn’t nearly as irritating as it normally is.

“Damian can handle his own breakdown.” Tim decides, before shoving the delicious pastry into his mouth. Glorious. It’s light and fluffy and warm, the jam is brilliantly vibrant against the tongue.

Jason just rolls his eyes and continues to browse through the news, eating every now and again from his plate like the slowest eater alive.

They sit in silence, Tim focuses on the blurry meal, the way the soft morning like makes everything more distinct and harder to see at the same time. It’s easier to see colors when they’re the only thing in sharp clarity, but the light makes the colors all blend together in places where they shouldn’t. The way Jason’s white shirt blends into the tablecloth and the tablecloth blends into plates and when Alfred comes over to collect Tim’s plate the way Alfred’s gloves blend into the plate.

It’s amazing how much Tim can and can not see. Tim’s own vision is barely even enough to require contacts, he’s just pushing twenty/forty, but Damian must be much, much worse.

Bruce comes in now, bedhead all mused up and not awake in the slightest.

Alfred places a smoothie in front of him, today it vaguely smells like something vegetable died in there. Disgusting.

But Bruce carries on, pulling up his own email and reaching out and grabbing the thick sludge that the only person to call it breakfast is the one putting a reusable superhero straw in it. Bruce won’t fully be a human being until he’s finished going through his email and let's breakfast digest for at least half an hour.

It’s another twenty minutes before Dick comes down, mumbling happily about some new award that Garfeild had won last night at some big actor thing, about how the big facetime call between the titans had been filled with good vibes and happy cheers. Cassandra follows, with a hand latched onto Dick’s too-large shirt and bedhead that rivals Bruce. Cass is not a morning person either, but she’s able to brute force the waking world by going to bed early.

The strongest soldier of them all, truly.

Dick sits down hard on the breakfast bench, the cushion bouncing Tim like it hasn’t in years, making the muffin he was cutting open jump from his hands to the plate.

“Sorry Dami- Tim. Fuck. Sorry it’s too early.” Dick’s voice is bright and smiling.

Tim lied to himself earlier, oh did he lie. That was not a fun motion for the steel of Damian’s spine to handle. Oh it’s like iron fire. The pain flares hard and fast before it shocks out of every nerve like a lightning strike.

Dick goes on, chattering about how proud he is of his friends.

Tim exhales hard and heavy, shaking hands trying to twitch out the final pop and fizzles of pain. Holy shit.

Tim feels a warm hand on the base of his neck-

“You okay?” Jason’s voice is low, rumbling, content.

Jason never sounds like that when-

“Complications unforeseen.” Tim quotes, the words biting and sharp. “Turns out, Damian doesn’t tell us everything about himself.”

That get’s people’s attention. Well, it gets everybody’s attention but Bruce’s, who still looks like he’s sleeping.

“What’s hiding in that little body of his?” Dick asks, his sharp gaze full of a scary intelligence that he normally keeps hidden.

“Are you hurt?” Jason demands, his hand pulls away and Jason’s already looking over Damian’s body, leaning over and making sure he can’t see bandages.

“Was Damian hiding injuries?” Cass sleepily hums, low into her breakfast. “He’ll get benched if he was.”

“Old injury acting up.” Tim says instead, the way he has to hold himself to make sure that his spine doesn’t jostle again is seriously straight, it makes him sound snippy. No wonder the gremlin sounds mad all the time.

It’s also clear that anger issues are present, complicated tangles of emotions being smothered by the hot boil of rage.

Tim just tries to shift to a more comfortable position, the human body can eat jammed up English muffins from pretty much any position. He can’t bend without trying to move the metal in a way it doesn’t want to- so he needs to be straight backed, but comfortable. Being warm will probably help as well.

Too bad Damian;’s bag of bones does not want to hold warmth.

“Is it his back?” Dick asks, shifting, moving, trying to get closer. “He complains about it when it’s too cold outside.”

Tim sighs, shifting to lay flat on the bench seat, sitting in the sun of the morning feels nice, but it’s not enough. Jason moves over, allowing Tim the full range needed to lay flat.

That feels so much better, actually. “Yeah, it’s his back. Feels like I can barely move it.” Tim settles, the top of his head touching Jason’s thigh, feeling the prickly thick hair mash against Jasons’s pj bottoms. Cass carefully maneuvers Tim’s legs (Damian's legs?) into a propped up position on her lap, taking some of the strain off the very base of the hips and more across the wide part of the shoulders.

Also, Cass is warm, so that’s another win.

Perfect.

