Chapter Text
It was about 3 a.m. when Tim emerged from the Batcave, tired out of his mind and his stomach growling for something that isn’t coffee.
“Get the fuck out, Grayson.”
“I’m telling the truth, Jason !”
But instead of sneaking off with one of Alfred’s brownies, he ended up walking into…whatever it was Dick and Jason were doing.
Jason was sat on a barstool, both elbows on the marble countertops, a skeptical look on his face. Standing across the kitchen table from him was Dick, hands on his hips.
Tim walked past them to wash his empty mug in the sink. “Shouldn’t you guys be in bed?”
“I could say the same thing to you, Tim,” Dick said.
“Hey, Replacement, get a load of this,” Jason chimed. He points to Dick with his thumb. “Dick here says that Damian has a friend .”
“Shut up Dick, stop lying.”
“Why does everyone think I’m lying?”
Tim shut off the tap, placing his mug on the rack. “Because we’re talking about the demon brat here. Have you ever seen him willingly hang out with someone that isn’t Bruce?”
“I’m telling you, he has a friend.” Dick crossed his arms. “I’ll prove it, just you wait!”
It wasn’t that Danny didn’t want to meet the Waynes, it was more so that Danny wanted to put off that eventual meeting for as long as possible. He knew that Damian was eager to introduce him to their father—and holy shit, Batman was Brucie Wayne, no wonder no one connected the dots—if only to give Danny an excuse to be around the manor all the time, and Danny would hate to disappoint him. But, well, Danny was fine with their current arrangement. He would meet them soon. He just wanted it to be on his own terms.
But, Danny thought, Damian’s family were a really nosy bunch.
They were at the zoo. It was a clear, bright afternoon, and with it being the weekend, the zoo was decently packed that neither Damian nor Danny would stand out too much. There was a new exhibit on silverback gorillas, and Danny was feeling enough nostalgia for his ghost hunting days that he invited Damian over to come see it with him.
He pulled the brim of his baseball cap low, speaking in Esperanto. “Heads up, Damian. We got two birds at 5 o’clock.”
Damian answered in kind. Danny had taught him the language he learned that Esperanto didn’t exist in this world. It came in handy for missions where they had to deal with sensitive information and didn’t want to be overheard. “ Which ones?”
He discreetly glanced at their tails, trying to put a name to the face. “ A night bird and a robin redbreast.”
“ Ugh. This is because of their stupid bet, isn’t it?”
Danny quirked an eyebrow.
Damian continued. “ It’s stupid. Grayson says that I’ve made a friend. Todd and Drake don’t believe him.”
“Ah.”
“You know, we wouldn’t have to deal with this if you just introduced yourself already.”
“Ha! And how would that conversation go? ‘Hi Mr. Wayne, I’m the son you thought you lost— twice.’” Danny subtly tugged Damian’s sleeve and gestured for him to leave first. As Damian passed him, Danny mumbled, “ Besides, I haven’t even told mother I’m alive again.”
Damian, ever the professional, didn’t break his cover until they met up again in the bird exhibit ten minutes later.
“What do you mean you haven’t told mother yet?” He hissed.
“ It means that I haven’t told her yet.” Danny had ditched the baseball cap, opting to hide his hair with a bandana. His black jacket was reversed so that it was dark blue instead.
“Why?”
.“ I enjoy the anonymity, I guess.” With Damian out of the League of Assassins and Danny’s powers restored, there wasn't exactly any reason for him to stay. While he enjoyed learning from the lead, he had never really agreed with their methods or their ideology— even if he did go along with it for his family’s sake. Being dead (again) afforded him a certain freedom that he hadn’t been able to experience in a long time.
It’s one of the reasons why he wanted to avoid officially meeting the Waynes for a while. The Bats were paranoid, Batman especially. If they knew who he was, they’d want to keep track of him. If they knew of what he was, they would want to vigorously research his every ability for potential weaknesses.
And Danny would rather just— not.
Damian sent him a withering look. “ Mother’s going to kill you when she finds out.”
Danny shrugged. “ Eh, dying isn’t so bad.”
Not after the first few times, that is.
“Well?”
“Dick’s right. Damian has a friend.”
“I told you.”
“But there’s something really weird about this guy.”
“How so?”
“Other than that disappearing act he did? Take a look at this photo I snapped of him.”
Tim passed his camera over to Dick and Jason. The photo in question was of Damian and his friend, back turned towards the camera, leaning on the bars of the gorilla enclosure. Everything in the pictures was in full focus, but the stranger’s—
His figure was blurry. So blurry that it was almost as if he ran just as Tim took the photo.
But he stood still the entire time.
Their initial curiosity became a bit of a game, and then became a competition. The objective was simple: try to meet Damian’s new friend.
But as soon as the boys realized that Damian’s friend was really good at hiding, they added a new rule: you can get points for every picture you managed to get— the weirder, the better.
This competition would eventually spread from the robins to batgirls. Steph, Cass, and Barbara were more than eager to join the fun.
Now, with six highly motivated vigilantes as competitors, you’d think that one of them would have managed to meet this mysterious friend.But nope, each time any of them would get close, Damian’s friend would just magically disappear. Some of them had even resorted to bugging Damian’s phone so that they could get there first.
“Brown and Cain are here .”
“Whelp, there goes that cafe. How about Batburger?” Danny pulled his hood up, walking slightly behind Damian.
Damian scrunched up his nose. “I refused to go to such a gimmicky establishment.”
“It’s because they haven’t made the new Robin toys yet, right?”
