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A blood-curdling screech breaks the peaceful silence at the Wayne manor. Jason is the last to arrive in his little brother’s room, having fallen asleep on the couch earlier that night. The initial fear that Damian was hurt is immediately chased away by the reality of something far worse.
Still completely asleep, the child seems to be fighting some unseen foe as he further tangles himself in his blanket. He’s screaming and crying and nothing Dick tries is enough to wake him from the nightmare. Tim, as much as he usually hates the kid, looks to be genuinely concerned and equally at a loss for how to help their brother. Alfred also tries fruitlessly to wake the boy.
“You’re making it worse,” Jason snaps, frustration heavy in his exhausted voice. “Move.”
“How am I making it worse? I’m trying to wake him up.”
An annoyed glare cuts his brother’s argument short as he carefully untangles the thrashing kid from his blanket, taking a few hits in the process. Putting the hairbrush from his nightstand in one hand and a stuffed kitten that had fallen to the floor in his other significantly calms Damian. A few moments later scared green eyes flutter open.
“Bad dream?” Jason asks. Damian nods as he sits up and clings to his brother. “Yeah. I get those too sometimes.” Tiny sniffles earn the boy a gentle squeeze and a kiss on the top of his head. “It’s okay to cry if you’re scared.”
“Warriors don’t cry,” he whimpers into Jason’s chest. “Mother said so.”
Nights like this, times when Damian says things like that, Jason’s hatred for Talia Al Ghul reaches a whole new level. He hates that he stood by and watched as that woman taught this child such damaging rhetoric. He hates that all he could do was convince him in the middle of the night to let himself be a child, even if it’s only in the tearful wake of a nightmare.
He takes a deep breath to steady his voice before saying, “Even warriors break sometimes. You’re ten. Cry if you want to.”
A few defiant tears slip down the boy’s cheeks, but Damian clutches his stuffed kitten and the front of Jason’s shirt a little tighter as he chokes on the sobs he refuses to release. Jason can feel the concerned stares of his family. Their pity isn’t going to help the youngest of them. It’s only going to make him retreat further into his mother’s conditioning.
So, he adjusts his hold on the boy before standing and leaving the room. Damian doesn’t seem to mind being carried; he doesn’t fight it. The others follow but maintain a safe distance. About halfway down the stairs, more tears escaped down tan cheeks. Damian is silently crying by the time they reach the kitchen.
Jason doesn’t mention it as he shifts his brother to his hip. With one hand free, he’s able to rummage through the cabinets. Alfred offers to help as Jason struggles to open a jar of Nutella only to be politely shooed away. He has less trouble spreading the chocolaty condiment on the bread and closing the jar. He hums a song that Dick and Tim don’t recognize as he demonstrates the rather impressive feat of peeling and slicing a banana, again with only one hand. They barely notice Damian start to hum along as he watches Jason finish constructing the sandwich.
After setting him and his snack down at the table in the dining room, Jason returns to his audience in the kitchen. “Ask. I know you guys have questions.”
“How?” Dick asks. “I did everything I could think of to calm him down and nothing. Then you come along. You barely show any affection at all and he’s suddenly fine? How? That’s not how kids work.”
Jason nods as he listens to Dick’s complaint while he puts everything away. “You love bombed, like you always do.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“With Damian, it is.” Anger and defeat mix in Jason’s blue-green eyes as he reflects on how Talia treated his baby brother. “His mom would be really sweet before she’d hit him. And she always found a reason to hit him, especially if he was already scared.”
A tense silence falls over the room as Jason starts washing the knife and cutting board he used. Neither of his brothers know how to react. This information isn’t new to Alfred. He’d already had a discussion with Bruce about Damian’s history when he noticed just how often the child would flinch at unexpected or loud noises. How often he’d put on an angry expression that didn’t reach the terror in his eyes. The old man had started keeping track of Damian’s hiding places throughout the manor, each one being near a window with two or more other possible escape routes. He even noticed that Damian never wore headphones when he listened to music on his phone, only ever one earbud.
When Damian returns to the kitchen with an empty plate, he can’t bring himself to look any of them in the eye. “Here, allow me,” Alfred insists as he takes the plate from the boy.
“Come on, baby bird,” Jason says, again lifting his brother into his arms. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
Holding on tightly to the front of Jason’s shirt and nuzzling his head under his chin, Damian nods. Their brothers don’t follow them back upstairs. The elder of the two barely glances over his shoulder when he hears Bruce return from patrol. He decides to duck into his own room instead of continuing on to the younger’s as Dick starts explaining the night’s events.
“Do you want me to lock the door?” Damian nods and relaxes a little when he hears the lock click. He’s always felt safer being alone with Jason. His brother has always protected and cared for him. For half his life, he’s been more of a parent to him than his own mother even though he was still a child himself when they met. “Pillow wall or cuddles?” A small whimper and tightened grip are his answer. “Cuddles it is.”
Exhaustion hits Damian like a truck as Jason pulls the blanket up over them. He’s sound asleep in minutes listening to Jason’s heartbeat. Warm and comfortable, his sleep is blissfully dreamless.