The warmth of the sun lights them all up, brilliantly in the space of the morning meal. The way they’re all crowded in like this means even more heat, Jason’s a furnace, and Cass is a space heater. Dick’s already moving cushions to get at the throw blanket they leave in here in the nook. Bruce is even looking more awake, blinking blearily into his coffee.

Tim puts a hand up, “I demand my last English muffin.”

This causes the table to laugh, a soft sort of almost there laugh, more like a chuckle really, but Jason reaches over and begins to do up a muffin like Damian normally likes.

It’s halfway through the final muffin, with Tim contemplating about how to drink the orange juice without spilling it that Dick and Cass both look up to the door.

Jason looks a moment after, pulling his attention away from the news on his tablet.

Sure enough, there’s Tim’s body, shuffling through the doorway.

“How do you do this?” Damian demands, voice hoarse and hair tangled. Those are the softest pj’s that Tim owned, given to Damian after the meltdown to make sure that Damian wouldn’t have to deal with anything disgusting like textures that are wrong.

“What, wake up?” Tim asks, still from his limited viewpoint of laying down on the nook’s bench. (And just,,, limited viewpoint in general. Damian really needed glasses.)

“I feel like I’m sick.” Damian grumbles, looking at the single plate that is left on the warming station. “Sick, tired, fuzzy, if this is how you wake up everyday it’s a miracle we see you before midnight.”

“Not all of us can be morning birds, Damian.”

A scoff, loud, then a full body wince.

Not a nice sound, which is why Tim never makes it himself. There’s a lot of sounds that Tim doesn’t like to make, because they’re bad sounds. Tim has a list in his room, he’ll find it and give it to Damian later.

“Master Tim already ate your morning meal.” Alfred informs Damian from his own position by the counter. Alfred never sits at the breakfast nook with them all. He says it’s proprietary but really it’s because Alfred doesn’t like sitting so low to the ground in the half height antique breakfast nook. “All vegetarian.”

Tim makes sure to throw a thumbs up. It makes Cass laugh.

Jason stands up, cracking his back and knee as he does so. He normally leaves earlier or just as Tim arrives so this isn’t anything outside the norm. “See you guys tonight.” He tells them with a quick wave. “I’ll try to keep a handle on everything, cut off anything that might need reinforcements. Stay safe.”

“Stay safe, chum.” Bruce manages through his morning haze, responding to the voice and movement of his children. His sleepy mumbles earn him a quick, brief one armed hug from Jason as Jason heads out.

“See you tonight, Jaybird!” Dick tells him, sending a brillant seven hundred watt smile. “Try not to scare anybody too bad at your day job.”

“Fuck you. Being a nurse is hard.”

“Yeah, nursing is hard.” Dick acknowledges, leaning deep into Cass and making Cass giggle. “But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you need to give every dude with a sore throat a death glare buddy.”

Jason sends Dick his death glare, a combination of thick heavy eyebrows and a mean mug of a look. “I don’t send people death glares.”

Tim’s voice cuts through the background, soft, almost impossible to hear over Dick and Jason’s silly fighting. “May I change up my plate, Alfred?”

“Certainly, Master Damian.”

Damian is the last to get his breakfast, sitting down just as everybody begins to filter out into their daily routine.

Beans, eggs, and a single slice of toast.

Tim stands up with the help of Cass just as Damian pulls out the fork and knife from the napkin. “See you soon.” Tim tells him. “You might want to eat slowly.”

The toast will be too much. Tim knows.

Damian rolls his eyes. At least Tim thinks Damian rolls his eyes. Hard to tell when your vision is as shit as Damian’s is. You’d think that you’d be able to see the color of it all, but really all you see is the blocky panes of the dark shadows of a face.

--

“You need to go to a meeting today, remember?” Tim, in a uniform he hasn’t worn in a long time now, reminds Damian after breakfast.

The house is in a whirlwind of activity as everyone gets ready to go. Jason’s already long gone, Dick’s next out the door. Normally Bruce and Tim would ride together but that’s been switched around today, with Cass and Tim getting to go one way together and Damian and Bruce going another.

Cass takes Damian to school because the theater where she teaches beginner dance classes is located right around the highschool, and Damian gets picked up and dropped off with her after he does his own extracurriculars.

But now, Tim’s got half a day to deal with highschool before the doctor's appointment this afternoon and Damian’s got a meeting to present to the board.

“I remember.” Damian’s got the notes Tim has been taking before him and going over them with a keen eye. “I’ll make sure that it goes according to plan.”

“Thank you.”

