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msfcatlover · 1 year

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msfcatlover: @the-overanalyzer What do you want to know? I have /many/ thoughts for this, and I don’t really know which ones to start with.

the-overanalyzer: @msfcatlover Honestly all of it, this is *such* a neat idea.

All my thoughts? Okay, I’ll do my best.

First, sources. I think my love for the memory-sending version of the time travel fixit trope is blatantly obvious, and I read a lot of them. Then one day, just after I started really getting into Batfam stuff, I read this TMA fic called “Deja Vu” by CirrusGrey (fantastic writer, btw, everyone who likes TMA stuff should check out their fics,) which has all 4 members of the original archives crew getting sent back from their moment of death to just before the series started; the thing is, they all have different amounts of information, so they all have very different priorities. Like, Tim thinks the Unknowing is the biggest threat, so he buckles down trying to stop that, Sasha thinks she just had a weird dream because she died before they really knew anything about what was going on, etc. They might as well be coming from completely different futures, their concepts of reality are so different!

Which got me thinking: What if they were? What if you genuinely had a fixit in the memory time travel vein with multiple protagonists being sent back to before everything went awful, but every single one of them is from a different basically apocalyptic future, so they all have completely different priorities on what needs to be fixed? All tripping over eachother’s plans, not realizing they’re not alone… and at the same time, being so truly, completely alone, because they’re the sole survivors of their individual timelines, and no one really knows what they’ve gone through; even the people they love most and want to rely on are going to be dramatically different from any version of those people each of them ever knew.

And, um, the Batfam is kinda perfect for that setup, isn’t it? But, obviously, I can’t find that fic. It doesn’t seem to exist. (Although, if you like the concept of multiple characters trying to fix the same timeline, “Time to Protect You” is a really excellent read. Also, if you like Dick having a worse adoption addiction than Bruce does, read “Time to Protect You.” It’s fun.)

Ever since I had that thought, I have been brainstorming. This. Monster. Because, y’see, I have to at least rough-draft each of their future timelines to know what each of their priorities would be. So there’s like, five full fics worth of content in the backstory for this fic. (I have made myself cry doing this. More than once. Lotta… lotta funerals & heroic self-sacrifices while loved ones watch helplessly in these WIP notes. And one formal “identify the body” scene that is somehow worse than all of them.) And that’s before they all start meddling in the timeline!

But you asked this on the Damian post. So, everything about Damian?

…This is gonna get long.

Damian is undergoing one of the most dramatic time shifts of all of them; he was in his late 20s when he got sent back. Since all 5 affected Robins are being sent back to the day Jason & Bruce were supposed to meet, that puts Damian somewhere between 4-6yrs old on arrival.

Another fic I really love from the TMA fandom (whose title I can heartbreakingly not remember right now) had Jon sent back to his first supernatural encounter, and one of the things that fic emphasized was this dichotomy between Jon’s decades of lived experience and the fact that he still has the body of a child. Which means he has the brain chemistry of a child. Which is going to impact his behavior.

So, in my story Damian’s not just a 28yr old stuck in a 5yr old body trying to get people to take him seriously, he is a 5yr old with 28yrs worth of memories, and that is a huge difference. (That’s not going to show much in this post, since I’m summarizing grand scale things with a few short scenes, and also Damian’s instincts are different from most 5yr olds thanks to, erm, everything. It would mostly be in the minutia of his behavior. But it is important to me.)

Is the rest of the family worried about Damian? Yes, obviously, that’s their baby brother. But none of them can rescue him alone (most of them need to completely retrain their bodies, even before gaining allies & equipment,) and as depressing as it is, they all believe he should be relatively safe where he is until they can assemble what they need to go bring him home. After all, both Ra’s & Talia need Damian healthy & intact for their plans to go forward.

Damian on the other hand, is now stranded on the other side of the world from all of his most trusted allies (even if they don’t know him yet,) and trying to hide his sudden shift in personality & priorities while surrounded by people who are very invested in his personal development. Hell, even Damian’s workouts & warmup routines have changed since he was a kid; how is he supposed to explain where he learned Dick’s balance exercises or Tim’s post-computer hand/wrist stretches? And on the other hand, Damian’s not used to a body with these proportions; how is he supposed to do anything like this?

(Damian did come back at the tail end of a fever that left him bedridden for a long while, so at least he has a short-term solution for that last problem.)

And remember: none of them know the others came back. As far as Damian’s concerned, he’s on his own.

