Who: Damian and Kara Where: Dami/Dick's place in Bludhaven When: recentlyish! What: Damian and Kara meet! Warnings: none
Damian was adapting well to Bludhaven. The crime might have been predictable and at times not very challenging, but one night of patrol could actually clear his mind the way that it couldn’t in Gotham. The dark circles under his eyes from worry were gone, the grim frown from being as close to heartbroken as the little bird had ever been erased and that anger- well, the anger would never leave, but at least here it was directed at the right people. He liked being Talon because it felt like it was his, like the only name he had to live up to was his own. So, it was good Kara was seeing him now and not a month ago. Or even a couple weeks ago. And, the little bird would never admit it, but he needed to see a familiar face that didn’t recognize him back.
His apartment with Grayson was a very typical bachelor pad. Dark, barely lived in and still decorated with the occasional pizza box on the floor or socks thrown around the couch. It sat on the edge of the city near the water, far enough away that they could safely house all their vigilante gear and close enough that he could get into the city fast enough to stop a crime. His two cats, Isis the kitten and Grump the older almost-feral one were allowed to perch, jump and claw anything they wanted. His third cat, his first cat, Bandit was back home with Stephanie. He missed it, but Damian understood where things belonged now.
Just home from a night of patrol as the sun started to lighten the sky in different kinds of blues, he stood on the balcony and took his mask off. Then the gloves, the utility belt and his cape. Damian tried not to look in the direction of Gotham for very long. He tried every morning. But, he just couldn’t help it.
Kara knew that being this close to Gotham wasn't good. Sam, who'd been helping her settle in with time in Smallville's wheat fields, didn't want her around people. And she couldn't really blame him. She'd killed someone without even realizing she'd killed them. Things were quiet in Gotham, but she knew she was on their "Most Wanted" lists, which she'd thought was a compliment, until she'd listened to some of the chatter around Metropolis. Now, she knew it meant they wanted to capture her in Gotham, and even though the bullets they shot at her tickled, they might hurt someone else. So, she'd been staying away and, in her defense, she hadn't realized she would find Damian so close to the other city.
She had a chance to change her mind. She could have gone to Micronesia, where she knew Helena was waiting for some version of her that wasn't her, and maybe that's part of why she went to Bludhaven anyway, even if she knew it wasn't the best or smartest choice. She liked Stephanie a lot; the blonde reminded her of home in a way Kara couldn't really put into words. And, despite Jason's violent nature, she liked him too. Maybe Damian would be the same way? Because however much she shouldn't be with people, she was terrible at being alone. She had always been the least serious thing in the science caste back home, and being left with only a dog and some anger that she wasn't built for, that just wasn't good for her. Helena made her feel bad; she knew it wasn't Helena's fault, but Kara couldn't help it. So, against all better judgement, she went to Bludhaven.
Finding Damian had been easy. Sanctuary had helped, but Kara had just listened, for the most part. Like a typical teenager, she'd spent the afternoon deciding what to wear - the suit her father had constructed for her trials, or normal Earth girl clothes. In the end, she chose the suit. She didn't have a superhero name, and she wasn't any kind of vigilante. The suit just made her feel safe and confident, just like it had when her father had given it to her. So, in the unitard made of red and blue, with a red cape and red boots that laced to her bare knees, she flew into Bludhaven, and she listened.
She'd already figured out how to pick Damian's voice out of the crowd on her test run, hearing Dick talking to him about pizza that one time, and she honed in the familiar tones. She didn't even stop to think that this was actually practice; it felt like a childhood game, and not like work at all. Locating the familiar voice, she flew to the apartment, where she burnt a very clean laser-line through the lock. Then she walked inside, as if girls in capes just waltzed into Bludhaven pads without warning all the time; she needed to work on her entrance.