“Make sure not to embarrass me at school today.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

The two know not to mess up badly with the other’s social and work life, there’s a bunch of people that depend on them and it’s not worth the effort of gaining a tiny win to tumble down the delicate balance that is both of their lives.

Tim narrows his eyes, before reaching forward and feeling the edge of Damian’s collar. The kid always messed up and made his ties crooked. It’s just a quirk that Damian’s always had.

Tim feels the crooked knot and quirks a brow. Damian allows Tim to fix it, like Damian always allows Tim to fix it. The knot is easy, Tim’s had each step long since memorized, learned it from having to go over and make sure it was perfect when he was little.

Damian’s small, numb fingers make it hard. Tim knows how to tie it right, but the way Damian’s body fights against him, makes the feeling at the tips of his fingers numb and bland make it hard to gauge the material and the tightness of it. It’s like wearing goddamn oven mitts.

The results aren’t perfect. No.

But, the two separate. Damian’s tie is fixed, only a little crooked. Tim’s getting called downstairs to get in the car.

--

Damian’s goal is only one thing today- the budget meeting for the research and development department.

Tim cleared his day of anything else, along with telling Tam about the situation.

So Damian’s not surprised when he walks in the door and there stands Tam Fox, furious expression on her face as the default and her clipboard wielded in her hands like a weapon.

Damian regrets a lot of things this morning. Having to learn how to put in contacts, having to drink two cups of coffee to pull himself out of a sleepy stupor, having to finagle himself into strict suits and tight clothing, having to deal with being with Brucie for the entire work day.

The thing that he hates the most, at this moment, is that Tim has left him to the wolf that is Tam Fox.

Tam Fox, a black hole in the stark white foyer of Wayne Tech. She’s wearing black, her eyes are the same color, she’s easy to look at compared to the brilliant light of everything else. Crystalized and perfect and giving Damian a headache faster than anything else in his entire life. Damn Timothy’s horrible brain.

Tam Fox is only barely above Damian’s true height, her dark hair tied tightly back and her attire nothing short of sharply professional. “You’re late.”

Damian isn’t late, in fact he’s early. By twenty minutes.

Tam doesn’t seem to care. She’s already marching away, the click click click of her heels like knives in Damian’s ears. “Follow me.”

So he does.

Damian is not about to argue with a Fox. They tend to win those arguments, the Fox family has been dealing with the Waynes for more than a century at this point, they’re both too well versed in each other to get away with much.

Tam’s listing off the work that Damian is apparently meant to do today, and the work that’s been shifted around at the drop of a hat because ‘of your families habits’. Tam’s voice is just on the edge of the line of tolerable, Damian can keep listening to it for now, but Tim told him as soon as the annoyance starts to tick in the back of his mind the timer starts at thirty minutes until he needs time to calm down.

Damian’s sure that this meeting will be very, very annoying.

--

Oh wow going through school is weird when you don’t have to consciously keep yourself in check at all times just on the edge of madness.

It’s actually rather nice, every now and again. Tim’s finding it easier to concentrate, even if he can’t see the board worth a shit and every time he shifts in his seat his back protests by threatening pain. As the day goes on Tim’s fingers- Damian’s fingers- get more and more numb. The feeling in his limbs just sort of goes from simply smoked over to truly muddied.

Tim knows it’s something wrong with the metal in there, whether it’s truly just an unavoidable side effect of the surgery or what, the back pain is truly unbearable. No wonder Damian is so irritated all the time, he’s in pain.

Tim tells all of Damian’s various friends- and christ does the kid have a shitton of friends- that he’s feeling under the weather, sorry, he’s gonna be quiet today.

They understand, wish him well, and mostly help him out with class work and even pass him a few little snacks throughout the day. Good kids, Tim likes them a lot. Damian has good friends around him, good people.

“Does your back hurt again?” Colin Wilkes asks gently, eyebrows smashed up and worried as they walk to the next period. “Yeah.” Tim says, because it does hurt. There’s a constant low level pain that never seems to go away no matter how Tim sits or stands or stretches. Tim’s not used to this, this is not his normal.

Colin, however, just rears back, shocked, “Holy shit you aren’t feeling good. Jesus, Damian, do you need to go home?”

Tim just shakes his head, no, “I’m getting checked out early anyway.” Tim tells him, like he told Colin as soon as they met up today. “I’ll be fine on Monday, no need to worry.”

Colin still looks worried anyway, but that’s because he’s a good person.

Damian is lucky to have him.

--

“If you open your mouth one more time I’m going to take this legal pad and shove it down your throat.”

Damian’s getting dangerously close to killing a man.

