dami can't (leavethenest) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-08-14 22:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | alfred pennyworth, damian wayne |
Who: Damian and Iris
When: Before the big villain dance party
Where: Passages
What: Damian wants to check up on Iris
Warnings: Some yelling and cuteness
Damian didn’t think very long about the things that he did. He ran on instinct and occasional selfishness, which would probably explain why he wanted to see Iris. There was affection for the woman, despite how batty she could sometimes be, and if the hotel really could connect both worlds it would be an opportunity to make her remember that he was there and not just some words on a page. But, in the time between deciding to see her and actually meeting up, he started to worry. Just a little. What if her constant fight against interacting with people was real and she had no real desire to see him? Damian hated the idea of being a burden to another person, especially someone that he didn’t talk to out of necessity or family. Pennyworth never really played into it. He was drawn to Iris long before he knew who she was connected to.
Now, unable to stop the buildup of pressure and that twinge of self consciousness, Damian waited at a door in the manor for it to open. That’s how this had to work, right? Find a door, think about the hotel, and wait. Dressed in black and more black, he leaned on the doorframe and let Jade tell him useless facts about ancient Chinese art. About buried warrior statues lined in perfect rows. It cleared his head long enough for the door to suddenly open a little; a passage to somewhere in between.
From the time Alfred had crossed back over from Gotham, Iris’ mind had been spinning about trying to meet with Damian. They’d met face to face exactly three times, once had been when they were things not quite themselves, and once had been in a dream, neither of which Iris was certain even counted. They had seemed so real, but there was no way to know if it was simply her mind creating intricate fantasies. The other time had been only a few hours, filled with him being slightly drunk, overtired, and ending with him eating half his weight in spaghetti and then passing out on Luke’s couch as she wandered back and forth between watching both him and Gus sleep. None of the meetings had been especially intentional, and had been over before she could even really think about it. The invitation to the hotel, though, was a different matter altogether. She had time to think. And worry.
She had been nervous from the very start, but talking with Sam had made it (if possible) even worse. Meeting with a friend, someone who wasn’t family, was nerve-wracking enough. But the added layer of Sam’s teasing (because that was what it had to be) upped her anxiety even more. The gifted outfits didn’t help at all. She’d spent most of the time between their arrivals and her departure for the hotel simply staring at them laid out across her bed while she sat on the chair in her room. She tried all of them on, the first dress with nothing beneath it, the second shorter dress that cut down way too far in front, the tanktop and jeans that made her look years younger. She knew that she had to choose something, that Sam would insist when she arrived to walk together to the hotel.
Somehow, in the time between showing up at Anton’s apartment and the two of them leaving, Sam managed to convince her to put on the first dress. It likely had something to do with the fact that as she rambled in her nervousness, Iris had told her about Damian telling Alfred that he would be “disappointed” if Iris didn’t show up. So Sam had wrangled her into the dress, nothing beneath it, but allowed (with a sigh and a roll of her eyes) a large, closely woven shawl, a silver so light it was nearly white, something soft and warm even though the early evening outside was still desert-hot. Her reflection in the full-length mirror had made her blush and turn away, but her sister insisted that she looked gorgeous. ”Hot.” But the dress exposed so much pale skin, and a constellation of small scars that were faded souvenirs of a night several years past that she wished she could forget: a few silvery lines from hardwood splinters and a raised caterpillar of a mark that only a very few people would likely recognize as the result of being grazed by a bullet. She didn’t normally pay attention to them in the short moments of showering and dressing, but they seemed to stand out against all that skin. It wasn’t anything she could complain about though, not in front of Sam, who had that long, dark line running along her own skin. Iris felt naked in more ways than one though, felt like a little brown bird playing at being a swan.
Dress on, shawl wrapped around herself so that she was almost completely covered from neck to ankle, hair pulled up and back into a loose twist held by a minimum of pins, she was still wary about going to the hotel. She’d sat with her journal open before Sam arrived, debating about whether or not to write a note to cancel, but there was Alfred’s gentle reminder of what Damian had said. She didn’t even know how he would be disappointed, or why, but it was enough to convince her to go along to the hotel with Sam, choose one of the keys from a random slot, and head for the room. Just like she did with her own door, she slipped the key into the lock and then pushed carefully once it opened, revealing nothing more than a plain, empty hotel room. As she stepped inside and shut the door behind herself, she was uncertain whether to be disappointed or relieved. Key in hand, she leaned against the edge of the bed for a moment to breathe, gathering herself before she turned around to leave again.