What Damian does is steal tiny bits of equipment to dissect for parts, and recreates the sound-emitter from Jimmy Olsen’s watch. It’s a huge gamble, because Damian can’t test it. The sound should be outside of human hearing range, but if anyone hears/detects it before Damian’s ready to escape, he’ll be caught. Even if the emitter does work, Damian can’t risk calling Superman to Nanda Parbat; the League has measures against kryptonians (Superman’s timeline is somehow even messier than the Bats’ at this point, so I’m going with Clark & Kara both being fully established heroes already,) so if Superman did come to investigate, he could get hurt or captured, and if Clark gets away or stops to analyze where the sound is coming from then he might realize it’s just a test and assume it’s some sort of trap when Damian does set it off

Basically, Damian has one shot at this, and he just has to trust his own tinkering skills are good enough because a test-run could ruin everything.

Damian’s future was an alien invasion that left the Earth like a wasteland, the remaining heroes leading the resistance. He had more relaxing nights then than he has now, constantly monitoring his own words & actions, surrounded by enemies, with no allies to fall back on, in a body that seems more weak & helpless than it ever has before.

(Part of me also thinks Damian might’ve lost a limb in that war? It’s tripping him out—possibly literally—to have it back, when it’s only been phantom pain for so long.)

So, y’know, it’s not just that Superman is the only hero Damian can call who will both probably hear him, get there in time to actually be backup, and won’t be immediately suspicious of Damian (probably.) It’s also that Damian needs access to interstellar resources if he’s ever going to stop that invasion, and even with nearly 2 decades to plan it, the better Damian’s starting point the faster he can do that. (It definitely has nothing at all to do with how much Damian’s missed Clark, Jon, Lois, the whole extended family… it’s been years since Damian’s spoken to any of them, even the survivors off fighting on other fronts. And there were not a lot of survivors; the enemy knew to target their most powerful warriors first.)

People who say you can’t lie to kryptonians are idiots who don’t know them. Here’s the secret: have a good excuse for a raised breath/heart rate and make sure the emotions of your lie match what you’re actually feeling in that moment. A stutter, skip, or mild increase will be lost in the racing, and all your pheromones will agree with your words. Easy. (Cass could tell the difference, but she’s not here, is she? Damian has no idea where she is—but she’ll be fine. It took a crashing spaceship to kill Cassandra Wayne, and she survived just fine on her own before joining the family. Damian doesn’t need to worry. She’s fine. She’ll definitely be fine.)

Damian waits for the next time they move him, waits for the first big city, and makes a break for it. He slips through the guards’ fingers with skills they didn’t know he has, and proceeds to make one of the most illogical choices for a normal escape attempt: Damian heads for the tallest building he can get to the top of. As soon as he reaches the roof, even before picking the lock, Damian activates his emitter. He barricades the door behind him, and stands there, buffeted by wind, struggling to stay upright.

Damian can’t hear the emitter. Damian can’t hear his own voice when he raises it against the wind, yelling to Superman for help. Damian thinks he can hear his guards running up behind the door, but that’s impossible; it must be his own blood pounding in his ears.

The wind changes direction, and Superman is there.

Damian knows the picture he paints: a too-small child with too much scar tissue, eyes wide & wild, panting & terrified, still dirty from the run through the city below, clutching a device he shouldn’t have. (A stranger Superman has no reason to trust, even though Clark was always more credulous than any of the Bats. A boy wearing League garb under his clothes, even if Clark might not recognize it.)

(Damian doesn’t remember Clark ever being this big, but it is Clark, cracking through the Superman mask in confusion & concern.)

Damian’s never been one to leave things half-finished. “Please,” Damian begs, glancing back at the door behind him, “I’m running from the Shadows. They’re after me, they’ll be here any moment, they’ll kill me if they do! Please, help me!”

The door jumps in its frame. The barricade holds.

Clark opens his arms. “Of course, son. Where do you want to go?”

Damian leaps into Clark’s arms (and oh, oh, he has missed this. The soft strength & nearly overpowering warmth all kryptonians have. Arms that fold around Damian’s back like a shield—because they are, because Clark & Jon & Kara & Kon know their own strength and would rather risk being hurt themselves than let their charges be hurt. Being held by his uncle, who died over a decade ago and has never met Damian, but still holds on like Damian is something precious & important. Yes, Damian can admit he missed this.)

“Anywhere,” Damian whispers, wrapping his arms around his uncle’s neck. “Anywhere they can’t find me.”

(That last part is lost to the rush of speed, but Damian knows Clark heard it anyway.)

Here’s what Damian is counting on: Clark Kent is not a stupid man, even if he can be swept away by his emotions. Superman does not often fight the League of Shadows and will not know where necessarily would be safe from them, so he will take Damian to a secret base. Superman would not expose another hero’s identity without asking first, so it will either be a Justice League base or somewhere safe for Clark. Damian is still dressed like an assassin under his travel clothes and is still very much armed, so hopefully Clark would not bring Damian anywhere Damian might pose a threat.

So, a Justice League base, the Fortress of Solitude, or (if Clark is critically underestimating Damian) the farm.

