Unwanted

4

Damian quietly set the food for his pets/best friends. He was going to give them a week. If by then they didn't come or try to make contact.... he would leave. He couldn't go back to that manor if it was only going to be the same.

He had just finished making a veggie and steamed rice meal, with tofu, for himself. He sat his plate and glass of water on his island counter and pulled the stool back to air down. Then there is a knock at the door.

   Despite his best efforts, you just can't break some things that have been ingrained into you since birth. He had a knife craftily hidden , but easily got, even tied up. He peaked out the peek-hole and found an odd sight. "Dami please open up." The ten year old slowly did as asked.

   "How did you find me?" He wanted to have some bite in his words, but it didn't happen.

"Actually by pure accident," Richard Grayson-Wayne smiled sadly. "Baby bird why are you leaving me?" Damian froze. He didn't know what to say. If he should say anything. "Did you know that the whole time I had you I never truly saw you as my brother."

"Leave," Damian's voice was cold.

"No." Dick growled. "You are going to listen to me. I never saw you as my brother, but I did see you as mine," he snapped out. He was angry that his baby wanted to leave him. Not that he could truly blame him. "My baby. My child. Mine Damian al Ghūl-Wayne." Damian didn't know what to do, so he did what was expected. He walked away.

"I don't get why," the child finally sighed when Dick hadn't left. "Why do you lov-like me. I'm useless, unlo-likable, untrustworthy. Mr. Wayne, Drake and Todd made that clear as Joker is crazy." He was picking at his food. It was good, just not as good as Alfred's was.

"I love you because you are you, Damian," Dick whispered. "You are, like I said earlier, my baby. My child. Just as you see me as your Papa." The child finally broke. After all the silent treatment from his, supposed, family. It took the one person who meant as much to him as his mother, to finally break the last barrier to the child's heart.

Unknown to them a dark figure hid in the same spot as Nightwing had the day before. He watched aggravated as his sons bonded in ways he has never achieved. Red Hood, other wise known as Jason Todd, watched with a detached sort of interest. Red Robin, or Timothy Drake also watched and wondered how he couldn't see it.

"When was the last time we willingly hung around him," Tim asked softly. "I know he had asked if he could help with some of my paperwork, but I never let him." The brown eyes of the teen look at his mentor from behind his mask.

"I didn't," Jason snorted. "I never liked him. He was going to get himself killed. I didn't want to be close to him when he did." The real eyes of the former dead man never left the child.

"We didn't," Batman said. "We... I didn't want to see that he was changing." And he now knew. He had gone to Alfred, like Dick had, only for a different reason. The answers he sought were not what he was expecting, nor did he like how they had come to be. The answers he sought from his colleague, even less so.