“Iris?” He asked, catching a glimpse of her willow frame before completely stepping into the room. Damian’s mind drifted back to when they first met at that party. They weren’t themselves, but so much of who they were, who they thought the world saw them as was right there on the table. That was a stubborn memory, one that refused to let him forget how smoke tasted in his mouth or the way his laugh sounded when it bounced off stone walls. When she was some fallen monster, she didn’t run from him. Not like how she seemed to want to now. “Were you...leaving?” He asked, confused.
She looked surprisingly good. Iris always had a frazzled bookworm look (which he didn’t hate, by the way) but this was a whole different story. It was almost like she dressed up for him. Nerves hit hard again and that part of him who was still stuck in his old Gotham told him to scare her off. She made him feel weak, the way she always scurried away from conversations nagged him into believing that they were better off exchanging notes. But, that part of him that was afraid to let anyone in was rusting away. There were so many people in this Gotham that wanted him around. That worried about him when Roger left town. He was different now. Instead of moving aside, he stepped in front of the door, hands in his pockets as he leaned on it to make sure she couldn’t apologize her way out of the room.
The voice made her breath catch in her throat as she turned to face the door. And yes, it was Damian. Standing there and blocking the one means of escape from the room. For all the nerves and speculation, part of her hadn’t actually thought that it was going to work. That part of her still doubted it, wondering if he was simply another hallucination standing there. She blinked and stared at him, one hand laying flat on her stomach to try to calm the strange flips it seemed to be doing. “I...” Her voice was soft, a thin sound that caught with her breath in her throat. “...You’re here.” There was the hint of a question to her words, even as she stared at him, obviously there by the door.
It was plainly clear that she was uncertain what to do now that they were both actually in the same place again. One hand braced on the bed, she eased herself down to sit, dress smoothed beneath her and shawl still held closed tightly in trembling fingers. She was slightly afraid that the way her hands were suddenly shaking would spread to her legs until they weren’t able to hold her. She sat carefully, eyes still on him as if he would disappear if she looked away. “I didn’t think... it actually worked?” It was almost an answer to his question, even though her thoughts refused to settle.
Damian smiled the way most Wayne men did, barely there upturned corners of his lips as if he were trying hard not to show any kind of emotion at all. To him, it was actually a lack of effort that made him that way. Being raised like he was along with the blood of two very stern houses made him stern and sometimes even sullen. “Why do I get the feeling you hoped it wouldn’t?” He teased, eventually pushing himself off the door to walk over to her. “It’s a lot easier to convince yourself I’m not real if you can’t see me face to face.”
He wasn’t good at solving cryptic puzzles, but he could read people. More specifically, he could read voices. As a natural mimic, he could tell when someone was out of breath from nervousness, if they were lying to cover something up or avoiding a topic. The way Iris spoke and looked at him said she was uncomfortable. Because of him? No, little bird. Because this is very awkward. Jade butted in before promising to mind her own business. To her credit, she hadn’t seen Damian worry himself so much about another person. Not even Catwoman, who he assumed had nothing more than a maternal interest in him these days.
Iris watched him walk closer, a frown forming between her eyebrows. The men she knew - Anton, Louis, even Orin - none of them moved with the same sort of purpose that Damian did, even while simply crossing a hotel room. He looked good doing it though, and the phrase “superior genetics” popped into her mind, sounding more like Sam than like Alfred, so she knew it was likely her own thought. She frowned more as she tried to chase it away, and forced herself to not inch backwards in retreat. “It’s different. In person.” She didn’t say how, thinking that should be obvious.
She pressed her lips together, biting them, actions she didn’t even think about, so unaware of how they betrayed her nerves.
Damian stopped next to her, standing at the corner of the bed, head tilted to the side as he looked at her. “I don’t think different is bad.” He knew it wasn’t, even if she said so. She had tried to convince him once that he wasn’t a stronghold in her life simply because he was fictional. This changed things. That’s what he wanted. “I wanted to see you. I don’t know why. You can’t miss someone you never see, can you?” He decided quietly he didn’t like the way she looked at him sometimes. Did she think he was dangerous? Just existing was a threat to her light grasp on reality.