Damian knows he’s struck gold when temperature drops. The Fortress makes this so much easier than having to find some way to hide Damian’s connection to Batman from the entire Justice League, and Damian never wants to bring trouble to Ma Kent’s doorstep. Damian’s relief is genuine, and he doesn’t bother trying to hide it when Clark sets him down.

The next part is the tricky bit: Damian has to sell his cover. A League-trained child assassin defecting would not know much of the outside world, would not know what was expected of him. Damian knows all that from experience. After months of hiding in Nanda Parbat, it’s not hard to slip back into that mindset, those mannerisms. They’re almost comfortable; hopefully the cold & alien environment will cover for the rest. Damian drops to his knees as he would before any significant authority (his mother, his grandfather, his family when he needed them to understand his remorse was full-hearted & genuine,) and begins with, “Thank you. I owe you my life.”

From there, Damian begins spinning the web that he hopes will save the world, rather than collapse & take Damian down with it. Truths & half-truths, genuine emotions, flickers of vulnerability, and a demeanor far too formal & professional to belong to anyone having a proper childhood. Fear of both the League & its enemies, any of whom would kill to have Damian back. Full, open acknowledgment of the suspicions Clark really ought to have, because the second Clark mentions the League to anyone who knows, Clark will receive the full run-down of how dangerous any League operative is.

(Damian insists on being locked up, telling Superman that his allies will only suspect Damian more—rightfully!—if he’s not. Clark is horrified by the idea of imprisoning a child who can’t be older than 6. They compromise with a guest room in the Fortress, the alien architecture as good as any lock any hero could cook up.)

(Damian insists on being disarmed, despite his own obvious discomfort with doing so. Clark tries to tell Damian that’s not necessary, and Damian points out how easy it would’ve been to slip a kryptonite blade into Superman’s chest from the second he let Damian into his arms. Clark looks a little green himself, and lets Damian finish.)

(Damian does not lie about lineage, at least not on his mother’s side. He does make it very clear he is not interested in meeting his father, confirms that his father is a very dangerous man, and heavily implies that his father’s displeasure with Damian’s upbringing might be dangerous to Damian himself. Damian also heavily implies his father knows of Damian’s existence and chose to be distant, drawing on the lingering, long-stifled bitterness of those early awkward days at the manor—wounds that don’t hurt anymore, not really, but that Damian can never forget—to really sell it.)

(Damian knows better than to try to convince anyone he’s had some sort of miraculous change of heart. No hero with experience with the League will see that as anything but a trap. Damian instead simply says he doesn’t like killing, expresses discomfort when pressed on his morals, and implies his escape has to do with a personal betrayal of some kind. Much easier to believe.)

The most direct lie Damian tells is that he got the frequency from his grandfather’s notes on known kryptonian biology. Damian drowns that in his own self-chastisement, admitting the inability to test the device in any way that mattered and Damian’s lack of an exit if the plan went wrong. Damian calls himself reckless & stupid for not having a backup. Clark catches Damian’s eye, and tells Damian he’s wrong; that Damian’s not stupid, Damian’s very clever for putting that together.

“You did good, son,” Clark says, Superman gone and replaced with only the kindness & pain of a man with a heart too big for this world, and a father with a boy not that much younger than Damian. “You did the best you could with what you had, and what you pulled off was pretty amazing. I’m sorry you had to go through that alone.”

“…Oh,” Damian says. He blinks. He breathes. And for the first time since Dick died, Damian cries. For everything he’s done, and everything he’s lost. For the family he’ll never have, and the childhood he never did. For a world that will—hopefully—never be. No wailing, no screams. Just soft, hitching breaths and tears that don’t seem to stop.

Clark pulls him close, and Damian buries his face in his uncle’s chest. And cries.

Damian knows the picture he paints:

Here is a boy, running for his life. A dangerous boy. A frightened boy. A boy who’s so alone, he has to rely on alien strangers for help. A boy desperate to be trusted, to not be seen as a threat. A boy who already knows there’s nowhere safe for him in the world.

An abused child will tug at any hero’s heartstrings. But Damian knows exactly which ones to pluck to stay safe under Clark Kent’s cape.

It’s intentional. It’s manipulative. It needs to be done. Damian has 17yrs to win trust, to build a network, to stop the invasion. The longer he can stay off the Bats’ radar, the better. He knows he has to play the long game.

(It doesn’t matter that it’s all true.)

#the-overanalyzer #damian wayne #damian al ghul #iwctw (time travel)#time travel fixit #batfam #batman #superman #superfam #superdad #my writing #mine #//#AND THAT'S ALL I'VE GOT SO FAR #As always #my main motive is making characters cry #...Meanwhile in Gotham! Dick is panicking. Jason's MIA. Tim's trying to join a cult. And Steph's PTSD is keeping her from talking to anyone.

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