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The first time Talia saw Richard Grayson was on a newspaper front page. He was a tiny little kid then, barely eight years old, with eyes so sad she could notice their sorrow even through the paper. He looked even smaller standing beside Bruce’s huge frame, on the stairs of the courthouse where her beloved supposedly gained guardianship over the boy.
She wished to go to them. To meet Richard and see for herself how very sad those eyes really were… if they were even sadder up close. To be in Bruce’s embrace once more, maybe this time he would be the one to ask her to stay… But she was in the USA strictly on League business and there was no time to waste on these foolish things.
So she kept on with her mission and went straight back to Nanda Parbat when she finished it.
***
The second time she saw Richard, she was taking a break from her father’s plans, posing as Talia Head, the heiress of a multinational company, searching for a business partner in the US. She was actually seeing Bruce again, and had just been invited to Wayne Manor.
The boy was still tiny, dressed in little pyjamas and holding a small elephant plush toy. She hadn’t got the chance to see his eyes because Richard was perched on the chandelier, as if it was the most natural place to be. She had to suppress the urge to raise an impressed eyebrow at that, lest she gave him away. It couldn’t have been easy to get up there. This child must be a handful.
Talia just let Bruce show her around his home and kept her amusement to herself.
***
She finally met Bruce’s ward officially a few days later. He was nine years old (and three months, as he declared), but looked closer to seven. His eyes weren't sad anymore, but he seemed a little wary of her. It was understandable. She was a stranger in his home and, as if that wasn’t reason enough, Bruce had mentioned that Richard had spent months at Gotham’s Youth Detention Center, before he came to Bruce’s and Alfred’s care. That was bound to be a hard and traumatic experience that surely caused him trouble trusting adults.
But she had an inkling that the boy’s curious nature would overcome his mistrust and (according to Bruce and to Alfred) uncharacteristic shyness around her.
***
After a few weeks, little Richard had overcome his wariness and had also completely won Talia’s heart. She found out she liked little kids, even if she hadn’t met many of them before, and Richard was an adorable, exuberant child.
He was so happy and so full of energy that she got tired just from watching him, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling just from seeing his blue eyes shining with joy. She was delighted to watch him doing his routines on the trapeze, to go to his gymnastic competitions and to catch him climbing to the chandeliers (which was their little secret, to Richard’s great pleasure and to Alfred’s exasperation – the man knew it all, he just could do nothing to keep the boy’s feet to the ground).
And Richard was so very smart! He found out for himself that she was the Daughter of the Demon’s Head – hacking the Batcomputer (he was a clever little kid, but he was indeed nine years old and loved wordplays… there was no stopping him and Talia was just waiting to see when Bruce would slip and start using the “bat” prefix on everything too – she and Alfred had a bet going).
Since the boy already knew the truth, Talia started to take part in his lessons as Robin. She taught him everything Bruce wouldn’t or couldn’t teach him, from fighting techniques more fitting to his small, flexible body that Bruce didn’t learn in the League, to obscure poisons and antidotes, to forgotten dancing styles and everything in between. He was just as good as a student as he was as a performer.
Sooner than she thought possible, she realised that she already loved this kid deeply and couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to lose him if she and Bruce ever had another fallout.
***
The fallout really came eventually. After a little more than two lovely years, when Dick was almost eleven and a half years old, Talia packed up and went back to the League of Shadows.
Her Father had finally got fed up with her being away, since she clearly wasn’t making any progress in bringing his precious Detective back to his side. It was not like she had tried, to begin with. Ra’s probably wouldn’t kill Bruce, but he held no regard to Alfred or Richard. She’d rather lose what was feeling like family to distance and heartbreak than to be the cause of their deaths.
So she went back to Nanda Parbat without leaving anything behind in the Wayne Manor, except for memories and a little piece of paper with a phone number and a message written in a code she helped Richard create.
Leaving them hurt even more than what she had anticipated, but it was for the best.
***
She wouldn’t see her boy for years. But they called each other twice a year, on their birthdays. She wouldn’t dare do it more often, it was already a miracle that her Father hadn’t caught them, as it was. They couldn’t push their luck.
***
When Richard was fifteen, Talia visited Gotham again. She managed to meet Bruce, but Richard was on the other side of the country with his Titans friends.
She left a Haly’s circus poster in his bed in the Manor. She had found it with a collector. It had a picture of Richard’s parents, aunt, and uncle. She also left him a bottle of the oil they used to put in each other’s hair, a bottle of the golden nail polish they both liked (it looked beautiful against their dark skin) and another phone number, with the same message as the one she gave him years ago.