He’s long since on that mental countdown timer, ticking ever closer to full throttle meltdown. Tam’s beside him, sorting out the notes and the powerpoints and the excel sheets while Damian talks, goes over the budget, handles the apparent morons that Research and Development has sitting in the high seats.

The meeting that started off fine is now quickly evolving into a shitshow. Powers- damn that man- is too busy trying to showboat this product that doesn’t work yet and gain more funding from his team that it’s cutting into other people's time. Weathers is too much of a pushover to stand up for himself and it is too frustratingly polite to not let a single prompted question session go without asking at least ten clarifying questions so this meeting is already over its allotted time slot by nearly half an hour.

Now everybody’s talking over everyone else and nobody’s talking about what they need to be talking about- so Damian finally has stood up to take charge.

The whole room is quiet now, looking at Damian (at Tim, really) with fear in their eyes.

Tam, however, is smiling.

“We came here to discuss one thing today.” Damian jabs a finger to the chart that’s pulled up, that has been pulled up for nearly thirty minutes before the sidetracking began. “One single thing. If you aren’t here to talk about budgets, or are not prepared to talk about budgets, or if your contribution can be succinctly put into an email, then please for the love of Batman himself get the fuck out of this meeting room.”

A moment passes, the people look at Damian like he’s grown a second head.

Then one woman in the pack stands up, packs her laptop, and says in a small, succinct voice, “I’ll email you by two.”

And she’s gone.

Four more people follow her lead immediately, start to pack and agree that they’ll have their information to the head of their department by two in the afternoon. They’ll pass on the proposals and their pretty much agreed upon wants and needs without the extra fluff and froof of the unnecessary meeting.

Damian’s on the edge of a meltdown, and the six people who remain must know that, by the way Damian’s glaring at them.

The rest of the meeting goes by without a single hitch.

--

The optometrist is a nice man, see’s them right away when Dick brings Tim into the office.

“Damian Wayne!” The kindly old man’s voice is big and booming, but Tim- for the first time in his life- doesn’t feel the need to brace against it. The optometrist has white hair, but the style of it escapes Damian’s vision.

Tim mostly held onto Dick’s hand as Dick led the way around, into and out of the car, into the offices of the high end vision place they all went too, and into the chair.

Do you know how long it’s been since Tim’s feet didn’t touch the ground? This is embarrassing. Damian is so, so weirdly short. Tim hasn’t been this short in ages- not since before his mom-

Well.

“I’m going to start the test now, okay?”

“Yes sir.”

The man brings the massive thing close, telling Tim to put his chin on the rest and adjusting it, chattering to Dick the whole time about how he remembers like it was yesterday having little Bruce Wayne in the same chair. Dick responds in kind, his own vision (twenty/twenty) was checked in this chair every year like clockwork.

“What’s more clear, A or B?”

The game begins.

A sick and sadistic game.

A, or B?

Who knows, the difference is so small sometimes that there really is no difference.

This goes on for nearly an hour.

Tim would rather be stuck with the Riddler. With the Penguin. Hell, give him Scarecrow at least fear toxin is more fun than this.

Eventually, the doctor tells him the test is over, gives him the prognosis (“congrats, you need glasses” what a shocker) and hands him a lollipop.

Hell yeah.

Cotton Candy flavored.

--

Damian can’t look out the window.

Well, he can, but you don’t understand he also can’t.

The light is too bright.

He got home after the meeting, right away running off and doing his work from home, but now he can’t even look at his laptop anymore because of the fucking light.

Of all the stupid fucking things to get upset over, the light is the thing that’s killing him. The light’s too bright and the couches he normally uses to make art are all wrong to sit on and he can’t hold a pencil for more than thirty minutes before the feeling of something in his hands drives him up the wall. The sensations that thrum underneath this skin are wrong. Damian needs to drink water every twenty minutes or this stupid broken ass brain starts screaming again, he has to move every ten or the same thing happens.

Tim’s body has little actual pain to it, the old aches of long broken bones reside sure, but it’s nothing compared to the wicked feeling of trying to touch his pastels and physically recoiling from them like the collection of Conté is poisonous. Oh it sticks to his fingers even now, no matter how much Damian has washed his hands.

How does Tim live like this?

Damian will take his muted vision again, the pain in his spine, the way he has to turn his whole torso to turn his head, to get out of here for a second.

Tim’s hair is tied up tightly, Damian can’t stand having the strands touch his face or neck. Damian took off the shirt right after breakfast, hunted down a new one and is now beginning to get irritated with the one he’s got on.

He’s in the hall bathroom, washing his hands like a crazy person, feeling like he’s losing his mind.

