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Wayne Manor is 45,000 square feet. It could fit snugly in the corner of the Himalayas that houses—housed—Damian’s rooms, so he's not sure why it feels so much larger. Tim has just left, his motorcycle revving down the driveway until the noise faded out maybe five minutes ago, and now Damian sits here at his desk, staring at his array of colored pencils in their mahogany case. He hadn't gone downstairs to say goodbye. ‘We can still hang out, or—’
Stupid. So profoundly stupid that Damian wants to throw something just thinking about it. He doesn't know where Drake got the idea that he'd ever want to hang out, ever want to spend an extra second with him that he doesn't have to, but it's so fucking stupid and so fucking annoying that Damian hasn't been able to think of anything else. He picks at his thumbnail, eyes prickling. What does he care whether Drake is here or with his friends in San Francisco or with his boyfriend across the city.
Nanda Parbat was bigger, but it was full. Damian couldn't walk two meters without bumping into someone; guards or assassins or his mother’s maids. Here, it’s just him. Everyone else is scattered across the country, and Damian doesn't even know where Jason or Cass might be. Equally likely that they're both dead in a ditch somewhere as it is that they'll resurface in the next few months.
He picks up a pencil—Prussian blue—and puts it down again. His sketchbook sits open to a half-finished drawing of Titus, but he can't make himself care about it right now, and it's all so stupid. Damian swipes angrily at damp eyes. Alone is what he was raised for, before all this—before Robin, before Father, before he somehow ended up here in this enormous empty house with its enormous empty rooms and its enormous empty silences.
The sun is beginning to dip below Gotham's skyline, bleeding orange and red across the buildings like an open wound, when Damian finally stands, wincing at the tightness of his shoulders. Fighting with the punching bag earlier didn't do him any favors, but he's been strung up for weeks, wound so tense he feels like a copper wire ready to snap.
Smarten up. Before you get someone killed. As if Damian is incompetent, a child who can't be trusted. As if he doesn't know every protocol, hasn't memorized every contingency, hasn't been training for this since before he could read. How the hell was Damian supposed to know she was there? That woman, that Doctor Zeller. He can't stand her. He can't stand who his father becomes around her.
Damian paces to the window, arms crossed tight over his chest. Anger sits hot and acidic in his throat. It doesn't matter that he's good at this, at Robin, and that he's not a fucking quitter like Drake. It never matters. And Tim—Drake—just gets to leave? Gets to walk away, hang up the cape, move on to whatever comes next like it's nothing, leaving Damian here with an offer to ‘hang out’ as if Damian needs his pity. As if he needs anything from him.
From anyone.
An ugly mix of fury and humiliation sits in his gut, nauseating. Damian opens his bedroom door, hesitating briefly before he remembers that there’s nobody around to observe him walking quickly downstairs, arms clasped around his middle. His father is probably still down in the Cave, which is fine. Better, even. Damian doesn't have to watch himself.
He reaches the ground floor and pauses in the massive foyer, surrounded by polished marble and ancestral portraits and absolutely nobody. The chandelier above casts prismatic light on the walls. Damian almost broke that chandelier, once, by leaping off the railing of the second-floor landing and swinging himself over to the opposite ledge. He'd been showing off—though he'd never have admitted it then—demonstrating a technique Dick had shown him. The crystal had swayed dangerously, tinkling like wind chimes, and he'd landed in a perfect crouch on the far side, triumphant.
Alfred had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, face pale, and shouted at him. Actually shouted. He remembers this so vividly because it was the first and last time Alfred ever raised his voice at him. He’d been furious, back then, but now in his memory, Damian can see the fear shining in Alfred’s eyes. Tim had been there too, he remembers suddenly. He’d come running at the noise and then stood there looking between Alfred's furious face and Damian's defiant one, and then—
It doesn't matter.
Damian's feet carry him forward mechanically, through the dining room with its long empty table, into the kitchen. The lights are off but there's enough sunset bleeding through the windows that he doesn't bother with the switch. He grabs a clementine from the fruit bowl, thumbnail digging into its dimpled peel. The white pith clings stubbornly, and juice gets all over Damian’s hands, making his skin tacky to the touch. He hates peeling clementines. He doesn't even—
“I thought you didn't like oranges?”