As for herself, she stole one of the photos of Richard that Bruce kept in his studio. Unlike her, Bruce had dozens of them, and he could take another one anytime he wanted.
***
The next time she saw Richard up close, he was seventeen and living in his own small apartment, in a city that was somehow worse than Gotham (she would be hard-pressed to believe it was even possible, had she not visited the city before, hoping to catch a glimpse of her boy from afar).
“Richard”, she spoke softly, wondering if he could hear the longing and the love in her voice. “You’ve gotten so tall!”. He actually hadn’t. He was still short for his age, but he was so much taller than when he was the last time she had held him as a tiny eleven year old! He was probably still growing, even if he would never be a tall man, if genetics and his acrobatics had any say in it.
They kept on staring at each other in silence for what felt like ages. She was trying to take every single detail of his face and frame as possible, before having to go back to the League again. And he was clearly very surprised by her sudden visit and, especially, by the baby sling holding Damian to the front of her body. She hadn’t dared talk about her pregnancy with anyone but Bruce, and even if her beloved had told Richard about their Kid, the great Batman believed she had lost their child, as per her Father’s plans.
Richard, still wide-eyed, gave her some space to get inside his apartment, before shutting the door and going for a hug, but stopped short, probably afraid of somehow hurting Damian. She initiated the hug herself, being careful not to squeeze her baby between them.
“What happened?”. They were now sitting in his small living room. Damian was still asleep in his sling and Richard had yet to lose the mesmerized look in his blue eyes.
After discovering the first signs of a breeding coup in the League, she didn't stop to think. She didn't bother to let her Father know what she uncovered. She didn't even pack for herself, or called on any of her most loyal companions. She just took Damian, his baby bag with only enough supplies to last them the trip, and was off to the USA in one of her helicopters.
Her only thoughts were all about getting her kid away from what was more likely than not the beginnings of a civil war in the League.
Talia herself wasn't quite sure why she thought it was a better idea to take her baby, her heart, to a teenager instead of to his father. But here she was, somehow convinced that it would be better if no one knew about Damian’s status as one of Batman’s sons (or even one of Bruce Wayne’s), he was in enough danger as it was by simply being connected to her and to her Father. She didn’t want even more expectations being held against her child.
***
Dick wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting after Talia’s call. She only told him it was an emergency and asked for his address, and she sounded more worried and stressed than he had ever heard her.
Despite Bruce’s warning about how easily he trusted people these days, he gave her his actual address instead of one to his most presentable safehouse. It was Talia, who taught him all about poisons and ancient dancing styles, who went to all of his competitions for two years, when she used to live with them in the Manor. Talia whose eyes always laughed when she saw him climbing the furniture or the chandeliers. So, he gave her the address to his apartment in Bludhaven and anxiously waited for her arrival.
He didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t Talia with colourful sling wrapped around her body and an honest to God baby, with a baby bag in the Al Ghul green and gold.
They called each other every birthday and she never told him anything about a baby. So that was new.
He also couldn’t have anticipated that Talia would want him to take care of her baby (because that tiny little human was hers!! She had a baby! Why wouldn’t she tell him? Was this the kind of thing you tell your ex-lover’s child, that was sort of your child as well?)
Anyway, the baby’s name was Damian and he was the most adorable baby Dick had ever seen, and it was almost impossible to stop staring at his little face and his cute button nose.
Talia had left the apartment to buy baby things, after telling Dick about the problems brewing in the League of Shadows. She needed her baby to be away from the League and with someone safe.
He had promptly agreed to take care of Damian for her, while the coup was subdued, even if he knew close to nothing about taking care of babies. Even if it was hard to understand that Talia trusted him to be alone with a baby she was clearly protective of. He asked her about Bruce, since Alfred was surely more equipped to the task at hand and Bruce had more to offer when it came to resources and safety measures, but Talia argued that it would be really hard to keep the news that a baby was living in Bruce Wayne’s house from the tabloids, and some of the League dissidents were high enough in the hierarchy that they knew about Bruce and Talia’s complicated history. It wouldn’t be too farfetched to imagine some of them would connect her missing baby with one the same age showing up in Bruce’s life.
So there Dick was, with a sleeping baby in his arms, waiting for Talia to come back with everything he would need to babyproof his house, baby food, and whatever else babies used on a regular basis.
