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The inch-deep ledge was there until it wasn’t. He slipped without warning and gravity yanked Damian down. He dangled from his fingertips on the mountainside. He bit through his lip keeping back the cry it wrenched from his throat and for a long moment, all he did was catch his breath and hold to the rock.
This wasn’t a mission.
It wasn’t a case or a test.
This was just climbing an easy ascent on a camping trip with his family.
He was relatively safe, he reminded himself, while he struggled to calm his racing heart. The harness strapped around his chest and legs was snug, properly fitted, and the rope was secured along the system of carabiners and pitons. Father was above, testing and driving in new pitons where he didn’t trust the old ones.
Damian tried hauling himself back up. His wrist throbbed and once he had a foothold he released those fingers to experimentally twist and flex his arm. It ached dully, likely not more than a minor sprain.
His heart thudded wildly, and in the second he closed his eyes he was entirely alone— the tug of the rope at his waist vanished. He scrambled up the mountainside for the small inset cave Father had pointed out that morning. An abandoned aerie to steal a moment’s rest was something Damian had scoffed at over breakfast. He’d insisted on climbing with Father and Todd, despite the split within him when Grayson wanted to kayak instead.
Kayaking had sounded less exciting but it was Grayson. Then, he had noticed the way Drake was looking at Grayson and the note of excitement in his voice and that made his decision: he was not in the mood to fight for Grayson’s attention from within a single-person craft on noisy water. Then, later, Drake would not be able to accuse him of “hogging” Grayson.
It wasn’t at all because he recognized the look on Drake’s face and empathized in an instant with that feeling, of finding time with their overbooked, overworked older brother. That wasn’t it at all.
Damian preferred climbing.
He preferred climbing until he was huddled on a narrow aerie, panting for breath, with his arm clutched protectively to his chest. He had to recover himself before he was missed.
The wind that blew through his hair was chilled and he shivered. It had the tang of colder wind, and snow, and sour memories of bile-raising pain.
Before he could collect himself, a face swung into view. Todd studied him silently and then rappelled down to hang directly in front of Damian, his feet braced on the ledge.
“What’s up, Tater Tot?”
Damian opened his mouth to reply and his teeth chattered. He clipped them shut again and swallowed.
The sharp edges of Todd’s face softened and with a smooth motion, he swung around and into place beside Damian. A heavy, warm arm was draped around Damian’s shoulders.
“No squirming. We don’t have much space, okay. Not everyone can have your tiny ass.”
“Tt,” Damian managed.
Todd dug in one pocket and pulled out a shiny red package. It crinkled. They were animal crackers— a child’s treat.
“I always carry something on me, just in case.”
“And you say you are nothing like Father,” Damian muttered. He accepted the biscuits nonetheless and poured them into his trembling hands.
“Lion’s mine,” Todd said, plucking one from Damian’s chalked and sweaty palm.
“This is disgusting,” Damian complained, chewing mechanically. His breathing was approaching normal but he felt like he might throw up. Another few chews and that was fading, too.
“Yeah, well, you’re welcome,” Todd said cheerfully. “Ready?”
Damian peered out at the world beyond the tiny shelf and the biscuits were dust in his mouth. The grit of them coated his teeth and tongue, scraping and swelling his throat.
The wind lifted his hair and stole his breath. It dumped frigid water into his veins and his arm didn’t matter, his arm was nothing if he didn’t make it to the top before Mother came in the helicopter because if he was not there at the top waiting, the price for failure would undoubtedly be worse than a broken wrist.
She might even leave him there to try again, and he’d be worse off.
Something unpleasant was squeezing his shoulders and had he fallen? Was he in a crevice, sliding deeper and deeper into abyss? That would explain why his chest was so tight, why everything was so black.
“Bruce!”
The cry was deep and hoarse, from a throat permanently raw from smoke. He recognized that voice, from within his tomb of a crevice. It was a voice that flinched at candles and had left restaurants over nearby tables with cigarettes. What was it doing here?
“Todd?” Damian croaked, from within the blackness. This was all wrong. Mother would certainly punish him for accepting any help, but Todd wasn’t even supposed to be here. By the timeline Damian worked out later, she had likely left him on the mountain to go oversee Todd’s retraining.
Later?
“Shh, you’re good, Little Bird. B’s coming back down.”
Then, the voice, the one that was crushed stone and silk. It had startled him once, how very unlike his expectations it was— it wasn’t a commanding tone reminiscent of Grandfather’s. It was somehow quiet, with softly groomed edges around every hard syllable.
“What happened?”
Right now, it was drenched in concern.
“I don’t know,” Todd answered. “I found him taking a breather and he snapped.”
“Damian,” the voice said. “Look at me.”
Was he an imbecile? Did he not know of the high and crushing walls around them, the fact that they were sliding into deep and bottomless nothing?
“Damian. Open your eyes, son.”
Then, a catch in Damian’s chest released. This was Father. Father who knew the dark better than anyone he’d ever known.
He opened his open eyes, and found they had not been open after all. He blinked into the late morning sunlight, flooding the valley below them. It was a beautiful, cloudless day— something almost like perfect.
It was the sort of day that looked like Grayson.
“Hello,” Father said, looking intently into his face. He was gripping his rope in one hand, leaning back to counterbalance. His gaze flicked to Todd for a second and then back to Damian. Todd was still beside him, arm around Damian’s shoulders, while Damian shuddered.
“Father,” Damian said.
“Let’s get you down,” Father said, offering a hand. “Come with me. I’ll clip your rope to mine.”
“No.” Damian shook his head. “I can finish the climb. I can.”
“Yes,” Father said, craning his neck to look up the rock.
“Bruce, he’s—” Todd started. A single motion from Father made him stop, without a further murmur of protest.