Damian flinches so violently he knocks his hip against the counter, pain rocketing up his body. The clementine tumbles from his hands and rolls to a stop just beside a chunky black boot.
“Cassandra,” he hisses, resisting the urge to place his palm flat over his sternum, over the beat of his pounding heart. Cass bends down to grab the half-peeled fruit, turning it over in her hand once, brushing off nonexistent lint.
“Hello, little brother,” she says genially, holding it out for him. Her fingernails are torn, the skin of her cuticles peeling, but her lips are quirked up into a tired smile.
“I—” Damian's voice comes out strangled. He clears his throat, snatching the fruit from her open hand, buying himself a moment to school his expression into something that isn't so startled. “I didn't realize anyone was here.”
His hands are shaking. He can't make them stop shaking, and Cass can read body language like other people read books, and she's looking at him with that terrible perceptiveness that makes him want to run. Cass is still in her suit—sans mask—with her hair sticking out every which way. She likely just got home from wherever the hell she’s been, but Damian isn't sure why she hasn't gone straight down to the Cave in search of their father.
Eyeing the dirt streaked along the inside of her wrist, Damian scrunches his nose and grabs a washcloth from the drawer, wetting it at the sink before handing it to her wordlessly. “Oh. Thank you.” She smiles at him, fondness crinkling her eyes, and Damian is struck with a sudden surge of affection so strong it nearly knocks him off balance.
Cass never notices the mud she tracks in. She’d been the bane of Alfred’s existence for it, for trudging in caked with dirt and blood, always so genuinely surprised when she finally noticed. She's doing it now, examining the smudge of brown on her wrist with mild interest.
“You're back,” Damian says eventually, and it comes out smaller than he intended. He hands half of the clementine to her, watching her systematically pick off the rest of the stubbornly clinging pith before popping the whole thing in her mouth at once. His shoulders finally relax from where they had risen up to his chin, but he's not sure if it's because it's Cassandra, or because it's just not anyone else. It doesn't really matter, he figures, because he lets himself be folded into a hug either way. She's been gone for so long that he can almost rest his chin on her head. Damian lets out a shuddering breath, pulling away abruptly and turning his face away from her searching eyes.
“I'm back,” she agrees, hopping up onto the counter, swinging her legs back and forth where she sits. “Where is everyone?”
“Gone,” Damian mutters. “Drake just left. He quit.”
“Quit?” Cassandra echoes, alarmed. “Quit what?”
“Quit Robin. He's done, so he says.” Damian peels another segment from his half of the clementine with more force than necessary, the fruit splitting under his fingers. His voice comes out bitter and he hates it, hates that he can't control the edge that creeps in.
“And the others?”
Damian shrugs with affected carelessness. “Grayson's in Blüdhaven, Todd's doing whatever Todd does. Brown has her own life. Thomas is with the Power Company in Atlanta. You were…away." He pauses. "Father's in the Cave.”
“And you're here.”
“Yes. Obviously.”
Even though he's not looking at her, Damian can feel how Cass’s eyes bore into him. He hates being seen like this. Everyone else sees what they want to see, when they look at him. They see what they expect. But Cass doesn't work like that, and it’s irritating. She can likely tell that he doesn't want to be having this conversation, but it's just as likely that she doesn't care. Sure enough, she nudges his thigh with her boot, head tilting a fraction. Bird-like. “Do you want to leave?”
“I'm not a coward,” Damian snaps. “Don't be ridiculous. Do you want to leave?”
“You're not me, Damian.”
Her voice is so gentle, so fucking careful, as if one harsh syllable could break him. It makes Damian simultaneously want to put his fist through the wall and fall into her arms. It’s pathetic. He's pathetic. “I don't want to leave,” he says roughly, jaw clenching. “This is my duty. Robin is my birthright. It’s different for Drake. He chose this life, so he can—un-choose it. I wouldn't want to, anyway.”
He thinks about the Gotham University acceptance letter laying on his bedroom floor. He'd read it once and then crumpled it up and tried very hard to forget it existed.
“There's nothing else for me," Damian says, and his voice sounds hollow even to his own ears. "This is what I was trained for. Robin is—it's what I am.”