Damian was just about to finish his daily brooding when an alarm sounded the second the lock disengaged. In seconds his knives were out, half circled, sharp things and he crouched as he turned to look who it was. A pouncing stance, like if Kara wasn’t Kara he would have been on her in a matter of seconds. There was a coldness in his expression. No fear, no joy that someone decided to come mess with him. In fact it almost seemed empty, like whatever trained him to be a vigilante didn’t leave much room for humanity once those knives were out. But, then he recognized the cape and the blonde hair.
“I know you’re new to earth, alien, but I’d bet my father’s fortune that they had doors on Krypton.” There was a hint of a smile and he stood up straight, knives gone as fast as they were brandished. He took a minute to look over the cape and bodysuit since he was half expecting her to show up in civilian clothes. “So, are you going by Supergirl now?” He asked, moving past to disengage the alarm and inspect the broken lock with a frown so serious that he never realized how funny it looked on his boyish face.
That blank coldness in his expression reminded her of Jason's, but without the anger. No, he reminded her of H'El. She didn't guard or try to protect herself from his knives; she knew he couldn't harm her with them. She just stood there until something like recognition clicked in his eyes, making him look human again, and she regarded him with her own sharp, blue-eyed curiosity. Maybe it was unnerving, the blonde girl seemingly just waiting to be gutted, but she didn't actually know about Kryptonite yet, and she didn't realize she had limitations out here. In Sanctuary, she knew she had limits, but not here.
"Ours doors were genecoded," she said, refraining from telling him that all doors on Earth were ineffective, because she'd already realized that people took it really badly when she was critical of this antiquated world. She watched him stand up straight, and she looked around the apartment when the knives disappeared. She didn't stay put; she moved. This was the first home she'd been in since that brief interlude when she first landed. Jason's abandoned warehouse didn't count; even she knew that was commercial. She wandered, and she touched. She tried to swipe her fingers along the television screen, and she tried to talk to the lights, asking them to brighten, and then she huffed and turned back to look at him. "Who is Supergirl?" she asked, and then she laughed when that frown crossed his features. It was a light laugh, tinkling and childish and happy, and clearly directed right at him.
“Genecoded. Of course they were.” Damian said flatly with an eyeroll that was batkid through and through. He pushed the door a couple times until he was certain it wouldn’t stay closed and went to the kitchen to get a chair to push it shut until he could fix it. If anyone else tried to break in while Kara was here? They’d be in for a surprise. “You’re Supergirl. And, Powergirl too I guess.” Damian didn’t seem all that committed to either name the more he thought about it. He knew what it was like to have people expect things from him and to expect the same out of others, but Kara seemed to have it the worst. Everyone remembered her differently or didn’t remember her at all.
He looked back at her as he dragged the chair across the carpet, his frown only deepening with confusion when she laughed at him. Girls were so weird. “What’s so funny?” Damian asked, putting the chair up against the door and then turning to look at her and then the black furball crawling from behind the couch. By then, the little kitten had tumbled out from her hiding place to see what was going on and investigate the new voice. Isis was still mostly a fuzzy black ball, but she was alert, friendly and talkative like Bandit was.
"We were advanced," she said, and for once the critique sounded playful, mostly because it was easy to sound playful when he sounded so grumpy. She was sure his grumpiness wasn't supposed to be cute, but it was. "I am not either of those things," she said with a very teenage sulk, one that came with her throwing herself down on the living room couch in a standard, teenage slouch. Unfortunately, her slouch was way too strong, and one of the couch's legs snapped under the pressure. She didn't even bother standing up, because she was getting used to that. She just crossed her legs on the now-uneven cushion, and watched him put the chair beneath the doorknob, her sulk changing to something warmer, an entertained smile as she watched him prop the useless chair up. "That is not effective," she told him, bright smiles and mocking that it wouldn't be effective at all.
"You are cute," she said, and it sounded a little complimentary, a little entertained. "I thought you would be smaller," she explained, and she would have continued, but the black ball of fur distracted her completely. She reached down to fingers, curious as to whether the creature would bat at it. "She looks like Streaky," she said thoughtfully, before tipping her head back up and settling bright blue eyes on Damian. "How can I be two different people?"