“Do you want to finish the climb?” Father asked. His brow was bent in a furrowed line.
Damian considered this. His wrist throbbed.
“No,” he said, quietly. “I do not.”
“Alright,” Father said. “Let’s go.”
The descent was quick— over an hour of climbing lost in ten minutes of rappelling and belaying ropes and clips. Cassandra, a mere paper doll of human against the broad blue sky, waved from the top when they touched down and unstrapped themselves from harnesses.
She cupped her hands around her mouth, twisting and taking three dimensional shape, and shouted something that didn’t make it to them below. She moved again.
Then Father pulled out his phone.
“She’s hiking down the other side,” Todd read from his own. “To meet Dickie and Tim.”
“Hn,” Father said. He picked Damian up. “Let’s go back to camp.”
“I can walk.” Damian wriggled and pushed against Father’s shoulder. It did not yield.
“Do you want to?” Father asked again.
Damian sighed. He slumped against the broad shoulder, his chin resting there.
“No,” he said.
“Alright,” Father said. He kept walking.
Todd walked behind them, carrying gear and whistling.
At camp, in the fire pit flanked by their two massive tents, it took Father all of a second to notice Damian favoring his wrist. Damian, though reluctant to admit it to himself, may have slightly favored his wrist in hopes of just that. It was wrapped and iced before they ate lunch.
Pennyworth was sitting on the dock when they went to swim in the lake, dozing under a broad umbrella with a book on his chest. Todd pinched the book away and splashed him and Damian laughed at the lightning-quick rap on the back of the head it earned the older boy. The rap was gentle and the smiles easy, and Damian slipped noiselessly into lake water.
Tiny fish nibbled at his toes, he held so still, and then he scared them away kicking off to catch up with Father. They swam laps back and forth between two buoys, until Father stopped abruptly and flipped to float on his back. Damian gave up on the breaststroke and paddled over to him to flop across his stomach.
For a second, they sank, and then they were bobbing up toward the surface again.
“Brat,” Father coughed.
“If you cannot maintain buoyancy under sudden pressure, then I am only doing you a favor providing you opportunities to improve your response time,” Damian said, with a sharkish grin.
“Brat,” Father repeated.
Damian left himself draped there, his head on Father’s chest while water lapped gently against his cheek and buried ear.
“What happened up there, Damian?” Father asked softly, after several minutes of basking in the sun.
“Nothing,” Damian lied.
“Damian.”
“When I was retrieved, after, I thought she would praise me for finishing despite my fractured wrist,” Damian said. He closed his eyes and drifted on Father on the gentle lake tide. “She did not. I learned to set bones. Another lesson. I mastered it quickly.”
Father’s silence was deeper than the lake.
Then he gripped Damian’s arms and tilted, treading water while he hauled him close and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice husky. It was like someone had taken the crushed stone and silk and twisted them into a knotted bundle. It hung in the air, spinning, bumping into the quiver that was Damian’s heart. “I’m sorry, habibi.”
A sob would have been easy to drown in the lake, to duck his head and come up coughing. The wounded whimper that escaped him offered no such quick escape, and Damian’s ears burned.
“Shh,” Father said. “No one is watching.”
Damian buried his face on Father’s shoulder.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“Do you want to be?” Father asked.
“What.” Damian froze.
“You don’t have to be, right now. Nobody is watching.”
Damian wrapped his arms around Father’s neck and his legs as far as he could around Father’s waist, while Father treaded water.
“I want a minute,” Damian said.
“Alright,” Father said.
If Damian wept silently against Father’s shoulder for longer than a minute, Father never told him. When the cracked ribs feeling seeped out of him, Damian pressed a quick kiss to Father’s cheek and slipped beneath the surface. He swam underwater until he was almost beneath the dock, and he crept up to drag his fingers at Todd’s feet like slithering eels.
There was a startled shriek and Damian laughed.
“You little miscreant!” Todd bellowed, immediately dropping his conversation with Pennyworth to dive in after Damian when he fled.
“Father!” Damian screamed, when Todd was gaining on him.
“I think you can handle a single brother,” Father said mildly, swimming for shore. “Unless you can’t?”
“Traitor!” they both yelled in unison, before turning on each other. Damian was dunked before he clambered up Todd’s back and dragged him under with a twist of his hips.
Damian was blue-lipped and shivering when he finally climbed out and wrapped a towel around himself. He sprinted through the woods, leaving Father and Pennyworth and Todd behind. At camp, there was a thick sleeping bag to dive into to warm up.
What he found was even better. Grayson, Drake, and Cass had returned and built up the fire. They were talking in the twilight, and Grayson only glanced at him before throwing wide his arms.
Damian leapt onto him, dripping still, while Grayson complained and laughed and hugged him tight. The folding chair scooted a few inches closer to the fire and Grayson rubbed a hand up and down Damian’s arm.
“You’re like a popsicle,” Grayson said.
“You stink,” Damian retorted.
“Love you, too,” Grayson chuckled. He squeezed him again and dipped his forehead against Damian’s damp hair. “Have a good day?”
“Good enough.” Damian shrugged. “Ghost stories tonight? And s’mores?”
“You read my mind,” Grayson said. “Go get your skinny butt into some clothes. You’re making me cold looking at you.”
“In a minute,” Damian said, snuggling down. He made sure to dig an elbow into Grayson’s side and smirked at the oof he got out of him.
Father and the others emerged from the lake path, and the little curve of a smile on Father’s face at the sight of Dick and Damian was like the sweetness of an ice cream sundae. Damian breathed, deep and slow and full.
The sky was plush navy, speckled with starlight, but it was a day like Grayson:
Warm, and safe, and bright.