“Damian?” Cass’s voice comes from the main hall. Her voice- normally melodic and gentle to listen too as she recites her plays- comes in like spikes to Damian’s senses.

“In here.” Damian calls back. Eugh. The sound makes him need to wash his hands again.

The cracks in Tim’s cuticles start to let themselves known. The jarring pain of them is a relief against the hellscape that is the brilliantly bright bathroom, the way the water echoes in the tight space, the way the tile floor is too cold and the way his socks make his ankles too hot and scratchy. The shirt’s not right and the pants are too loose and the sounds of the pipes in the walls makes Damian want to scream-

“You doin’ okay?” Cass asks, her voice even lower now, softer, it’s never how she talks to Damian, oh no, this is her special tone that she uses just for Tim-

It doesn’t hurt to listen too.

“No.” Damian is not doing okay. He is not.

He wants to cry some more. If he cries one single more tear he’s going to throw something against the wall. If he throws something against the wall he’s going to vomit, if he vomits he’s going to have to deal with the horrific stomach feeling he got right after breakfast- right after having to choke down even a bit of food because it all tasted like ash in his mouth because all the texture was wrong-

Cass folds Damian into her arms.

Which is silly, considering that Damian is currently over six feet tall and towering over Cass’s minute height. Damian in his own body is taller than Cass-

But Cass pulls Damian’s hands away from the sink, making sure to hold his wrists and not his fingers or palm, turning off the water and folding Tim’s back nearly in half to tuck Damian underneath her chin.

She’s warm.

She’s warm and she’s strong and she makes a humming sound that is finally right.

“Let’s get you to the cave.” Her voice is that gentle-soft now. The same way she always talks to Tim in, oh it’s so nice. It’s nothing like the voices this morning, where everybody was talking too fast and all at once and just made the worst feeling pound in Damian’s head.

Cass leads Damian to the cave, bent over in a position that Damian’s normal back would not have stood for. Tim’s a lot more flexible than Damian gives him credit for, it seems.

The cave is blessedly dark.

There’s none of the blinding, awful light anymore, streaming into the windows like a javelin through armor in a medieval battlefield. The cave is also the perfect temperature, the cool air refreshing against Damian’s skin.

Finally,

This was finally, finally right.

The rock’s are smooth, nothing like the bumpy unevenness of the manor’s tile and hardwood. They get to the mats and Cass demands Damian to take off his socks.

Which normally, is a disgusting habit that Tim should not bring onto the practice mats, his gross feet should be in socks or shoes when he’s down here there’s so many things that can go wrong with bare feet in an active cave ecosystem and Damian already had to take a whole mess of pills this morning that ranged from antibiotic to an ancient prescription of adderall-

Oh.

The plastic almost-leather of the mats feel perfect under Damian’s toes.

Cool, with a hint of grab to it. Clean in a way that the socks did not convey. Damian knew exactly where each of his toes were at all times, and could feel each nail against the plastic, the way it gives under the ball of his foot when he walks.

Damian knows what he needs.

He makes a bee-line for the after patrol blankets that are down here by the mats. The blankets they use to keep warm between workout sets and after patrol and when they’re doing long paperwork and reports down here in the cave.

Tim can be seen more often than holed up down here doing experiments and working. He’s normally barefoot (stupid, considering he’s still on goddamn antibiotics for his missing spleen), wrapped up in one of four blankets, in his very specific chair or he was moving, doing workouts to his specific playlist.

He got cranky when you bothered him- but Damian now knows why he gets cranky.

If the world goes from normal, to that hellscape up there in the manor then Damian’s found a whole new level of respect for the effort that gets put into Tim’s daily life.

Sure enough, the blankets are right there in the basket.

The basket right by the training mats, neatly arranged by Alfred every week. The ones Tim uses are in the middle, because that's where they are meant to be, not on the bottom, not on the top right in the middle, and when Damian feels the fabric beneath his fingers that is right he pulls it out.

Silky, smooth, with a hint of velvet to it. The knit has no pattern, is a deep awkward almost blue color, and is the most perfect texture known to man. Damian wraps himself up in it to keep warm.

Oh this is right. He just needs-

“Over here.” Cass directs him, Tim’s chair is in her grasp. She’s got both hands resting on the beaten up back. It’s right over some experiments that they all need to run on Ivy’s newest release of her mind control serum. Tim was going to do it, as Tim normally handled boring stuff like that, but for some reason-

Damian sat down.

Oh yes. The chair wasn’t perfect, but that was what made it perfect. The perfect comfort, the handrests wide enough for Damian to tuck wildly too long legs up and criss crossed, the back propped him up to lean forward and into the workstation.