“I’d make you pay for the door if you weren’t some hobo alien.” He said grimly, but his Wayne seriousness flipped a little at her bright smile even though he absolutely hated that it did. And, calling him cute didn’t help either. “Yeah, most people say that about me. And, can you not destroy my apartment?” Lip turned up in a snarl, head cocked to the side and tone teasing. Damian was all sharp and bratty like a rich kid who never heard the word no his entire feathered life. But, he was a lot better at hiding liking another human being behind all that brattiness when he was ten. Now? When there was a blonde, teenage Supergirl sprawled out on his couch? Not so much.
The little black furball chewed on the tips of Kara’s fingers thoughtfully before attempting to climb up her arm and onto her stomach. Meowing all the way up like she was part of the conversation somehow. Damian frowned at the kitten. Frowned affectionately. “Her name is Isis.” He told Kara like it was a very important piece of information and then took a seat on a nearby beanbag chair, looking kind of ridiculous in his Talon get up hanging out like a regular teenager. “It’s complicated and boring. But, there’s a bunch of different versions of you. Helena obviously remembers one and Steph and I remember the other. I don’t think you’re either, which means there’s more Karas you could have been.” He shrugged. “A year ago? You probably would have had to pick one that you liked the best and try to be like that. Now I say do whatever the hell you want.”
Her expression turned confused when he used the word hobo. The language magic H'El had given her was good, but it wasn't contemporary, and it didn't do anything useful with slang. "I do not live on the street, nor am I a migrant worker," she informed him. Sanctuary might be odd, but she could at least claim to have a home, and she had no job to speak of. "I miss school," she added, which seemed out of place, but she did miss the classes for the science caste on Argo. At sixteen, school hadn't been her favorite thing to do, but she would give anything to have those boring hours back now. "Do girls tell you that you are cute?" she asked, taking him at his word. "Stephanie was telling me about relationships here, and how they differ from Krypton," she added, enough of a blush to her cheeks to completely betray the sixteen-year old girl beneath the eighteen-year old physique. As for destroying the apartment, that made her huff again. "A piece of furniture is not the entire apartment." And, yes, there was a fair dose of playful threat there.
"Isis," she said curiously. Her translators had little information about religion, and nothing about Egyptian gods and goddesses. She laughed at how he looked wearing that gear, in that chair, not realizing immediately that she looked equally foolish. "Why do you all dress like that?" she asked, nose crinkling. "It is not as bad as Jason's hood, which is not cute." But she understood that the uniform said something about him, just as hers said something about her. "What does it mean?" she asked, motioning to his clothing. As for those other Karas, they made her frown. "I do not think I am anyone's Kara. I just arrived. Your Karas had been here for a long time," she said, piecing together what she'd gotten from the others. She lifted her shoulders, the cape flicking enough to make the kitten paw at the red edge of fabric. Kara laughed. "I do not think I can be someone else," she admitted, unapologetically, a happy smile on her face as she flicked the red cape again.
Damian’s face turned a lighter shade of pale when she blushed, but for once his nerves around a girl didn’t make him scared so much as just glad she was there. And, he tried not to think about her calling him cute again or what Stephanie could have possibly detailed in earth courting rituals. Instead he just cleared his throat and nodded along with what she was saying. “Girls tell me I’m handsome.” He corrected her, though that was hard to believe as he was currently being eaten up by a beanbag chair. “But, cute works. You can call me that.” Damian said like she was the only one allowed to.