He could only hope that Talia stayed in Bludhaven for enough time to teach him the ropes.
***
“Mama has to go, my love”. It was probably one of the hardest decisions of her life, but it would be for the best. And it was only temporary. She kissed Damians little forehead and inhaled his soft baby scent for what would be the last time in months, before passing him to Richard’s waiting arms.
Damian made his soft cooing baby noises, his little hands pulling a strand of her hair. She smiled sadly at him, before hugging Richard as tightly as she could, considering he was holding a baby, and kissed both his cheeks. The older boy looked a little apprehensive with her leaving, but he had been nothing if not a natural at dealing with Damian.
“Everything will be okay,” she assured him, “you are already an amazing big brother to him.” It probably wouldn’t give Bruce’s status as Damian’s parent away. Richard hadn’t shown any true desire to discover who Damian’s father was, bless his heart. And his concept of family has always been rather broad. “And you can call me, if there is some kind of emergency. You can do it, I have faith in you”.
“Okay, I can do it.” He didn’t sound very sure to her ears, but it would have to do for now. “Say bye-bye to Mama, Dami.”
“No bye-bye, Mama”. At ten months, Damian was quite adept of the word no. “Ahki, no bye-bye”, he scowled at Richard and let Talia’s hair go, in favor of beating the teen’s chest with his small fists. His vocabulary was not yet very large, but just last night he started to call Richard that, and the boy’s face was priceless. They were the most adorable pair.
It felt terrible to leave them both so soon. But the longer she stayed in one place, the easier it would be for someone (her Father or the League dissidents) to track her down and find Dami. She couldn’t risk the safety of both boys so deliberately.
It was bad enough that she was selfish to the point of trying to raise her child in the League and away from his father, only because she knew Bruce would never let her keep their baby boy in her care, as long as she was following her own Father philosophy and orders. The worst part is that she knew her beloved would be right in his reasoning, but she wasn’t ready to choose between her baby and her Father. Maybe it made her a bad mother, but she just couldn’t. She only hoped someday she would have the courage to part with one of them, for the sake of her child.
Now she was thrusting said baby in the hands of the boy she saw as another son, her first one at that. It would be so hard for Richard to juggle his day job, his patrols as Nightwing, and taking care of a baby. She helped him find a good daycare.
There was no time for her to find someone to babysit for him at night, but she was quite certain that Richard’s Titans friends would help him if he needed someone to look after his little brother. Those five kids were closer than anyone else she knew, and she could tell it just from the way Richard talked about them.
“I really need to go, mama. Ahki will take good care of you.” She tried to smile again, but her heart was breaking in a million pieces.
It was for the best, she repeated to herself, as she turned her back on her family and went back to the Father that gave her little more than pain.
She took solace in the fact that Damian already had a space carved on Dick’s heart, even when he didn’t know who was the baby’s parent. And it was only temporary. She wouldn’t leave them forever.
***
Damian’s first night without Talia was hard. Dick did everything he could to distract the baby, but it was to no avail. He was usually a serious and silent baby (or as close to that as a baby can be), but his little brother hadn’t stopped crying and calling for his Mama, since Dick finished feeding and getting him ready to sleep.
“Shh, Dami, it’s okay, baby,” Dick cooed softly, rubbing the baby’s little back and kissing his hair. His arms were getting tired of all the rocking he was doing, but every time Dick tried to put Damian in his little crib, he would cry even louder. So he kept rocking, walking from room to room in his small apartment, and singing every lullaby he knew, the one Talia taught him and the ones from his own childhood. “I wished she was here too, buddy”.
Eventually, after what felt like hours, Dami got too tired to cry and started to whimper quietly and to yawn. Thank God, Dick thought. He was exhausted and just wanted to sleep for sixteen hours straight.
He should have put Dami in his crib, but his little hands were holding Dick’s shirt so tightly, and he was frankly scared that leaving his line of sight would be enough to prompt another round of crying. So he gathered all the pillows in the house and arranged them around the bed, so Damian wouldn’t roll off it in his sleep, and laid down to sleep with the baby still in his arms.
***
“Ahki, no.” That was Dami’s favorite phrase of the week. He was a very opinionated baby and he wasn’t the biggest fan of his car seat. He also really liked to slap Dick in whichever body part was the most convenient at the time, which now was his face, to get Dick to pay attention to him. “No car”.
“Yes, car, Dami. We need to buy food, and I’m not even close to ready to explain to anyone how I suddenly have a baby, so you’re coming with me. In the car seat, yes.” The baby just frowned, scrunching his little eyebrows.