The experiment in front of him was automatically opened up, responding to Tim’s biosignature, and-

Oh? That formula was wrong. Tim must have gotten it wrong when he was working last night. God. A simple mistake- oh this one was right but only half synthesized-

Music got put on, Damian looked up to see Cass fiddling with the stereo system. She’s got that beat up old ipod they all store their playlists in because Bruce never bothered to update the stereo system to support anything but an ipod older than Jason. The playlists have nearly eight hundred songs each, and considering just how many playlists are on that stupid thing you’d be surprised at how long the poor machine has kept trucking for.

The song is simple, with words that don’t have much meaning but a steady beat. The beat carries Damian’s attention back to the problem before him.

It might have been Tim’s job, but Tim was too busy being a traitor and going to the eye doctor. So maybe he wouldn’t mind if Damian just did one or two…

--

“Have you been down here this whole time?”

A loud, cheerful voice cuts through Damian’s concentration.

Jars him, actually, makes Damian look up to see where Dick was speaking from. The crack of Damian’s back was loud, the muscles cry out in sore irritation to let Damian know that he needs to stretch-

Wait. It’s only been-

“You’ve been down here for three hours.” Tim says, in Damian’s voice, from where he’s standing by the railing. “You need to eat something right about now.”

“It has not been three hours.” Damian snipes back, but-

The body he’s residing in, now that he’s not focused on the work in front of him, is screaming.

Every single status effect all at once, was how Tim once described himself when he had hobbled out of the cave. Damian had thought it silly, a video game reference at best, but now Damian can feel it in stunning 3D.

4D? Because technically this was life and not a simple move? Semantics-

Damian reaches over to the work bench and grabs the massive water bottle that seems to follow various family members around the cave via Alfred.

The water is crisp, cool, and nothing like anything Damian’s had before. Glorious. Perfect. Water has never tasted so good before. Filtered right from the spring underneath the cave.

Tim rolls his eyes, but motions upwards. “It’s time for dinner, come on.”

With that, Damian’s body disappears from sight, and Damian himself is left to walk gingerly afterwards, trying to stretch out his back.

Fuck. This sucks. Damian walks on stiff knees to the bathroom before he makes his way upstairs.

--

Another meal of vegetarian options. Alfred’s adjusted his menu items for the both of them and there’s a solid mixture of their preferences on each other's plate.

Jason’s not home- he’s probably in his own apartment downtown, but Dick and Cassandra are. Dick’s texting when Damian gets up to dinner, looking up briefly and giving a small smile. “Welcome back to the living world, how are you doing?”

Damian has no idea how he’s doing. Genuinely. There’s not a thought in his mind about his actual general self, just various facts running in the background about petri dishes.

(And one line of thought that’s just a random song replaying about four lines over and over without any stop. God save him.)

Damian shrugs, not knowing how to respond. Genuinely not sure how to process the emotions that roll inside of him. He’s usually better at this.

Tim’s brain must be more broken then Damian was originally led to believe.

Tim sits right by Dick, hands curled around a glass of water and talking with Cass before Damian had come up. Tim flashes a smile himself before resuming a conversation.

Damian does not think about Dick’s elbow casually thrown across Tim’s shoulders- the shoulders that should be Damian’s.

Bruce himself is helping with the food, holding the heavier plates for Alfred as their grandfather passes out the drinks. Damian sits next to Cass, allowing her to press up against him just a bit before she shuffles back into her section of the bench sectional.

It felt good to have human contact. Just for a brief moment.

The food, as always, is delicious.

Bruce and Alfred sit at either head of the table, and ask after everyone's day. Cass had a good one, at her theater dance classes, the various members are doing well, learning how to do jazz dances, this month is all about Fonzi. Dick’s own day was jammed packed, he’s looking forward to the weekend where he’s going to hang out with Wally and the rest of his friends.

Bruce has had a good day, overall he’s made good progress on a bunch of projects and he’s asked Clark for help over the weekend- not like it’s a hard thing to convince Bruce to ask of his best buddy sort of massive crush.

Damian and Tim already know what the other was meant to be doing today, because they had it on their schedule to be ready for it. But they explain how the day went anyway.

“I made people in the research and development department afraid of me.” Damian tells them, “I did not react well in the meeting. I did, however, get things done and have the budget formed for the next year.”

Cass frowns, “Be nice. They’re just civilians, they don’t know better.”

“Hell yeah.” Tim’s smile is wicked, and a little mean. “They deserve it.”