“That…is simply a coincidence.”
“What. The absolute fuck .”
“Uh…anything wrong, Barbara?” Dick asked.
Barbara looked up from her laptop, bewildered. “How the fuck did the tracker I put on Damian’s phone end up in Antarctica .”
“What the— wasn’t he just in his room?”
Damian was playing fetch with Titus in the vast gardens of Wayne Manor when his brother decided to phase out of the ground and scare him.
“Woah!” Danny redirected the punch thrown at him. “It’s just me.”
“Why do you keep doing that?”
“I gotta keep you on your toes somehow.”
Damian grunted. He crouched as Titus bounded towards him, a bright red ball in the dog’s mouth. Titus deposited the ball in Damian’s hand, and Damian threw it as hard as he could towards the collection of topiaries to their right. “So? Where did you put the bug?”
“Antarctica.”
Impressive. “How fast can you fly, anyway? You were only gone for less than a couple of hours.” A pause. “Was that how you managed to run for so long without breaking a sweat? Your powers?”
“Really? You’re still hung up about that?”
“I measured myself against you. A meta. No wonder I never got the best of you.”
Danny snorted. “As if being a regular human ever stopped our parents.”
“No…I guess not.” Damian hummed non-committedly. “Why Antarctica?”
“I wanted to see the Fortress of Solitude!”
“Danny…That’s in the Arctic.”
“See, that explains why I wasn’t able to find it.”
Danny saw a camera flash.
“Hey…uh, Damian…Why has Tim Drake been taking pictures of me?”
“You’re not very photogenic.”
It was Father who ended up ‘finishing’ the others’ strange competition over Sunday brunch.
“So, Damian, Alfred tells me you have a friend.”
Damian stared pensively at his tea before answering.“Of a sort. Yes.”
At Damian’s admission, the entire table erupted into chaos.
“Details, Damian. I need details!”
“Oh my god, who are they? Screw that— what are they?
“Wait, does this mean nobody wins?”
Father ignored the clamor at the table and gave Damian a soft smile. “Why don’t you bring them around the manor, some time? We’d love to meet them.”
His brother was probably going to try and find some way out of this, but…it was his father asking…and, well… “I will ask them.”
It was about time Danny introduced himself properly, anyway.
“You’re being very cavalier about this.”
Danny shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets. “What do I have to be nervous about? I’ve got no one to impress.”
“Not even our father?” Damian turned to crack open the grand double door. Through the gap, they heard someone scream ‘ Quick— act natural!’ followed by an increasingly worrying amount of noise. Damian shut the door again.
Danny laughed. “Trust me, Dami, I’ll be just fine . Besides, all this sneaking around was getting kinda annoying.”
“They are rather tenacious.”
“Stubborn, more like it. At least we know where you get it from. Now, come on. Pretty sure they’re dying to see me right now.”
Damian raised an imperious eyebrow. “Try not to let them suffocate you with their questions.”
Danny didn’t really know what he was expecting when he officially met the Waynes. Though considering that they were Batman’s proteges, he expected that they would at least be able to successfully act natural when someone yelled ‘act natural.’
He was wrong.
It was easy enough to pick out who was who after his many hauntings of the manor. Dick Grayson was closest to the door, Cassandra Cain on the couch, Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown behind it. But all of them were in such utterly ridiculous positions that Danny didn’t even want to attempt to describe because it was just that embarrassing.
The only people who actually succeeded in acting naturally were their father—and yeah, no, that was still weird to say—and his butler who just walked into the room.
Damian face-palmed. “This was a terrible idea, why don’t we just go and visit the zoo?”
Bruce Wayne gave a blindingly bright smile. “Oh don’t be in such a hurry, Damian. You haven’t even introduced us to your friend yet!”
Oh. Oh. Danny got it now. That’s why no one’s connected Bruce Wayne to Batman.
His little brother sighed. “Everyone this is—” Damian paused, brows furrowed.
“ How exactly did you want me to introduce you?” he mumbled in Esperanto.
Danny scratched his cheek. “ I… hadn’t actually decided yet.”
“Would it be safe to tell them the truth or should we just stick with the friend cover?”
(“Are they speaking Kryptonian?” Stephanie was probably supposed to be saying that under her breath, but Danny caught it anyway.
Tim narrowed his eyes, glancing between him and Damian. “It sounds like it but…I don’t recognize any of the words they’re saying.”)
So Kryptonian shared a similar structure to Esperanto? Holy crap, that’s convenient. He’d have to bug Damian for a copy of ‘Kryptonian: For Dummies’ guide later. It’s not every day that you have the chance to learn an honest to god alien language.
But this little tidbit did narrow his options down significantly. Danny and Damian had been debating the merits of telling them Danny’s real identity or just making up a cover. But now it would just be really suspicious to introduce him as just ‘some guy’ when they’ve already heard him speaking in what sounds to be Kryptonian.
Danny inclined his head. “Just tell them the truth. There’s no harm in it.”
Damian gave him one more concerned look before turning to his family. “This is…Danyal al Ghul. My older brother.”
The living room went dead silent. Feeling a little self-conscious, Danny rubbed the back of his neck. “Hey, uh, nice to meet you. Feel free to call me Danny.”
Suddenly the door slammed open and a man came bursting through. “Did I miss it? Please tell me I didn’t miss the demon brat’s friend coming over!”
Danny turned around, eyes widening. “Jason?”
Jason blinked. “Danny?”
Damian’s eyes shifted between the two of them. “You know each other?”
Disneyland was right. It was a small world.