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What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.
Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals
~•~
Sometimes Damian struggled with the rules of his new life.
Like that one time he thought that going for a hike meant a similar exercise to the one his grandfather had him do. Dick had been horrified and trying to hide it when Damian had asked him if he was required to be barefooted or if it was alright if he wore shoes.
Dick did that a lot. The being horrified and hiding it thing. It always sent a pang through him, unease that he put the expression on his brother’s face, gratitude that he tried to hide it for Damian’s sake and something distant, something he couldn’t name.
It helped a lot.
Everything Dick did for him. Kori too and his other siblings. They all tried so hard to explain things to Damian, to make him feel safe.
He did.
He felt safe in the apartment he shared with Dick and Kori and Cass and technically Tim, even if the teenager wasn’t really around right now.
He felt safe in a way the league had never made him feel, in ways the manor, for all its differences to his mother’s and grandfather’s iron rule had never quite managed.
Here, with Dick, Damian was starting to learn that it was alright to be confused and it was alright to make mistakes and it was alright to ask questions and it was alright to have wishes and thoughts and interests.
Despite being convinced still that his father was alive, no matter how many tentative talks about grief and expectations Dick started, Damian kind of hoped that Tim wouldn’t find him for a long time.
So yes, despite all the help he was getting, despite how safe he felt here, Damian struggled with the rules sometimes.
What he did know though was that he couldn’t be useless.
It wasn’t a rule that had been discussed, but he knew it was a rule because Cass pushed herself to talk sometimes when she’d been silent for too long and he knew how much that hurt her. She had confided in him one day, maybe two or three weeks after their father’s alleged death, that she was scared that if she was silent for too long, they would forget about her. She had told him how sometimes her parents, the one before his father, had looked right through her. She had also told him how sometimes their father startled when he looked up and saw her, as if she hadn’t been in the room the entire time.
She was scared Dick and Kori would be the same.
Damian was reasonably confident that it was bullshit and wouldn’t happen, but he was also pretty certain that the rule simply had different consequences.
Don’t be useless or…you get sent back to the League?
It didn’t sound right either, not when Dick had sat him down and had assured him that he would never ever go back.
Not when he knew Dick and Jason had talks about the possibility that their father would come back, talks where they sat together on the rooftop and drank pure vodka from the bottle and had entirely silent conversations with their eyes.
Not when Damian had witnessed one, hidden in the shadows and Jason had said ‘You adopted them, Dickie. Ain’t nothing he can do’ and Dick had taken another sip, his shoulders carved in tension, before he’d forcefully relaxed and said ‘Yeah.’
Dick wanted to keep them.
Still. Damian knew it was a rule, not to he useless, because Dick stuck to it too. Dick went on patrol despite his sprained wrist and Dick held Cass through nightmares despite the way he could hardly keep his eyes open and Dick talked to Tim on the phone and encouraged his quest despite the way their father’s name always made him tense for a split second.
So when Damian felt a cold coming on, he didn’t say anything.
He didn’t ask not to have to go to school, despite the way swallowing his coughs burnt his chest.
He went to patrol despite the way exhaustion weighed down his limbs.
Damian hadn’t often been sick in his life. He hadn’t been sick since he’d come to this country, but he figured that he could tough it out. Hide it.
So he slept with his fist crammed into his mouth to muffle his coughs and he met the day with an impassive face, a headache clawing at his temples.
He couldn’t be useless.
After all, what did he really bring to this family other than his training, his talent? Who was he but a good soldier?
Damian could follow orders.
“Keep up,” Nightwing said lightly, his tone inviting Damian in on the joke, challenging him to say something about being faster than Dick, being better than him.
Damian simply ducked his head and did as he was told.
He missed Dick’s smile dimming.
By the time they reached the docks, Damian’s entire energy went into controlling his breath. It was slightly wheezy, slightly too out of shape, but he didn’t think his older brother could tell.
“Slowpoke,” Dick teased and Damian forced himself to glare at the man, as if his words didn’t cut deep. He knew the older vigilante was joking, but it was true, wasn’t it?
Damian was slacking and it was unacceptable.
However, he thought that if he replied right now, his voice would betray how out of breath he was, so the glare would have to do.
Dick’s smile only deepened and he ruffled Damian’s hair. The boy leaned away by instinct, a knee-jerk reaction he hadn’t had in a while, and Dick pulled his hand back as if he’d been burned, concern and guilt flashing in his eyes. “Sorry,” he apologised, which was a needless action and frustrated Damian to no ends because Dick was his superior and he shouldn’t have to apologise for Damian’s mood. “Didn’t realise it was a no-touch day.”
Damian made a non-committal sound and sucked in another slightly wheezy breath.
