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sassycassie-s-series · 5 years

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All My Fault 26

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG/K+

Notes: (Masterlist) This is a kinda long one at 2,212 words, but WOOHOO more stuff is happening! We’re getting over closer to their confession y’all! If you’re wondering, no I don’t really know how to do short series XD Just LOOOOONG slow burns XD

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @haylo4ever @lostredrobin @probsjosh @spooder-moon @welovegroot

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25

^^^^^

Damian glared at Dick over the top of his sketchbook. Per Alfred’s orders, he was on bedrest until the next morning, and it was the day after he arrived. So, another twenty-four hours in bed. McCloud had gone to bed herself after Damian’s hand twitched in the cave and woke her up at 2:30AM, so Alfred sent her to bed.

Which meant that when Damian got transferred up to his own bed, Dick decided to keep him company.

At first it wasn’t so bad. Dick just sat at Damian’s desk on his laptop and started going over crime rates and actually helped Damian type up his mission report to submit to the Watchtower’s records. And then… Dick got bored.

“C’mon, Little D,” Dick teased. “Don’t you think Nora Wayne has a nice ring to it?”

“Grayson, so help me, if you make one more joke regarding the feelings I have for her I will strip you to your mask and briefs and string you up on the GCPD tower with the Bat-signal shining right on you for everyone to see,” Damian growled, going back to a sketch of Titus he’d been working on that morning. Dick spun around in the desk chair, giving Damian a skeptically raised right eyebrow.

“I'm so glad you’re willing to just admit to my face that you are such a goner for her,” he said brightly.

“Grayson, I'm warning you,” Damian snapped, jaw clenched.

“Just admit to me you think Nora Wayne has a nice ring to it and I’ll let it go,” Dick said playfully. Damian closed his eyes with a resigned sigh.

“Tt. Alright. Whatever. It has a nice ring to it. Sure.” And I most definitely have not already thought of that many times over, he added silently.

“Glad you agree. Because if she became Nora Wayne, you’d no longer have to call her McCloud all the time. Heaven forbid you call anyone by their first name. I imagine Alfred and Bruce would be delighted to have a Mrs. Wayne again.”

“And if she chose not to give up McCloud?” Damian challenged.

Dick shrugged. “Then that’s her choice. You still wouldn’t have to call her McCloud anymore. You could call her something cute instead.” He paused. “Like honey or baby or something.” Damian scoffed and rolled his eyes.

Through the slightly open door, they could hear familiar music drifting from down the hall.

A smile pulled on Dick’s face. Damian slowly lifted up his sketchbook and hid behind it to avoid further teasing.

McCloud was singing Phantom of the Opera from her bedroom. Her door was probably open and she might have just gotten out of the shower or something. She had a nice voice. It was Broadway-levels of loud without being Broadway trained. She tended to belt dramatically and not care how it sounded. Like the time before the charity ball when she thought she was alone and sang Total Eclipse of the Heart in the Batcave.

Dick peeked up over the top of Damian’s sketchbook. “You hear that?” he asked with an ecstatic smile.

“Yes,” Damian said flatly, not giving his eldest brother the satisfaction of a reaction.

“She’s singing both parts of a duet,” Dick pointed out.

“Indeed,” Damian agreed, tone completely monotone.

“Sooo… why don’t you sing the other part?”

“I don’t sing,” Damian snapped.

Dick sighed. “Cloudy is the only fun person in this family,” he muttered. Damian rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue.

^^^^^

“Gooood morning, Cloudy!” Jason greeted brightly as I went down into the kitchen to get some breakfast before checking up on Damian again.

“Morning Jay,” I replied tiredly, through a wide yawn.

“Sleep well?”

I tilted my head to either side to loosen up the muscles. “Kinda,” I replied.

“You ditched patrol to snooze on Damian’s bedside. Must be a little stiff.”

“Technically, I fell asleep before you left and no one bothered to wake me up.” The sarcasm in my voice wasn’t lost on Jason. He snickered.

“That’s fair,” he relented.

I munched half-heartedly on a bowl of dry cereal that I wasn’t in the mood for and sighed. “I'm gonna go see if he’s okay.”

“Loved your shower performance, by the way,” Jason offered.

I pushed some of my damp hair out of my face. “Thanks,” I said, leaving the kitchen with my bowl of dry Cookie Crisps. Alfred would be cross if I got cereal dust on anything, so I carefully managed not to. Besides, the boys left half-eaten candy bars on the floors of their rooms and had gotten chocolate on the carpet more times than I bothered to count. My room was spotless by comparison.

When I reached Damian’s door, it was half-open. I could hear Dick humming inside, and if I listened hard enough I could hear the scratching of Damian’s pencil too. I lifted one hand and knocked. “Morning,” I called.

“Mornin’ Cloudy!” Dick replied loudly.

“Good morning, McCloud,” Damian added.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

There was a pause. “If you’d like,” Damian said.

I ducked through the door.

Damian was sitting up in bed on a pile of plush pillows with the sheet over his lower body. His upper body was bare, save for the bandages wrapped around his injuries. His bruises were smaller—healing. His sketchbook was on his lap. I could see a drawing of Titus on the page. I examined his injuries briefly—and absolutely did not pay attention to his physique—and perched at the foot of his bed.

“How you feelin’, Damian?” I asked casually, popping some cereal into my mouth.

He shrugged. “Absolutely fine. But Alfred won’t let me do anything till tomorrow morning.”

“That’s a good thing,” I said. “Gives you more time to heal.”

Damian regarded me, searching my face like he was searching for any sign of mocking. But I wasn’t mocking him. Just genuinely believing that Alfred’s orders were sound. I chewed on another small handful of cereal and threw a piece at Dick when he opened his mouth. He caught it expertly and laughed in victory.