“No,” she replied, still watching him with wide eyes. “Different isn’t bad. It’s just... you’re not family. I’m not used to this.” Her voice was still quiet, and part of her wanted to push past the awkwardness. That part wondered what Sam would do in the situation, but her mind’s answer to that made her blush suddenly, dark pink on normally pale cheeks. Trying to ignore it, she swallowed and pushed on, forcing words out. “I think you can. I used to have penpals when I was young, and I missed them when I wouldn’t hear from them for a very long ti-” The soft flow of words stopped, and she blinked up at him. “You missed me?” Her eyebrows rose with the question, as if it was nearly unbelievable that it might be the truth.
“Of course I did.” Now that he was closer he could see the small marks on her skin. He knew about her past in a very obscure sort of way that was more like a feeling than a chronology of events. He creased his brow, wondering if she thought he only cared for her because she carried a person through his door. The truth was, in reality it would be a lot easier to know her if she didn’t have Pennyworth. She wouldn’t have this false obligation to help his family and this belief that he looked after her out of obligation. The worst reason to interact with anyone. Damian looked away from her for the first time, eyes settling down at her feet. “You didn’t miss me.”
Iris’ shawl had slipped off her shoulders without her noticing as she watched him. The frown on his face earned her own in response, unsure what he was upset about, unaware that his own thoughts about them knowing each other were quite close to some of her own. She was half convinced that anyone that knew Alfred only gave her time in order to keep him safe and keep him coming through the door. She had only just started to think that her family didn’t feel obligated to look after her, and she hadn’t quite made the leap to believing that about other people as well. The shift of his eyes away made her frown all the more, and she started to stand, as if standing would help anything. She only rose about half way before sitting again, realizing that while being at such different heights might be awkward, standing in the middle of the room would be even more so. The words spilled out of her in a little rush, Iris barely thinking about what she was saying. “No, I did. You didn’t write, and then there were the memories, and I hadn’t heard from you in so long. I was starting to think something had happened to you.” Her shawl slipped down to pool in the crooks of her elbows when she finally did stand, and talking with him had distracted her enough so that she was no longer thinking of what she was wearing.
Taken aback from the sudden rush, he stumbled only an inch or so away from her, but corrected himself instantly. They were practically nose to nose in the dungeon, but this felt different. “I didn’t want to leave. Then, Roger got on that plane and I thought-” He finally looked back up at her, that insecurity still there mixed with guilt. “I thought you’d all be better off without me.” He pressed his lips together and shrugged. “But, I can’t leave. Even if you told me you were glad I was gone, I’d still try and see you anyway.” Damian was so matter of fact about it. He didn’t know any other way of expressing himself and being unapologetically honest was his thing even before he was a Robin. Even if she made him nervous, even if he wanted to brush his fingers on the spot right above her shawl across her arms and back (but couldn’t find the courage to do it), Damian could at least say things honestly.
The look on her face shifted to confusion at his returned words. “Roger left?” She was quiet, the near-whisper overlapping with the other things he was saying. The things that were making her stare at him because nothing quite made sense. She started shaking her head even before he was done talking, her expression confused but insistent. “Better off? Why would I...? No. ...no. I don’t want you to go.” Their initial meeting had been strange, and their connection continued to be strange, complicated by her own issues and confusions, but she’d never truly wanted him gone. He had yet to treat her like glass like so many other people had in the past, and whether it was some sort of respect or just because he was still a brat, she didn’t care. It was a dangerous thought to have, not caring, but the reasons didn’t matter to her. The fact that he wanted to see her, that he would try even in an imaginary situation where she didn’t want to see him, made her words dry up. She stared at him, shock on her face, and blinked. “Why?” she whispered. It wasn’t an attempt to gain compliments, or any sort of false modesty. She honestly couldn’t figure it out.
He stared back at her like he didn’t understand, either. He was created to be powerful, to possess courage and confidence in everything except these kind of everyday feelings that normal people tended to have. Now that he was allowed, even encouraged to stop acting like a superior brat all the time, he wasn’t sure how to handle all of it. Damian’s expression turned frustrated quickly and he exhaled sharply. “When I had to lock you out of Gotham, I wanted to be on that side of the door with you instead of keeping my back against the portal so you couldn’t get in. Sometimes things aren’t about everyone else, sometimes it’s about you.”