His chest hurt and he felt the need to cough, but he managed to keep it in until Dick was already down on street-level. The boy allowed himself a weak cough, before he scaled the building to follow Nightwing.
It was a pretty uneventful patrol and while Damian would normally be mad about that, always itching to get his energy out, to prove himself, to help people, today he was relieved. After every small fight they had, he felt a little bit worse and he didn’t think that he was the most reliable of partners right now. If they’d gotten into an actual fight, Damian would have become a liability.
He knew that he was supposed to report things like that, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to.
Maybe…maybe he was just scared that Dick would tell him to suck it up like his trainers in the league would have.
His time here had made him soft if he couldn’t even handle to be told to be better.
“Good job, kid,” Dick said and Damian preened at the compliment, even if he knew that he didn’t deserve the praise. His chest was hurting more now and so was his throat. Every time he swallowed, he felt like razors were travelling down his throat.
“Good night,” he said and the words hurt, but he managed to escape to his room before he could give away just how bad he felt.
Damian was shivering by the time he had managed to drag his heavy limbs out of his costume and into his pajamas. Not even his thick blanket gave much relieved and he curled up and shook, sniffling pathetically.
He told himself that he’d been through worse, that he’d been colder.
It was true, but that didn’t take away the miserably sickness in his chest and much to his horror, Damian felt tears well up in his eyes.
Pathetic.
He needed to be better than that.
Damian carefully tried to regulate his breathing so he would be able to sleep and hopefully wake up better in the morning, but the airy quality to his breath was grating on his nerves.
He must have fallen asleep at some point though, because he woke to a cool hand on his forehead, a cold hand really, freezing and he whimpered and weakly tried to pull away. A cough fought its way past his lips and then Damian was wheezing, unable to quite catch his breath.
“Easy, Damian. Take it easy,” Dick said above him, his familiar voice enough to make the boy’s anxiety settle some.
“What-” he started, before being interrupted by a fresh round of coughs. It tore up his throat or at least it felt like it and Damian couldn’t help but make a miserable little noise.
“I know,” Dick said sympathetically, carding his fingers through the boy’s hair. “It sucks being sick.”
“Not sick,” Damian forced out past trembling lips. “I’m fine.” More wheezing followed his statement.
Dick paused and when he spoke, his voice was carefully even in the way Damian recognised as his brother trying to soothe him before they had another talk about rules and reasonable expectations and discipline and appropriate punishments. “You have a fever and you can barely breathe, Damian. I think that counts as sick.”
Damian sucked in another wheezy breath, as if to prove to both of them that he could, in fact, breathe, before he was thrown into another coughing fit. “Can’t-” he said.
Dick leaned down and offered him a glass. Damian greedily sipped some cool water. “Can’t be useless,” he said, now that his sore throat wasn’t in the way anymore.
His brother went very, very still.
“Being sick doesn’t make you useless, Damian,” he said after a few moments of clearly trying to compose himself. “And even if it did, you don’t have to be useful to stay here. We love you for you and we want you to be happy and safe and healthy.”
As always, Dick managed to find the sore spot and press down and a moment later, Damian was sobbing, all snot and coughs and tears.
“Oh, Damian,” Dick said and the bed next to him dipped. Damian felt himself pulled into his brother’s lap and despite the indecency of it all, he didn’t resist, allowing the older to rub circles into his back. “I’m sorry, this isn’t a conversation for right now. You shouldn’t have deep emotional talk while you’re sick.”
Which meant that eventually they would have to have a talk about it.
Damian wondered if Dick would listen when Damian pointed out that Dick clearly couldn’t stand to be useless either.
He thought he would.
He thought that Dick would help Cass too, if Damian told him about his sister’s worries. He wasn’t sure if he should though, not when it was such a clear breach of trust. His mind was moving slowly as he laid wheezing in Dick’s arms and perhaps, Damian decided, this was a decision to make when he was healthy.
“Sorry,” he whimpered.
The circles on his back got firmer, more grounding. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Damian,” Dick said firmly.
“Sorry,” he repeated regardless, as if Dick would change his mind if Damian insisted. “Sorry, dad.”
The circles froze, but Damian wasn’t fully sure.
“Nothing to apologise for,” Dick repeated, sounding choked. “But I forgive you.”
Damian relaxed at the absolution.
He liked that Dick gave it, even if he didn’t think it was needed.
“Now we’ll get some more liquid and some medication into you and then you can go back to sleep,” Dick added, the odd quality in his tone.
“School?” he asked hesitantly, a wheezing breath and cough following his question.
“I called you out,” Dick said simply. “We’ll talk tomorrow, yes?”
Damian felt something press past his lips and then a glass was in his hand again and he obediently swallowed the pill.
“I love you, Damian,” Dick said.
Damian wanted to tell his brother that he loved him too, but he drifted off before he could manage.
Tomorrow then.