He looked down at his Talon costume. The black and gold with heavy boots and a large utility belt. It was a far cry from the bright greens, reds and yellows of the Robin costume, but that was obviously deliberate. “We wear them to be a symbol. Mine is a symbol of Talon, what I made myself in this- I mean in Gotham. There were a group of zombie assassins terrorizing the city and I killed their leader and made myself the Talon. My father hated it. And, for a while I tried to go back to who I was before. But, Talon is mine.” Damian’s hand clenched subconsciously. Gotham was full of people trying to mold the little bird into something that could make them proud. Someone who followed orders and didn’t step out of line. A Robin. But, he wasn’t that anymore. Not if he ever wanted to be more than ten years old.
His fingers loosened as he watched her play with the kitten and he barely smiled when she wasn’t looking. “You could always take classes at a community college or something. There’s got to be a way to give you an earth identity. I know you don’t want to live in a city, but you shouldn’t have to be alone, either.” Damian got back to his feet and started putting his gear away in a digitally locked cabinet near the hallway. He inspected his belt, the cape, mask and gloves. Making adjustments on gadgets before locking them up.
Kara's experience with boys was nil. For all the scientific advancements that Krypton had, they were very conservative about relationships. Kissing was reserved for a genematched pair, and only after all the agreements had been signed by the couples parents. She had one friend at school who'd kissed a boy before their genematching, only to have her parents decide on a better, more lucrative genematch, and it had become a nightmare for everyone. She didn't register his embarrassment, and she didn't shy away from asking awkwardly inappropriate questions, because questions had always been permitted in the science caste. Granted, questions weren't as risque as they were here, either, because life was less... graphic. "Are you having sex with someone, too?" she asked, and then she considered his potential handsomeness very seriously. "Can you try to act handsome?" she asked, the glint in her eyes marking the question as her teasing him.
She went serious when he discussed the uniform, and she tugged her knees up on the lopsided couch and smiled when the kitten hid beneath the edge of her now-still cape. "Once we pass our trials, we wear our uniforms to indicate our family, our rank, and standing. My family colors are red and blue and gold, and the symbol is our family crest. It means hope," she explained, pausing as the translation magic tripped up on zombie. "How do you kill things that are already dead?" she asked curiously, a frown touching the corners of her lips. She didn't know why she should be surprised that even the dead were violent here, but she was surprised. "Talon," she tested, as if she wanted to see if the word fit the boy who was tucking his gear away. "It is a strong word," she finally said, "but we have no word like it in my language. It means claw?" she asked, because that was the closest the translator had managed.
"What do you wear when you are being Damian?" she asked, as he locked things away. "I am not part of your community. How could I attend your community school?" she asked, but her entire face brightened at the prospect of being in a classroom, being around people her age, maybe even making friends. She frowned, and she looked down at the broken couch leg. "I think I need to learn how to not break the furniture first."
Damian turned to look at her, clear blue eyes going a little wide at her first question before turning away back into the cabinet as he hung his cape up and locked everything up. Act handsome. Damian knew she was teasing him, but he still took it as a challenge. He thought one didn’t have to act it so much as be it, but he had spent enough time with Grayson to understand it usually translated to act confident. Which was something he could do in spades most of the time. So he leaned on the hallway wall and faced her, arms crossed to show his biceps and chin up just a little. “I’ve never had sex before.” He said simply because at this point he figured everyone knew and lying about it would only get back around to him. Neither had Kara, he was pretty sure. And, he let that thought roll around in his head. Would her lack of control probably kill him? Yes. Would it be worth it? Probably.
He liked the way she worked through earth words. Even if she was some hobo alien. In Gotham everyone had to stay three steps ahead of each other, but here Kara was saying the word Talon for the first time without fear of being in the dark. No, she didn’t have very much to fear except for herself these days. “A bird’s claw.” He affirmed. “My brother is Nightwing. We like to keep our names with a feathered theme.” Damian’s tone lightened and he grabbed the stack of comic books he promised before walking over to the couch. “And, you’re here so you can learn not to break everything you touch.” He threw the comics on the coffee table and then hesitated. “Can I sit next to you?”