Damian dug his fingers into her shawl and held onto her. A little bird barely using any of the force he had, but with all the frustration of someone who didn’t have a clue how people were supposed to act around each other. “You have no idea how hard it is to see someone need help and know you can’t be there. Someone you care about.”
Damian’s unapologetic honesty was something Iris wasn’t sure how to deal with. She was always so certain that people were being easy with the truth with her, little white lies that they thought were for her own good. Everyone except her doctors, who while having gentle voices, were brutally frank with their diagnoses and determinations. But Damian wasn’t anything like those doctors, and his words weren’t gentle. They were blunt and stole her breath as effectively as if she’d been hit. As honest as they were, she still had difficulty forcing them to make sense with the way she saw the world.
The contact made her eyes go wide and caused her to breathe in quickly in surprise. She was shorter and slighter than many people, but she often forgot how much of a physical difference there was between the two of them. More than that, no one had been this close to her since that dark night in the hotel, and that was not something she wanted to think about just then. She forced the thought away, leaving her mind shockingly quiet as she tried to understand. His words continued to hit her, and it was the last ones that earned a reaction. “I have no idea?” She blinked, and showed some of the rare stubborn strength that she hardly even realized she had. “I have to hear second- and third-hand about you taking on criminals and the undead and getting lost in mazes and almost dying so that Jason has to rescue you. Which, by the way-” her arm was just free enough for her to make a fist of her hand and hit his chest. It wasn’t nearly enough to ever hurt him, but it was a show of frustration in that second. “Don’t ever do that again!” Her outburst had been quiet enough, though intense, but it tapered off after she hit him, blush rising on her cheeks again as if she couldn’t believe that she had just done that, said that.
“I’m a superhero from a comic book. Dangerous and stupid is what we do.” Eyebrows raised at her strike against his chest, but he didn’t let her go. Reminding her that he was some weird product of a man’s imagination, a character born and then scrapped only to be rewritten for the sake of strange wasn’t exactly comforting. But, now her face was flushed either from anger, embarrassment or a mix of both and even though it probably would make her even more flustered, he couldn’t help but smirk. Damian reached with one hand to brush his hand against her jawline, “I don’t think it would be any better if I told you right before I decided to do something stupid.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t die,” she protested, quiet again but frowning at the thought of that. She didn’t know how the doors worked - if any of their alters could come back if they died. She knew through Alfred about the Lazarus Pit, but her reading and research had shown her the dangers of that “solution”. She didn’t care if he was part al Ghul, she didn’t want to see the situation where someone in Gotham was forced to use that pit. She was about to tell him so, but the touch to her jaw stopped her brief frustrated anger. She went still under it, muscle memory from years past keeping her from turning away or pulling back. Instead she simply looked up at him with wide eyes and shook her head. “At least I would know when to worry,” she whispered, but the stubbornness had gone out of her.
Damian smiled, his expression turning almost shy from the way she looked up at him. He wanted to do something more than just hold her and the way she was dressed made him think she was at least here to impress him. But, Damian’s experience was limited to one drunken makeout session with a girl who was so far out of his league he’d need a spaceship to get there. Iris was, too. Damian didn’t really have a chance with anyone who was a teenager for more than a half of a year. Besides, Iris had baggage, there was a good chance she wouldn’t even want something with him.
Jade tried to gently persuade him otherwise, being a personal champion of feelings and caring like some kind of mental teddy bear, but Damian lost his courage. Instead he just blurted out, “You look really pretty when you’re upset.”
Iris may have been a teenager for the standard amount of time, but that time had been anything but normal, trapped in the strange world of her own home without seeing anything. She’d never had the normal experiences that her siblings had, only learning about everything through their stories. Her own “experiences” had only happened once she had reached her mid-twenties, when everything had been brief and chaotic before it fell apart. Her resulting baggage had been medicated away into fuzzy, faded memories after being picked through by mental health professionals.