Dick, who still thought Damian was the most adorable baby ever, couldn’t resist booping baby button nose, receiving another indignant “no”, in protest.
***
Donna had been on the phone with Dick for little more than five minutes before a little voice interrupted their conversation.
“Ahki, up, up!” There were a few beats of silence, before Donna realised what was going on.
“Dickie, it’s that a baby?!”
“No?” Well, that was not reassuring. Why would Dick have a baby?
“Richard John Grayson, what is going on? Did someone have a run with a magic user and you forgot to tell me again?”
“What?! No, Donna!” complained loudly. “Why would this even be your first guess? ” She couldn’t be blamed for asking. It wouldn’t be the first time someone got de-aged. Hera, it wouldn’t even be the first time someone got de-aged and Dick was the one who had to take care of the de-aged person. But this person sounded younger than most cases she saw or heard about before.
“Ahki! Up now!”
“Hold on for a sec, Don.” She could tell he put his phone down somewhere, as his voice got more distant (and all soft and full of love). “Hi, buddy. Do you want a snack?”
“Okay, I’m back now. No one got de-aged, if that’s what you thought. He is a real, normal baby. His mother can’t look after him right now, so he’s staying with me for a bit.”
“Do you need any help? I love babies, and you know my job has a flexible schedule”
“It would be nice to have someone to look after him some nights. I haven’t been able to patrol in these last weeks. I don’t know anyone in the city to babysit him. And I didn’t tell anyone he is with me, so I can’t leave him in the Manor”.
“Richard John Grayson!”
“Hey! You can’t use my full name twice in the same conversation!”
“Well, you deserve it! You are taking care of a baby all alone for weeks? I’m staging an intervention. We will probably be in your apartment tonight.”
“What? Donna, no!”
“No, Don, no-no!” the baby squealed, sounding very much delighted. Donna just laughed and bid them both goodbye. She had other phone calls to make.
***
“Your ahki has very nosy friends, Dami”, Dick told the baby in his arms with a soft smile. Dami gave him a light slap to the cheek, and asked to be let down, before crawling back to where his favorite colouring book and crayons were spread on the floor.
He took his colouring very seriously for a baby. It was what he liked most to do, even during the time he spent at the daycare with other children. And he was always so proud of his drawings and colouring skills. It was adorable, like everything he did.
Dick followed his baby, already calling Donna back. Dami was a very clever baby, but he was a little shy around new people and it would be very overwhelming to meet all of the original Titans at the same time. He would make sure to have a video call with all of them to explain the situation, but it would be better if they came in pairs at first.
Anyhow, Donna was right – as usual –, he should have asked for their help as soon as Talia left. He would get an ear full from each one of them. Dick would never hear the end of it.
At least, he would be able to go back to Nightwing. The city was probably even more of a mess with his absence.
***
The video call went as well as he thought it would. As expected, his friends were shocked to find out the circumstances that led to Dick being the sole responsible for a whole tiny baby.
Being his closest friends, the original Titans knew about Dick’s relationship with Talia, so they weren’t too worried about her intentions (Dick knew it would be a completely different story when he finally got the courage to talk to Bruce, but that was a problem for the future).
For now, he had his friend to rely on. They would take turns watching Dami so Dick could patrol a few days a week, and whenever he needed a hand. Knowing that made everything so much easier. He felt like a fool for not telling them sooner.
***
The only thing troubling, besides the normal worries that come with having a baby and a vigilante carrier, was the fact that he had started to think of Damian as his, without even realising. He couldn’t even know when was the first time it happened, but it was probably very soon after he met his little brother.
Dick had known he was already too attached to a baby that wouldn’t be with him forever, but he hadn’t really understood how much until he caught himself calling Dami “his baby” aloud.
And Dami was such a lovely baby. So smart and so cute! He was already starting to get up to his tiny legs alone, only using the closest wall, furniture or person to prop himself up. He would start walking anytime now. Dick felt so proud the first time he hovered a little without holding anything! Dami felt very soon after letting go of Dick’s legs, but to Dick even that few seconds felt like the biggest victory.
Talia could come back to get him back at any moment and there wouldn’t be much he could do to keep this little boy with him. It was well in her rights as his mother. Dick was only a temporary guardian.
But he couldn’t help but be delighted with every new thing Dami learned. And he couldn’t find it in himself to regret ever having this lovely child in his life. Even if it would one day break his heart to see him go.