She didn't laugh when he leaned against the hallway wall, but her smile widened. Krypton might have been chaste, in comparison to Earth, but she still knew what boys did when they were trying to look good. "Yes, like that," she said without embarrassment, tipping her head to the side in consideration and not looking away. She'd never been shy, and it was only her uncertainty about this planets customs and her own naivete that made her seem it, along with that flash of color in her cheeks. "I have not had sex either, but Stephanie has. She says here mistakes are encouraged," she said, as if it was a taboo to even think of making mistakes on purpose, especially mistakes of that nature. "If she has had sex, why have you not done it?"
"The claw of a bird is a good name," she said after considering it in the same way she would have considered one of her problems at school. "It can hold on, it can defend, and it can be offensive," she said, a hint of distaste in her voice at the concept of offensive power; she was having trouble getting used to that. But her attention became rapt when he mentioned Nightwing, and she was interrupting before he'd even managed to finish the name. "Nightwing is one of our lesser deities," she said. "Nightwing and Flamebird," she said, her voice making them sound slightly romantic, even without imparting the story. "They, like Rao, are very old. There is also a story of a man who was cast out of his caste hundreds of years ago, and he took on the name Nightwing." She smiled, because it was something that felt like a tether, like a connection point, and anything that connected her to this new place she was going to need to learn to live in was good.
When he approached with the paper books, she nodded and watched them land on the table. "Yes," she said. "You may sit. Try not to break the couch." She smiled.
Damian didn’t like talking about the whys of his virginity because it called attention to his last memories and how old everyone treated him sometimes. He felt eighteen most of the time with school and all the responsibilities of the bat family, but sometimes he felt very small. Sometimes he just felt ten. And, he didn’t want Kara to know that. Selina had seen it early on and it ruined things. He’d never be anything more than the little bird to her, even when he knew he was destined for so much more. “Everyone in Gotham were part of my family. Stephanie found someone who’d never be a bat or a bird.” He explained, trying to sound very matter-of-fact about it. He envied Stephanie sometimes. That she could find someone that understood her and didn’t reject her because of it. Even if it took a crazy person for that kind of commitment.
He took a seat on the slanted couch, smiling at her sudden burst of energy at the name Nightwing. A real smile. Damian liked her grasping at her planet’s lore and it reminded him of his time being trained by the League of Assassins who would sometimes turn to him in the humid jungle air and tell him a story about a snake who tricked wolves or mongoose who fought cobras. As a five year old he wasn’t afforded much imagination, but he’d dream of those tales of cunning and strength. Those were his gods. “You’d like Nightwing.” Damian said after a moment. “Too much. You can’t meet him.” He teased and handed her one of the comics that had little pieces of paper sticking out to note power poses. Jim had suggested the New 52 since it was less complicated than Damian’s Gotham.
“It’s mostly just you kicking ass.” He explained, flipping through another comic. “I also found some footage on Super-Man before he left. That might be more helpful, even if it’s a little fuzzy.”
She was perceptive enough to realize there was something about how matter-of-fact he sounded, about how different it was from the way he said everything else that was true, that made her think there was more to it. But she didn't push him on it, because he hadn't made her feel wrong yet. Like with Stephanie, she was afraid to push too hard, to run him off, or to make him realize she was significantly different than whoever she was in his memory. "I asked her about him," she said of Stephanie's lover. The thought, the word, made her cheeks flare, but she didn't cast down her blue eyes or look anything but curious about the subject. "I did not have much family. I had my mother and father. And my aunt and uncle. Kal was just a baby."
When he sat on the slanted couch, she did him the favor of resettling her weight intentionally, and causing the other side to fall down as well, so it was even - just legless. She tried not to laugh, and she failed, fully expecting him to give her that scowl he'd shot her way when she arrived. "Nightwing. Is he Dick? I spoke to him. He said he was handsome, and Jason said that he was named after a sex organ, but that it was not intentional, and then Jason and Stephanie bantered. Banter? Flirted? Joked?" she asked, getting tripped up on the words. "They made me laugh," she admitted with obvious and unabashed pleasure at the simple contact.
