crusaded | the young and rich

I can't sleep.

While the sun has yet to dip below the horizon, it's been days since I had any semblance of rest. Pain and fatigue have worn mostly down, only a light thrum remaining in the air, pressing against my temples and forcing every thought to a roadblock. Every action is stilled by a need not to interrupt that steady ebb and crash of water that sounds. I can't decide if it's my imagination filling the silence, or if the beach is truly so close. I lie on the sofa, a T-shirt several times too large loose over my shoulders, the first serviceable item of clothing retrieved from the box. I should check on my suit. Make sure everything is in working order, and every weapon accounted for.

Instead, I'm waiting until Damian gets home, thinking more carefully through Stephanie's words. At least when it comes to this, it's likely that she knows better than I do. She's spent more hours with him and can see through the quick tongue that he uses to lash out at everything that isn't to his satisfaction. And, if nothing else, discovering the fact that I've been missing to him for months, dead for months, better shapes my perspective.

Here is an opportunity to make an effort I've owed for some time.

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"I wouldn't have negotiated," Damian says, simply. "You could have knocked him out easily and brought him up to the surface, but you didn't. You hesitated. And so you failed. Todd has never responded well to reason in the past. I don't know why you thought he would do so now."

"And what would you have done with him, once brought to the surface?" I ask, raising a brow. "The inclination to hide would not have been solved. Sooner or later, he would have escaped and we would find ourselves back at square one. My goal, Damian, wasn't simply to bring him to the surface if it came at the cost of scaring him further."

I lean against the back of the sofa, crossing my arms over my chest.

Damian considers that for a moment. Allows his father's reasoning to sink in as much as he is able. He is not so stubborn to see that there's a sense behind the words, but they beg an important question all the same.

"If you didn't want to scare him, why go down there at all?"

Folding my hands neatly under my chin, I rest my gaze on my son for a few seconds. There are countless ways to answer this question. Not all of them will please him, and I can't say that I don't understand why. Jason has not, after all, been part of his family. Damian owes him no debt, no obligation to try and understand the ties that bind, and I'm sure that Talia must have impressed upon Damian the significance of a blood relationship often enough by this point that the mere suggestion that both boys are equally important to me may be taken as an insult.

Or, worse yet, as indication that his loyalty and presence will go unacknowledged.

"Because he is also my son, Damian, and one who I let down," I explain. He's seen the uniform. He knows the history. "The least I could do is make sure that his life here isn't suddenly disturbed by my arrival. Which is not a message he can receive from anyone else."

"Tt."

He bristles at the mention of yet another false son. Drake had been bad enough, but Damian will never lower himself to call Todd his brother. One good deed at Halloween doesn't erase the past, let alone the other boy's pedigree.

"Not all messages need delivering through words," Damian points out. Though some of the intricacies of civil discourse remain lost to him, he has a cannier understanding than many are inclined to give him credit for. "Ignoring him would've been less of a disturbance than hunting him down to deliver a message about how you plan to ignore him."

Lacing my fingers, I pause; the suggestion isn't one that failed to cross my mind in those few seconds it took for me to work up the conviction to try again, to cross the island and head down into Rapture, to make a reconciliatory attempt and pull Jason out of a city he'd found himself all too comfortable in. Even now, had I the opportunity to try again, I know that heading down into Rapture would have been an inevitability. But why? How do I try to convey that to a son who has no obligation to try and understand? Who likely will never accept the notion that Jason or Tim are sons in their own right, and thus deserving of as much attention as Damian himself has ever been?

Or do I keep the thought to myself?

(I went down because he needed that moment, defenses down, because I needed to see that his finger wasn't ready to pull the trigger.)

"Perhaps," I confirm, sitting straight. "But then it would have become a waiting game. Each waiting for the other to attack. No trust formed."

"As opposed to now where he trusts you completely," says Damian, expression as contemptuous as his voice is sarcastic. He rolls his eyes. "Right. That makes perfect sense."

"As opposed to now, where he hopefully realizes that he may trust in the fact that I have no plans to hunt him down for crimes he has yet to commit," I reply, the tone of my voice having taken on an edge. This boy needs to better learn respect. "It is not an alliance, no. But it is a call for truce, and I fail to see another way of forming it other than by direct conversation."

"Or can you think of anyone who would have sufficed as a serviceable go-between? Knowing that he has reacted in extreme and violent ways before?"

I wouldn't want to send my son to that.

"I've spoken to him several times with little incident," Damian counters, and though the change is subtle, there's a defiance in his posture that becomes more evident the harsher his father's voice becomes.

"Would that have been serviceable enough for you? I could have helped."

"Holding a regular conversation with Jason is a different matter entirely than discussing family," I point out, convinced that Damian trying to speak to Jason about me, of all people, wouldn't have gone over smoothly. Especially when Damian sees himself as the only true son, having come to blows with Tim before on the matter. (I've placed no small amount of weight on the fact that Dick brought these observations to me, and that Dick has since taken Damian under his wing as Robin.)

"It's too much of a risk," I conclude, more firmly than before. "I won't throw my son into that."

"Tt," says Damian, rolling his eyes. This is surely a lost cause, if his father thinks that sending him to talk to a nutcase is more of a risk than anything Grayson had him do in his tenure as the Batman.

Including going up against the Red Hood.

"Are we done here or do you wish to tell me I can't do something else because it's too much of a risk?"

"I don't appreciate that tone, Damian," I reply, gaze sharp as I sit straighter, not sure if it's in an effort to set an example, or if I'm simply too well-aware of the fact that my patience is being tried. Worn thin. Even Damian might not escape a sharp word or two if this continues, but I see no benefit to arguing.

It's late.

"We'll speak again tomorrow. You'll start lessons, and we'll train come evening. But I want you to get sleep tonight." With a look, I add, "And I'll know if you haven't."

the young and rich

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