Bruce looks a little lost, but overall supportive, so that’s good.

“Did you put money into the solar panel project?” Tim asks, curious because that project has been his personal baby over the past two years. He’s trying to get green energy incentives passed for a while now.

“Of course.”

Tim looks pleased, if a little smug. No wonder Jon’s commented on Damian’s punchable face before, if that’s what Damian looks like when he’s vaguely pleased. Damian needs to work on that. He also needs to work on the other million things going through this damn brain.

“Thank you, Damian.” Tim’s moving through his dinner with a decent pace, always one to eat slowly. It's pretty wild now to see him eating so quickly. “I did my best at the optometrist, we didn’t know what you’d prefer, contacts or glasses, so we asked for both.”

Knowing he’s made a face, Damian can’t help his instant disgusted reaction. “Did the optometrist tell you my vision was fine?”

Dick pops up now, every so goddamn helpful. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

Dick shrugs, easy and fluid. “The man said your vision was terrible, that it was amazing that nobody noticed beforehand. Damian, we need you to tell us when something’s wrong-”

Nothing was wrong, what did Dick not get about that? What did this whole family not get about that? He was fine, he had gotten around fine, he had been praised at his ability to notice movement in the dark before, he could see fine.

Not fine enough, apparently.

Suddenly, Damian has no appetite.

He figures this out by taking a single bite of his rice pilaf.

It sours in his mouth, turing to rotten sulphuric ash-

Damian’s stomach curdles, erupting into a frenzy of nausea and-

--

“Should have warned you about that.” Tim’s voice- Damian’s true voice- comes from the other side of the door.

Damian himself is leaned against the toilet, hands curled around the top lid as he heaves into the bowl.

The first heave had triggered the next, and then the next, and then the next-

Now they’re both here, Damian’s wiping hot angry tears off his face-Tim’s face- and Tim’s outside the locked door, talking to nothing and just being there.

It’s not helping.

“Sometimes, when I get upset, I can’t eat. When I can’t eat I get upset. It’s a pretty bad cycle.” Tim tells Damian, like that whole way of thinking is not insane. “I have to trick myself to break the cycle, I’ve gotten good at it. Also sometimes I just exhaust myself, that works too.”

Damian wants Tim to go the fuck away-

“But I get it, this whole thing. The family is worried, of course, but they’ve seen this before it’s nothing new. They know how to trick me too. Trick you now.”

“Not for long.” Damian manages to croak out. “Not for long at all.”

Silence, from the other side of the door. Contemplative silence.

“You’re right.” Tim tells Damian. “You’re very right. We’re only like this for about forty eight more hours.”

“Thank god.”

Across a closed bathroom door, thick and heavy, the two of them let out weak little laughs.

--

“No patrol from either of you.” Bruce says, slipping on his cowl.

Both Tim and Damian won’t argue on that. They’re both too used to their own body to try and fight at the level they’re used to in somebody else's. They’re not going to do something outrageously stupid for a little thing of pride. They know that this is not something they can just wing their way through. They’re trained, highly specialized athletes and they know their limits.

This? This is a limit.

There’s nothing for them out there but injuries. They know the limits of this curse. It’s easy to work around, they just need to wait.

“We’re going to practice at home.” Tim promises. “Emergency backup only.”

“End of the world backup, only.” Damian swears. He’s already wrapping his knuckles to take out some aggression on the bags they have down here.

Cass and Dick let out little giggles from where they sit, perched up on their motorcycles by the batmobile. Cass’s laughter is just air from her lungs, popping like little firecrackers, but Dick’s giggles are loud, distinct, so close to a snort.

Bruce just quirks a smile, “We’ll keep you updated with the coms. Be nice to each other.”

“I’m always nice.” Tim says, but with Damian’s face it comes out as very, very disingenuous.

--

The night is staying awake by the communication lines of the main computer open as every breath gets caught by oversensitive micro-microphones. The easy low and slow accent of Clark gets echoed down the lines, wishing both Robin’s well and a speedy recovery.

Nightwing sticks with Batgirl, it’s a quiet night all around.

Red Hood shows up for half a second, inviting himself to the party with a bang. He’s telling the bat’s he’s invading for the next two nights.

Tim and Damian keep busy with experiments, report write ups, their exercises, and one single spar that got called off because they both fucked up instantly within the first half second after go was called.

They waited up until the rest of the family came home.

--

The next morning is the weekend. Thank god.

Damian wakes up at two in the afternoon.

The house is soft, with the afternoon sunshine leaking through windows from all ages, the wavy, imperfect colonial windows in the foyer to the stained glass gilded age windows by the stairs to the modern ones on the back of the house that let in the entire view of the estate grounds.