The blurted words made her blink several times, as if her mind couldn’t quite absorb them, and she looked down at herself reflexively, as if checking her appearance even without a mirror. That glance only revealed silver shawl, white dress, and pale skin, and she finally remembered what she’d been convinced to wear to the meeting. She paled and then blushed, the combination causing irregular areas of blush that stood out against the light colors. Taking a half-step back, she shook her head and tried to pull the shawl back up onto her shoulders, difficult with Damian’s hands holding it at certain places. “Hush,” she finally whispered, shaking her head again. “It’s not nice to tease the crazies.” She glanced up, eyes clouded and a small smile that was meant to laugh with the ‘joke’, but only ended up being a sad, almost brittle thing. She tried to step away, to turn, to give enough space to compose herself and readjust if things were shifting now to be mean. It had happened too fast to make sense, unless it was in response to her hit, the way she was yelling at him. Doing what could only be considered nagging. She just needed time. A minute. Something so that she could make sense of everything since she’d walked through the room’s door. She said the only thing she could think of, even as a memory of Selina’s angry, blaming words about worthless apologies slipped through her mind: “I’m sorry.”
He lowered his hands, letting his fingers naturally form little fists near his waist. A pose most people associated with the little brat, that along with the tight armed cross across his chest. “I don’t understand.” Damian shot her a look, all confused and embarrassed teenager. “You came to see me dressed like that and I thought-” He tried to shrug it off. The little bird wouldn’t know how common it was to feel rejection at such a young age. To fumble and fight things they wanted. Right now he just felt like a shadow trying to be human for once in his little feathered life.
“I really did just want to check on you.” He said quietly, with another helpless shrug that seemed to replace whatever feeling he had with sullen indifference. “I should go.”
As much as she’d wanted a minute to regain her bearings, the loss of his hands on her arms left her feeling somehow adrift, missing a grounding force. She turned back to look at him, surprised to see the look on his face, just as confused as he was. The mention of her dress made her tighten the shawl around herself, close around her body but the tops of her shoulders still showing. “My sister...” she started, quiet again as her cheeks darkened again with a blush. “She thought... thinks... that you’re...” She gestured vaguely between the two of them, as if she couldn’t quite find the words. “She kept sending me things like this to wear because she thought you would like...” Her voice caught on embarrassment for a moment. “Even though I told her it’s not like that. That you’re from the other side and you have Selina and I’m not...” She paused again, struggling for the words to describe what she ‘wasn’t’. “...right.” Her blush hadn’t faded at all until he mentioned leaving, and she paled slightly but nodded.
“I... figured. That’s what you wanted.” She tried to smile, but it didn’t quite form the way it should. She didn’t want him to go, but neither could she keep him there if he wanted to leave. “I’m doing better now. You don’t have to worry.” And then, because she thought it was what he wanted to hear: “Alfred should be through regularly now.”
Damian made a couple scoffing noises like a stuffy aristocrat at some tailgate party. First at mention of Selina and then at her promise Alfred would be in Gotham. “How many times do I have to tell you, Iris? Pennyworth might be important to my family, but my main concern is you because I care about you.” He crossed his arms, not quite ready to actually leave now that she managed to get so much of this wrong. “I wanted to catch up in person with you. I admit the outfit was distracting, but if you really have no interest in me, then we should agree on a dress code.”
He had a way of sounding deadly serious even if most of the things he said could be interpreted as, heaven forbid, jokes.
The scoffing took her by surprise, and her expression showed it, open and readable. As much as her mind tried to fight it, his words hit with honesty, nothing hiding behind his eyes that would point toward half-truths or the little white lies that were always ‘for her own good’. She began to twist one edge of her shawl through her fingers, an openly nervous gesture. “I shouldn’t,” she replied. Then, thinking that maybe it needed more explanation: “Have any interest.”
“Why.” Damian huffed, more of a challenging statement then a question. “Because I’m younger than you are? Because I’m a comic book character? I don’t see why that matters or why that should stop you.” He walked back into the room, taking a seat on the bed almost like he was protesting her answer until she gave him a better one. “If you really don’t then you should be honest with me. Not pretend like any of those things would stop you.”
Iris found herself nodding along with the reasons Damian presented, but frowning when he said they shouldn’t matter. She was left looking at him as he sat down, trying to figure out why those reasons weren’t enough for him. Her mouth opened, looking for words to explain. “I’m crazy.” That was easy enough to admit to. The second part went hand in hand with it, but wasn’t something she usually said: “And I’m... more than a little broken.” Her voice was quiet, as if that was a secret she wasn’t used to sharing. She thought that combined, those reasons should be more than enough to send anyone running from her, but he was still sitting on the bed like none of it mattered. Her hands started to shake again no matter how hard she clenched her fingers, and she looked at the floor before glancing right at him. “I don’t know why you’re still here.” Her confusion came out heavy in her words. “Why you aren’t running...”