She took the paper book when he held it out to her, and she flipped through the pages. "Are you in here?" she asked curiously, before really glancing down at the colorful drawings. They looked familiar, but in the way that drawings of people always did, lacking whatever it was that made people real. She paused a few page flips in, and she pointed at a page. "That is H'El. He is gone," she said, not really understanding how that was on the page.
Damian raised an eyebrow at Jason and Stephanie flirting and decided he liked it much less than her running around with some old super villain. Oh so Jason got to have fun and be a smartass, but Damian had to go pick himself up on his own while Dick stopped coming through the door and the rest of the family dispersed into their own directions. Jason never tried to make things right or talk to him after the fight, so what was the point in trying with him anymore? Damian pushed the frown away. Maybe he’d tell Kara all about it someday, but she didn’t need to hear it now.
Isis crawled out from under Kara’s cape and onto his lap, tiny claws clinging between his suit’s armor and purring loudly against him. Bandit might have helped raise the kitten before she was even old enough to eat solid food, but the fuzzball still recognized Damian as its momma cat. He seemed weirdly okay with this. “No, I made sure to pick comics I’m not in.” He said gravely, with a look like he’d kill her if she tried to go look for evidence of him before this Gotham. “This Kara isn’t the one I knew. It doesn’t matter. We’re just looking for techniques, right?” Damian leaned a little closer to see the picture of H’El and gave her a look like he didn’t recognize him. “Tell me about him.”
She watched the raised brow and the frown, and she waited for him to tell her what had caused them, but he didn't say anything at all. "Did I say something wrong?" she finally asked, wondering if she'd found that point with him, the one where he realized she wasn't who he thought she was, and where he became angry. Her expression showed her concern. She was like an open book that way, unaccustomed to feigning things. She was much more accustomed to laughing and crying and screaming, than she was to pretending things didn't bother her. She was getting better at pretending but, like being alone, it just wasn't something that came easily to her.
The kitten's antics made her smile again, and that purr made her feel a little better. "She makes you look kind," she told him, as if she'd realized he wouldn't want to look kind, not normally. But she said it like she'd learned a secret, all smug sweet and willing to argue if he tried to tell her otherwise. That look carried when he tried to glare her into not finding books about him. She whistled, eyes rolling up with greatly feigned innocence. But then there was H'El, and her smile disappeared.
She ran her fingers over the page. "He was Kryptonian. I do not know how many of the things he told me were true. I met him when I first came here, after your governing body had taken me. He told me we could save Argo, and he took me into Kandor. He only wanted to go home," she said, her expression pained and wistful as her fingers passed along the page. "He gave me your language," she said, looking up. "He worked for my father, but I still do not know what happened to scar him." She didn't add that she was almost positive she'd killed him, but her expression might have said it for her.
“No. Jason and I don’t get along, that’s all. We had a fight because I told Stephanie about you and he doesn’t trust me anymore.” Which hurt his feelings more than he cared to admit, so he tensed to try not to show it. And, Damian could tell she was walking a thousand thin lines at once. It kind of made him mad. He left Gotham so that he didn’t have to do that exact same thing. “Don’t worry about saying the wrong thing around me, okay?” He said sternly, but there was a kindness behind it that he was trying to chase away. The same that held the kitten clinging to his belly. The little Wayne gave her a look that was a lot like the kind Stephanie or Helena used to give him when he told them he felt alone or too different for them to understand. “Because I’m going to say whatever I want. Even if it pisses you off. It will piss you off.” Damian smiled again and relaxed back against the couch. “You’re just going to have to deal with it. I’m not kind, fair or understanding. You said I was mean on the journals? Well, you’re right. And, I’m really good at it. Ask anyone.”