Jason’s here, found in the second library when Damian stumbles his way in there.

“Looking' rough asshole.” Jason delightfully informs Damian upon arrival.

Damian’s still wearing sleepwear, his hair’s a mess, way longer than Damian has ever bothered with before, with the pallor of sleep still around his eyes. “Back at you, Todd.’

This makes Jason jerk, just a bit.

“Damn, forgot you were Damian.” Jason settles back with a huff that sounds more and more like Bruce’s grunts everyday. “Switch back to normal, Dami.”

Damian rolls his eyes, and goes to his sketchbooks.

--

“You can put me down, Dick.” Tim and Dick are walking Titus, the dog’s a fan of the massive manor grounds and is always willing to sniff around the woods. “I’m not an invalid.”

“You sure complain a hell of a lot less than Damian.” Dick says back.

The two of them had woken up too early and had started up with doing random menial chores. Tim’s never been more productive in the morning. Eugh, disgusting. Tim had offered to let Dick help him take Titus out, Dick had jumped at the chance.

It had been an uneventful walk, Dick immediately grabbed Tim’s hand and over the course of the nearly hour they had been out here it had evolved into Dick holding Tim against his hip, an impressive feat for a man as short as Dick was, with a kid as old as Damian.

Dick wasn’t letting go, pulling Tim close and chatting away about anything, he was leaving soon, picked up by Wally before dinner.

“I stab you less than Damian does.” Tim corrects.

“Damian’s never stabbed me.”

“He’s never gotten through your body armor, you mean.”

Dick says nothing to this, just hums a little up-down note.

They walk a little more, following the excited barking of Titus.

“How’s the back?” Dick asks, shifting Tim a little more onto his hip.

“You’ll be able to read it all at the end of magical attack report.” Tim tells him, prodding Dick hard in the side. “Myself and Damian both will have to write one.”

Dick pulls Tim a little closer, tucking Tim’s head underneath Dick’s own chin. “My secretive brothers, not even letting me have a hint?”

There’s so much that Tim can tell him.

That Damian’s back is all wrong and that the pain in his limbs hurt with every breath and as the day goes on his fingers start to go numb because of the pressure against the metal there. There’s feelings of anger that go beyond just puberty anger, feelings that need to be addressed by a real living doctor. About how Damian apparently had been going around half blind this whole damn time-

There’s a lot of shit going on, but Tim won’t let anybody know that until the end of it all, when he’s in his own body with his own problems.

--

The next day goes the same.

It’s not as sunny anymore, the clouds are rolling in from the south. It’ll rain tomorrow, thick and heavy, just like it’ll drizzle tonight.

Bruce is pulling out the old report forms about magical changes to the body. They haven’t been used in ages, not since Dick was Robin, they only require a little bit of updating.

Bruce tells them both to fill them out, take their time, really evaluate the body their in.

So they do.

They walked a mile in each other’s shoes, after all.

--

Damian wakes up.

It’s a sharp contrast to his previous slow, groggy, hard mornings. This was simple, one minute he was asleep, the next he wasn’t.

Perfect.

The familiar sense of his own self at last.

He feels Titus sleeping beside him, sound and heavy, a warm weight along his side he’s missed while he wasn’t himself.

Damian meanders down to breakfast, leaving Titus to his sleep.

Alfred is already up, of course, making breakfast for them all, well, really brunch.

“First one us as always, Master Damian.” The smell of cooking is crisp, ripe against the still lingering presence of morning. “I see you’ve found your own footing.”

“I have.” Damian’s proud of his own skin. Thankful to look down and see his own hands and not something alien and strange. “How’d you know?”

Alfred just hums, a little pleasant tune to himself. “I have my ways, Master Damian.”

--

They fight less, now.

Tim and Damian, they submit their reports and the family immediately reads them.

They both get assigned doctors.

Psychologists, well needed. Not the same one, thank god, but doctors to talk about their problems all the same.

Bruce has been seeing somebody for years, Dick the same way, but this might be the push the family needs to finally get Jason seeing somebody about his problems.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Bruce talks to Talia, after reading the files, about the surgery on Damian’s back, asking if the prosthetic was able to grow with him or if it would cause him pain further on as he grew into an adult.

That was not a fun conversation.

In the end it doesn’t fix them, not really, but it helps.

It helps them a lot. It gives them both more understanding of where the other is coming from. There’s no coddling, there’s no drastic changes of behavior.

It’s just a step into the right direction.

For both of them.