Damian titled his head to the side slightly and looked at her like she suddenly stopped making any sense. She might have been difficult, but so was he. “I’m only going to leave if you want me to, Iris. You have to tell me you want me to go.” He said with conviction, like he was reciting a natural law. “I don’t care about the rest of it. I’m broken, too.” Damian admitted, realizing moments too late that he recognized parts of him weren’t perfect. That even if his mother had built him to be a king, he was just a broken little demon looking for something more than violence and power.
He held out his hand to her with a little hesitation. “Come here.” He told her softly in what was as close to gentle as he could muster. Maybe if Iris just let him hold her, then she’d understand what he was trying to say.
Iris shook her head, responding to more than one thing. She didn’t want him to leave. She may have thought that he should want to leave, but she didn’t want it. Nor did she think that he was broken, not at all. He may have had the strangest start to life, but she would never have labeled him as broken. Not in the same way she was, at least.
She had enough hesitation of her own, and she looked at his hand as if it might have been some sort of trick, but it was only a quickly passing moment. She slipped her fingers into his hand and slowly let herself be drawn forward, sitting next to him on the bed, but with enough space that their hands were the only thing that touched. She wasn’t sure what he wanted her there for, and didn’t want to push into his personal space any more than sitting on the bed already was. She could feel the inviting warmth of him all along her side though, and had to do her best to not lean toward it. “You’re not broken,” she finally whispered, not knowing what else to say.
Damian let her hand go, opting to put his arm around her waist instead, a small urge to let her lean against him, but without the strength of demanding it. He looked at her, nervous as expecting her to just trust him. “Yes, I am.” Damian’s gaze faltered, lips turned into a small ironic smile. “I was trained to kill. I had a disdain for everyone in the bat family but Grayson and my father. The last memory I had in my Gotham was trying to get my father to kill someone.” He sighed and shrugged slightly. “Now I’m here. I feel different from who I used to be. I worry about people. I see even Jason as my brother. It’s broken.”
Iris’ hands laced fingers together in her own lap once they were free again, and she felt uncertain and ungrounded again without the touch. There was tension under the sudden hand on Iris’ waist, her back and shoulders tight with it. It took her a moment to register the touch, and after startling just slightly, she let out a long, slow breath, forcing some of the tension and nervousness away. After another moment, she shifted just enough to be able to lean closer and rest her head on his shoulder. It seemed so forward, and her stomach jumped nervously, but she stayed there, eyes staring across the room. The talk of killing made her think of being in someone else’s memory, blood on her hands and full of hatred. For the first time, she wondered if it had been Damian, but it didn’t quite seem to fit. She tried to push it away, but her voice shook slightly when she started to talk. “Going against your training isn’t being broken. Not when that means caring for people.” She paused, a faint smile appearing as her voice went surer. “And Jason is your brother. No matter how none of you want to admit you’re all a family.”
He leaned his head on hers, reaching to hold the top of her folded hands. He liked the warmth of her body, starting to see the advantages of physical affection even if it boiled down to just holding hands and hugging. To someone that never experienced any of that growing up, it was considerably comforting. “I know he is. It’s just- the more people I worry about, the less focused I am on stopping psychopaths from taking over my city.” He closed his eyes, sighing heavily. “And, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I’m not Robin. I can’t be Talon. I have no identity when everyone around me knows exactly who they’re supposed to be.”
Iris wasn’t used to someone holding her, but she had old, fuzzy memories of how it could be. This was different than that had ever been, though not in a bad way. This was tentative, uncertain. She twisted her fingers around, somehow catching his in the motion so that his hand ended up between hers. She was quiet, listening for a long time before shaking her head. There was just the barest hint of a smile in her voice. “You don’t want to worry about people, and yet you end up here with possibly one of the most unstable people in the entire city.” She shook her head again and didn’t specify whether she meant Las Vegas or Gotham. It didn’t seem to matter. Her voice went softer, gentle. “I think you’d be surprised at how many people aren’t actually that certain about themselves.” Her fingers tightened around his for a moment, and she closed her eyes. “Might take time to figure out. But you will.” There was certainty there; quiet, but present.
