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As a rule of thumb, when Damian feels anger it burns.
When Mother leaves him in a dreary, disgusting city with no-one to turn to but a stranger, he feels anger like freshly-raked coals. The heat of it staves off the chill of Gotham’s autumn. (And the chill of abandonment.)
When Father refuses to allow him to prove himself, treats Damian as a child and and worse, an invalid , Damian feels anger like a bonfire. The flames dance high in his chest, curling over an ever-growing mountain of kindling, the smoke pooling in his throat and threatening to choke him. This time the burn drives him, sustaining him through the rejection until he can prove himself and take his rightful place at Batman's side.
When Damian returns from his attempts to wipe the blood from his hands, the weight from his conscience, only to find a new child walking by his father’s side, he feels anger like a geothermal geyser. It’s scalding as it pushes to the surface, the buildup of pressure so sudden and its eruption so violent that even Damian himself is taken off guard. (His self control never would have slipped so horrifically, otherwise.)
The metaphorical coals go dark and soft, following his disastrous introduction to Timothy, crumbling away into charr and ash. The boy grows on him, in a reluctant way. Like a wan sunrise in the springtime, persistently melting the river until the ice begins to crack. (He thinks maybe he does the same for Timothy.)
The thaw never gets to break- at least not while it would have mattered.
Years pass. Damian’s anger still burns, when stoked. Timothy has gone, leaving nothing but an empty grave. That, and a hole in Damian’s heart which he refuses to let fill, even as more rooms in Father's home are.
All of this does quite a bit to explain why, here and now, Damian is alone. Or perhaps it does little.
Despite the mysterious circumstances of his disappearance, and the unusual nature of their lives, Damian hadn’t held out any real hope that Timothy would return. Even if his eldest younger sibling had survived (which he had doubted) his Father had done a brilliant job burning that bridge. Timothy had made it quite clear in his communications prior to the strike of disaster that he felt he had no place in the Wayne household. This is something Damian is not sure he could ever forgive his father for. Years pass, and not a whisper of Timothy Drake is caught on the wind.
Here and now, though, Damian is skulking through the shadows of one of the League’s strongholds, hunting down a whisper.
Since his mother had rallied her own loyalists against Ra's, both Damian and Cassandra had fielded many defectors from the League. Each offered their own payment, in exchange for a new identity or a place to lay low.
One offered a rumor to Damian, asking only that he follow it.
Anything, they said, to repay the debt I owe them. They bled for me, punished as consequence for sparing my life. I have nothing left, now, but that debt.
Damian had solemnly shouldered the promise, knowing what weakness the League saw in mercy.
There is someone, the rumors say, that the Head of the Demon guards jealously. Someone who is small but capable, who wields staves like an extension of themselves, who refuses to kill their opponents even at their own expense. Someone who wields a soft smile or quiet thanks as deftly as a blade. Someone who lives in silk irons, bound to the Demon’s whim.
Hot and caustic as the pits that bubble deep below his grandfather’s ostentatious throne room, Damian's anger burns once more.
Once an impenetrable stronghold, infiltrating the favored al Ghul compound is child play. With a war splitting their ranks, the League is in disarray. That's why Father and his allies are striking while the dissent still lingers. Unknowing of his plans, they’ll serve as a convenient distraction while Damian investigates his Grandfather's captive.
He finds a gilded cage not far from the compound’s peak, where the chambers of the League’s royal family are sequestered. Incapacitating the singular guard at the door is child’s play, and with all other security in this area occupied Damian has no fear of discovery for some time.
Inside is, on the surface, a bedroom with lavish furnishings; a four-poster bed with sheer drapery and silk pillows, a workspace that's more a wall-to-wall countertop than a desk, a fainting couch, and well stocked bookshelves. All the trappings afforded to an al Ghul’s favored, with all the same restrictions as the cells deep inside the mountain. The window is an inches-wide strip near the vaulted ceiling (too high to reach, too narrow for even a child to wiggle through) and the door’s locks are plentiful on the exterior. The decor is in the royal colors, the furniture both ornate and sturdy.
In the late evening light, he barely has time to register the other presence in the room before they’re surging out of the shadows under the workspace.
Skinny, shorter than me, unarmed, is what Damian first registers as they approach. What he registers next is; Timothy.
The younger man doesn’t attack, luckily for Damian. Even if he weren't enveloped in a spine-cracking embrace he is unable to move.
“You’re here,” comes a voice muffled by his uniform. “You’re real.”
He finally summons the strength to lift his arms and reciprocate
“I’m here, namir althalj, and I will not leave your side.” Damian murmurs into the boy’s hair, hands fisting in the back of silk nightclothes. After his heart begins to calm its rabbiting he pulls back, hands landing gently on his brother’s shoulders. “We must withdraw, Timothy. Quickly”
Timothy disengages with a nod to begin gathering supplies- makeshift weapons, a spyglass, compass, and small food caches are all retrieved from hideaways and deposited atop a folded sheet on the bed.
“I-” Damian’s words catch in his throat. An apology seems weak, watching Timothy prepare what has obviously been a long-planned escape bag. “We held no hope for your return, until recently.”
“Ra’s.” It’s not a question, and a pang of nostalgia is triggered in Damian’s chest. His brother shall steal the title of ‘Greatest Detective’ yet.
“We thought you to be dead,” he confirms solemnly. “I’d heard a rumor, recently, of Grandfather parading around a captive heir.” I couldn’t bring myself to hope, he doesn’t say, but I couldn't force myself to leave you.
Timothy pauses, briefly, expressionless, before dropping another shiv into the pile accumulating on the bed. He moves to collect new clothes from the wardrobe - Damian recognizes them as standard League training garb - and the relief of simply finding Timothy alive evaporates.
They bled for me, the defector had said.
Timothy changes with clinical efficiency, as all Bats do, but for the brief moment his back is exposed, Damian feels rage boil his blood.
He finds himself fully prepared to fight whomever he must to get Timothy home. Should he get the opportunity to show the Head of the Demon what punishment means, well… no one needs to know how he got Timothy out.
For all that Damian has feared Ra’s since he was very small, he knows now that the man is a coward. He knows now that the man hides behind tradition and calls it honor. He knows now that his family is his strength, and to protect Timothy right now he would level the Himalayas themselves.
“Let’s go home,” he says, shouldering the tied-off makeshift backpack before his little brother has the chance.
The smile he receives in return is blinding.
The wildfire in his heart is not entirely appeased, but the smoke no longer chokes him, and the flames do not charr his rib cage.
Timothy is not fine, as he will insist, but he is coming home.