Silently, Cass slips off the counter, padding forward until she's standing right in front of him, peering up at him with black eyes. “Damian,” she says, almost reproachful. She takes his hand. Unwittingly, Damian lets her, blinking rapidly to stave off the wetness collecting at his waterline. “Is it what you want to be?”
Damian pulls his hand free, turning around and pressing his palms flat against the cool marble of the countertop, shoulders curling inwards. “It doesn't matter.”
“Yes it do—”
“No, it doesn't. I know I'm his least favorite, I'm not an idiot, but I'm the one who's blood, so he's—I'm obligated to—”
His voice cracks and he cuts himself off, horrified. His eyes are burning. The humiliating truth of it is that he's drowning here. The Manor is too big and too empty and he's so desperately, achingly alone that sometimes he can't breathe, and Tim leaving felt like abandonment even though Damian would rather die than admit he cares, and he's terrified his father will send him away and equally terrified he'll never get to leave.
“My mother was a doctor,” Damian blurts. His eyes widen at the slip; he hadn't meant to say it, but now he has, and he can't stop himself. “In Egypt. She was studying when she met Father, and she taught me a lot about medicine. Did you know our grandfather was a doctor, too?”
“Runs in the family,” Cassandra says quietly. “You should do it, Damian. You'd make him proud.”
Nothing I do could make him proud, Damian doesn't say. Some things are too pitiful to voice out loud. Instead, he shrugs, tapping a fingernail against the marble. “I can't. It’s just me, now. I'm all he has.”
“Dick didn't stop being Batman's son when he became Nightwing,” Cass retorts. “I don't stop being Bruce's daughter when I leave town. Tim won't stop being your brother because he took off the Robin costume.”
“He's not my—”
“He is,” she interrupts. “Whether he's Robin or not. Just like the rest of us are still here, even when we're not here.”
“That doesn't help Father,” Damian mutters. That doesn't help me. “Someone has to actually be in Gotham. Someone has to patrol with him, watch his back, be there to—”
“Tim's just taking a break, Damian. He’s not leaving forever. And even if he were—Bruce has the League. He has Oracle. He has us, when he needs us.” She pauses, waiting for Damian to turn to face her. “He doesn't need you to sacrifice yourself to take care of him."
That's not what he's doing. Is it? It's not a sacrifice to be Robin, Damian—he loves this. He truly does love being Robin. It’s just that now he knows there are other ways to help. After everything with Dr. Bashar and Emma, Damian thought he'd put this needling thought to bed. He'd decided; Gotham needs Batman, but it needs Robin, too.
But what does Damian want? What does he need?
Cass plucks at the Batgirl symbol on her chest, contemplative. “I don't think I’d ever give this up,” she admits. “I want to do this for as long as I can.” And Damian feels all the worse for it, shame sitting heavy in his chest, his throat, suffocating. But Cass taps a finger against his chest, right over his heart, and gives a little shake of her head. “It’s okay to want something different. You and me, we aren't the same. One is not better than the other.”
“What if I'm wrong?" Damian says quietly. “What if I leave and I—what if I hate it? What if I'm not good at anything else? What if Robin is all I'm meant to be?”
Cass shrugs. “Then you come back. No biggie.”
“‘No biggie,’” Damian echoes, incredulous. Cass smiles.
He drags his socked toes against the tile, shifting his weight from one foot to the other; practically screaming please don't look at me please don't talk to me. To her credit, Cass doesn't, instead finally ridding herself of her mud-stained boots and blinking at the tracks she's only just now noticing. She wets her washcloth again, crouching to scrub at the dirt with a furrow between her brows. Damian grabs his own rag to help, scowling at the amused curl to Cassandra’s lip.
They stay on the floor long after it’s clean, sitting opposite each other, their legs tangled together. The last dredges of sunlight are fading, and with them goes Damian’s resolve. Maybe that's proof he's not meant for this. He doesn't know. Nothing makes sense anymore.
“I don't know what to tell him,” he says eventually, gaze dropped to his lap. Cass knocks a foot against his knee.
“Want me to stay?”
For the first time all day, for maybe the first time in months, the Manor doesn't feel so barren. “Yes,” Damian says quietly. “Please.”