He went quiet as she explained who H’El was and tried to make sense of the words he didn’t understand. She really was an alien in the strongest sense of the word, but her dealings with this H’El sounded like anyone who made friends with an extremist. Words like he only were a lot like how the al Ghuls only want to wipe the earth clean. How his mother only wanted a good world for her son to live in. It started out as only and turned into a million different wants. At least, that’s how it happened on earth. “Did he do something bad?” Damian asked, childishly eyebrows up in wonder.
She frowned at his admission that the fight with Jason had something to do with her. "I will fix it," she said, firm and insistent. "Stephanie helped me. You telling her about me was a good thing," she explained, not understanding how anyone could get angry about something good. Maybe it was yet another nuance of this planet that she didn't understand. She was still pondering that when he told her not to worry about saying the right thing. She scratched the kitten when he said it, thinking it through as he talked again, the careful concentration it took to ensure she didn't hurt the kitten obvious on her features. In the end, it was his claim that he would piss her off that had her head jerking up. "You are the things you say you are not," she insisted, all blonde ferocity in a very young body. "You can be mean, too, but that does not mean you are always mean." She shrugged. "I was mean to a girl who was going to be genematched with a boy I liked," she admitted. "That does not mean I am always that way." As for asking people if he was mean, she gave him a look that could have belonged to any human teenager on the planet. "I can decide for myself if you are mean."
H'El was a more somber topic, and she looked at the kitten for a few seconds before responding to him. "He did not. I fought him, and he is gone," she said, having a hard time putting it into words. "He had a way to turn back time, so that Argo did not die. He told me no one here would be harmed, but he did not tell me their timelines would change. It was not fair to them," she said sadly. It had been the right choice, but that didn't mean she didn't regret it every single day, because she did. "He kissed me," she added, the addition an indication of her youth in a way that nothing she'd said before could ever hope to be.
“No. I’m always mean.” Damian corrected her, cool blues unmoved by her ferocity, though perhaps a little drawn to it. “You’re just a girl who gets upset about girl things.” His bratty tone was back in full force and he was tempted to get mean right there just for the sake of showing her that he could. Instead it just came out as a sort of school hallway teasing. “Trust me. One day you’ll be having a good time and thinking to yourself that I’m a really nice boy, and then I’ll call you fat. Or say your hair is long and gross. I’m not nice.”
But, they both knew that wasn’t completely true. And, the way he listened to her talk about H’El put a giant hole through his case. Damian kept his eyes on the colorful comic book pages while she spoke, focusing on the warm purr of Isis and the minimal amount of information Kara was giving him. He understood what it felt like to be confused by feelings, probably better than anyone in the Batfamily. “He probably felt like it was you and him against the world even if you smacked him around. I would have kissed you, too.” Damian looked over at her and for the first time there was a little color on his cheeks, but he looked away to make it vanish. Clearing his throat. “Do you have a place you can practice fighting?”
She made a face, one that was all unimpressed teenage eyeroll. "What are girl things?" she demanded, enough confidence in her young to voice to make it clear she thought she could smart her way out of whatever he managed to come up with. He got an unimpressed sound in response to the comment that he'd call her fat or insult her hair. "Do not call girls fat, and do not make fun of them. Society is hard enough on girls as it is," she said a little fiercely, and then she smiled. "Plus, you do not think I am fat, and you do not think my hair is gross. You are only mean if you mean it when you say mean things."
She looked up when he said he would kiss her, and though her cheeks flushed, it wasn't because of his admission. "You know what it feels like?" she asked, because she had heard it in his voice just then, that sense of being confused and of not belonging. "He kissed me before we fought," she admitted, the hush coinciding with the fact that kissing a boy she wasn't genematched with would have been a crime on Argo. She huffed a sigh, and she closed the comic, blocking H'El's face with her hands. "I have been going to Smallville, but I have not been practicing. I have been lying in the wheat fields, mostly. You think I should learn to fight?" she asked, that distrust of violence back in her voice again. "Helena said she would give me things to help me find a way home." She gave him a look, blonde hair tumbling onto the blue of her suit. "You think I should figure out how to live here, instead?"