“I don’t get to pick the people that are important to me.” Damian wished he could have just brainlessly followed his mother into the fire. He wished Gotham didn’t mean what it did to him. His life would be a lot easier if he didn’t get so goddamned involved. He turned his head a little to look down at their hands, feeling her breath against his neck. The little pauses between conversations calmed his nerves. Told him he didn’t have to run away from something that was good for once.
“I’m sick of being in the middle of who I was and who I’m going to be.” His voice was quiet and low as if to match hers. The hand around her waist moving up her back to hold her shoulders as he closed the last little gap between them. “Tell me you’ll still be there for me if I change. Even if it’s not true. I just need to hear it.” Loyalty was something he was demanding of those closest to him lately. Well, with the exception of Selina, anyway. He knew there was no straight answer with her.
With his arm around her shoulders, Iris seemed to almost shrink into the curve of it, somehow fitting herself there easily. It felt good and safe, even though she knew that it was a strange world in which Damian Wayne could truly be considered safe. She was able to keep her eyes closed and not think about all the other worries for just a moment. It made it easy enough to focus on Damian, the things that were bothering him. She didn’t have a lot of her own experiences to draw from to give him advice, but she’d heard all of her family’s stories and was forever reading when she was younger.
“Everyone’s in the middle. No one stays the same, so everyone’s moving from one point to another. Your points are just... bigger at the moment.” She paused, trying to think of what to say. “I know it’s different for you. With the fighting and wanting a name to do it under. ...have you talked to Stephanie? She’s changed names several times. She might have some advice.” She knew that he and Stephanie were on good terms, that she was probably the family member he was closest to. Iris didn’t know what it was truly like, living and working in Gotham, but Stephanie did. It was the best advice she could think of in the moment.
If I change. It was hard to promise something when the circumstances could shift in an instant. She knew that any change of his might not end up being positive, that he had it in his history to go a much different, darker direction, to follow the ghosts of his mother’s family. She knew that she should put some sort of caveat on any agreement she gave, telling him that she would only be around if he stayed to the “Bat” side of the fence. But hadn’t she already fallen in love with a bad man once in her life? (Not that this was love. Of course not. This was friends, sitting together and talking.) She could hope differently for Damian, but that possible future shift wouldn’t be the thing that stole her affection or her loyalty. She felt a flash of guilt thinking about Ian, as if his memory was watching her with someone else and disapproving. She tried to push that thought away, though her voice was quiet when she replied. “...Until they take me away.” She had no delusions that someday her tenuous hold on things would snap again and she would end up back behind locked hospital doors.
Well, that was a first. Damian never thought he’d worry about someone he cared about being instituted. Usually, the bats and cats and birds helped put away people like that. Insanity isn’t so cut and dry out there. Jade knew her own share of unstable people and cared for them, too. But, mental instability on the Vegas side of the door wasn’t so simple as Gotham. Not everyone had specific obsessions and colorful quirks. Sometimes they just had a very light grasp on reality. Damian knew this about Iris, but he had so far tried hard to run to her rescue when she needed it. That’s not a bad thing, little bird.
“It’s not going to come to that.” Damian told her, a promise he wasn’t sure if he could keep, but it was something he had to believe in. He kissed the top of her head, tightening his fingers around hers for a moment before letting her go and falling backwards on the bed. He folded his hands over his chest and looked up at her. “You should give me a name.” He said, a playfully thoughtful look on his face. “I’d never let anyone tell me I had to change it.”
Iris smiled where he couldn’t see, face turned down, a sad sort of smile that a person gave when they knew things weren’t going to end well. She’d known since she was eleven and her sight vanished that she was never going to have a life like other people. That deep-seated knowledge only solidified after everything in Seattle. There were very few things she was sure of some days, but the knowledge that her time outside was limited, was something that she never doubted. But she took his promise with a nod, and shifted her smile into (hopefully) something more believable before looking at him. The kiss to her head, the grip of his fingers, both helped.
The bed bounced slightly when he fell backwards, and that and the look on his face actually drew out a real smile, the one that was the equivalent of anyone else’s laugh. It softened the haunted look she so often had in her eyes, and she turned to look at him, her knees pressing lightly into the side of his leg and her dress draping dangerously in a place or two from how she twisted. “I should?” She shook her head, smile still lingering. “I think that’s something you have to decide on. I could come up with something awful, and then you’d be stuck with it.”