“Tt,” Damian muttered.

Dick shut his laptop. “You gonna keep him company for a while, Clouds?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Okay. I'm gonna go get some stuff done. I gotta go make some calls,” Dick said, leaving the room. He didn’t shut the door behind him, which I was grateful for. A shut door would make me uncomfortable.

“Bye!” I called after him.

“Bye!” Dick singsonged. He whistled down the hallway.

I turned my attention back to Damian. “Cookie Crisp?” I asked, offering him the bowl.

He shook his head. “That much sugar would make me ill,” he said. “Thank you for offering though.”

I shrugged and ate another handful. “No problem,” I said. “How are you feeling, really?” I asked.

Damian glanced over my shoulder at the door. “I'm alright,” he said. “My injuries ache and throb but nothing else is new. I just… the mission failed. It’s no one’s fault. But it was my idea so it seems like my fault. It’s my fault I was injured this badly. It’s my fault we didn’t get the speedsters back. It’s my fault that I worried you when I turned up barely conscious. It’s my fault—”

“Stop,” I said. “It’s not your fault. You’re too hard on yourself. You blame yourself for things you have no control over. So you couldn’t get the speedsters out of the Speed-Force. So what? You tried. And that’s what matters. It’s not your fault that I'm here, out of time, either. It’s the Time Bombs’ fault. So do yourself a favor and relax.”

Damian opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it when I cocked an eyebrow. Then he sighed. “Fine,” he muttered.

I crossed my legs under me at the foot of his bed and leaned forward. “So how’s your Titus picture?” I asked.

“Fine,” he answered, turning the sketchbook to show it to me.

“Looks great,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said automatically. He bit his lip and looked up at me. “Really. Thank you.”

I smiled. “Of course. How did you sleep?”

“Fine. I should be asking that question to you though.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I woke up at about one-thirty in the morning to you sleeping with your head on the edge of the gurney.”

“Oh. Yeah I slept okay till Alfred ordered me to bed about an hour later when I woke up because you twitched.”

“Apologies.”

“Nah it’s okay. It was better for my neck to go to bed like a normal person,” I joked. Damian smirked. It wasn’t so tired and weak anymore. I liked his more alert smirk. It had a mischievous quality to it that made me feel like a kid meeting a new friend who was ultimately going to get me in so much trouble for doing something my parents told me not to do like swim in a creek or something.

“Then perhaps I’ll rescind my apology,” he said.

“Nah. I’ll still accept it because it used to be rare for you to apologize.”

“Tt. I was a bit of a brat when I was younger, wasn’t I?” he mused, grinning slightly.

“Mmhmm!” I agreed, eating more cereal. Damian snorted. “But,” I added, “you were also a good kid at heart who was doing his best with what he had to work with. You weren’t raised like a normal kid and frankly arrogance can be confidence if you can back up your claims. Which you often did.”

Damian regarded me. “Thank you,” he said. “That is… very kind of you.”

I smiled. “‘Course,” I said.

Damian looked between me and his sketchbook for a moment. “There’s… there’s something I want to show you,” he said thoughtfully.

“Uh… okay,” I replied.

He threw his covers off.

“Hey, wait, Damian,” I protested, “Alfred said you’re supposed to stay in bed till tomorrow.”

Damian gave me a cocked eyebrow, waiting for me to back down. I gave him the same look, refusing to back down. Waynes were ridiculously stubborn, but I wasn’t a doormat either. “You wouldn’t be able to reach what I’d like to show you, McCloud,” Damian said, getting out of bed. “And getting something from my closet won’t hurt me.”

I glared at him from the foot of the bed as he crossed to his closet and pulled down a box that was up on the high top shelf. He brought it over and dropped it by my knees. He sat on the other side of the dusty box and let the lid flop carelessly on the floor.

Inside was a pile of old sketchbooks, several of the bottom ones with yellowing pages.

I tensed up. Damian didn’t really show off his art to too many people. Sure he showed me his painting of the picture I’d posted on Twitter and his designs for my charity ball dress, but his sketchbooks were far more private. I only saw the drawing he did of me when I first got to the future because Jason dropped the sketchbook on my lap. I looked up at him, with surprise on my face.

“You alright?” he asked with a small grin.

“You’re… trusting me with this?” I replied.

“Of course. I'm showing you the practice sketches of the drawings I used to give the family every year for the day you went missing. Grayson would keep his for a while and then insisted I keep the drawings I gave to him.” He dug into the box and pulled out a folder that had several pages of sheet protectors in them and passed it to me. I pulled it open. “Those are the finished products. They look the best,” he added.

I flipped through the drawings. Each one was beautiful, and I could see how his art style improved over the eight years I’d been missing due to the time jump. There were eight of them. “Did you use references for these?” I asked. “Because I'm pretty sure I never looked like that.” I pointed to the one of me—dated 2025—in a flowing gown dancing with a partner whose face couldn’t be seen. The gown looked like it was being blown by a fantasy wind that also caught my hair.

Damian grinned. “No. I made that one up. Grayson asked if I would draw you dancing because he said he would forever remember you as a dancer. I decided I could take some liberties with it,” he said. I chuckled.

“And the one with the wings?”

“I was fourteen and Grayson said you were an angel. What would you expect?”

While I looked through the finished sketches Damian had drawn for Dick in greater detail, Damian pulled out the others he’d done for everyone else, explaining them and reminding me that the family loved me. I looked between the drawings and their artist, feeling flattered and amazed that he always depicted me in such beautiful ways. Most of them had me laughing and smiling in some way.

“I really don’t know what to say,” I said. “They’re all incredible.”

Damian ducked his head and avoided my eyes. “Thank you.”

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