He made an affirmative sound, but didn’t say anything more about it. Asking her to talk about H’El was enough. Damian wasn’t about to get into the last year with Selina if he could help it. He’d rather talk about crime fighting any day. “I think you should protect. You’re powerful and people might need you one day. If you have the ability to defend the innocent, it’s your duty.” Damian said like a true Wayne. Honor and justice were things instilled in him at a very young age, but he didn’t understand what they really meant until he became part of the bat family. He sat up a little straighter and crossed his arms thoughtfully.
Hels would try to get Kara home. It was a selfish move to get her version back. It had to be. “I think you should spend more time here before you decide to leave, alien.” Damian said with a shrug. “There might be more like you eventually. When I first got here it was only my father. Now Gotham is full of people I knew. Just think about it before you let Helena push you into going home because she misses her girlfriend.”
She wanted to ask, but she didn't want to push. She gave him a look that said she knew, that she understood that there were things he wasn't saying. But she could be patient. For all her love of frills and thrills back home, she could be patient; it was a trait of her caste. In the end, it was the way he sat up straighter and crossed his arms that made her nod in something like agreement, before she'd even realized she was doing it. "If you help get into school, then I will think about protecting people," she promised. It was a big concession for her, and she still refused to be like Jason from the house of Todd. She refused to attack first, and she refused to harm someone who had committed no crime. But she could try helping. If she was going to consider staying here, helping it be safer was important. She didn't want to think on it for too long, because it almost made her stomach ache. Instead, she gave him a very surprised, and very curious look when he said Helena missed her girlfriend. "I do not understand." Because in a world where genematching was government controlled, homosexuality was not something that was openly admitted to or discussed.
He nodded. “I can promise you that. I’ll work to obtain you a new identity and entrance into a school. You should stay in Smallville for now. And, then when you feel more confident you can move to a city.” Damian pulled his tablet off the coffee table and made some notes for himself. This was something he could do without worrying about the bat family interfering or stopping him. Damian almost missed her confusion at Kara’s weird friendship with Hels back in her world, jerking his head up with eyebrows up at the curious look. “Helena was in love with the Kara she knew. You had to have figured that out by now, right?” Maybe Damian was giving away too much of his sister’s secrets, but after she lost her temper with Damian he could put two and two together. Everyone could have guessed, right?
She shook her head when he asked if she hadn't figured out that Helena was in love with her Kara, eyes wide with understanding. It put so many things into perspective, and it made so many things make sense. She wanted to ask questions about breeding and how that kind of relationship worked, but she held the questions back. She could ask Sanctuary. Perhaps there was knowledge in the sunstones. Or, more likely, the Fortress sunstones would be able to shed some light. She hated going to the Fortress, empty and abandoned like it was, but there was something personal about the question that made her determined to do it before she went to Micronesia to see Helena. "I spend most of my time in Sanctuary," she told him instead. "It is my place, beneath the Pacific Ocean. The yellow sun does not reach there, and I can sleep and eat and feel normal again." But it was lonely, and her expression said as much. "Can we watch the videos now?" she asked hopefully, coaxing the kitten onto her lap and away from his with a flick of her cape. She settled back on the broken couch, obviously content to stay there for a little while; she really wasn't good at being alone, not at all.
Damian almost wished he had a place to feel normal, but he knew that it didn’t exist and couldn’t compare to how different Kara felt. He thought to tell her that she could visit whenever she wanted, but that much was already obvious. Stephanie in all her big sister warmth had likely said so when they met. Instead he just nodded, letting Iris crawl over to Kara again with tiny little mews and got to his feet. “Let me go change into my regular clothes. I look ridiculous sitting around the house in this. And, I’ll make popcorn. I bet they didn’t have popcorn on your planet.” He smirked, turning on the television and started up a newscast about a man in blue and red flying across the sky.