The ex-boy wonder kept any comments about how beautiful she looked sitting there above him to himself. He let his hand wander down to touch the top of her knee, though, his thumb lightly moving across her pale skin. “Come on. It’ll be like you’re knighting me or something.” He raised his eyebrows, the closest thing to a silly look that he could muster. They were the masters of muted expressions, weren’t they? “Besides, there’s nothing worse than Robin at this point. The first night I went on patrol with Batgirl taught me that. I saved this woman from a pack of criminals and when I told her I was Robin, she told me that was a girl’s name.”
The touch to her knee made Iris blink slowly, looking down at his hand and nearly losing the thread of the conversation. As it was, she had to clear her throat and shake herself slightly to refocus. The ridiculous look on his face, so subtle, was still enough to draw out an actual laugh from her, a soft breath that had barely any sound to it. “It’s only because this Gotham hasn’t known any Robins. They don’t know what you’re like.” It was mostly a plural “you”, as the city hadn’t known any of them. But his Robin even more specifically. Then her eyebrow rose slightly. “And there’s nothing wrong with being a girl.” She knew that he needed a new name, though, that much was clear. To have to come up with something to call someone else though, something that would be used by more than just herself when she wasn’t completely tethered to reality - it was daunting. “I... would have to think about it.” It wasn’t something she was going to take so lightly as to simply throw a random word out there.
“The point is, I don’t want the first thing people think of when they hear my name is girl.” He smiled at her laugh. A genuine, almost boyish smile that showed how young he was despite all the seriousness and grumpiness that he usually showed. He let his hand wander over her knee, across the bed towards her hand, his fingers gently running across hers like someone grazing over piano keys. If she was going to let him touch her, he didn’t want to cut off the physical contact until they had to part ways. “I don’t expect you to come up with it now. Just, think about it, all right? It’d mean a lot to me.”
“They wouldn’t think that if they saw you, though.” It was a quick comment, one she barely thought about as she was saying it, but that almost (but not quite) made her blush again once she realized. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt her face flush so many times. The light touch of his fingers didn’t help, especially since she was so unused to touches like that. She knew she likely shouldn’t allow it, but it was just another “shouldn’t” that she ignored. Her pinky finger quirked up as his passed over, brushing over the side of his palm before it was gone. Her eyes on their hands, she had to drag them back up and nod slightly. “I will. Think about it. ...I might not come up with anything you like though. But I’ll try.”
“Good.” He caught the little brush of her pinky, watching their hands along with her. The little bird wasn’t used to this kind of thing, either, but he always went for what he desired and this felt like something he wanted. Even if she was keeping him from taking it any farther, he didn’t really think that barrier would stay up for very long. “I need to get back to working on the Batwing. It has to be functional within the month.” A small admittance that he and his father were back on speaking terms. That particular subject was still on unstable ground, though, despite both of them trying very hard to make it stick this time.
He sat up, body turned a little towards her so there was barely a gap between them anymore. Damian liked the little reactions he could get out of her, the circles of pink around her cheeks that appeared when he barely touched her at all. Like all of the former Robins (except Tim, but he was easily the worst), he got a certain amount of satisfaction from keeping people on their toes. It gave him courage that didn’t have any right to be there in the first place. He put his hand on her hip and leaned in to barely kiss the edge of her lips. The embrace was nothing like the aggressive fight that he had with Selina where he felt like he had something to prove. This was just affection where it was deserved.
The kiss was purposely brief, as if he didn’t want her to make up her mind about him yet. He gave her a look, the kind that seemed certain about something that couldn’t be said and he stood up and left without looking behind at her. It looked cooler that way, according to Jade.
Iris caught the hint that things were on the mend, slowly but surely, between father and son, and it made her smile. “Why the month?” she asked, but her question was quickly lost when he suddenly sat up. She blinked several times, and tried to back away, thinking that he was sitting so he could get up and move away, but then his hand was on her hip, nearly a brand through the thin fabric of her dress. She could feel each shift of his fingers, and it made her shiver, a long line along her bare spine. She’d barely ended the shiver before Damian leaned closer, and she froze, eyes wide. The touch of his mouth was unexpected, more than possibly anything else that had happened.
She was still in shock when he stood, moving away. She stared at him, lips parted slightly as if to say something, but she couldn’t find words. After a moment, she pressed her lips together, as if trying to chase the sensation there.