Archive of Our Own

Damian first noticed he was different when Mother began teaching him colors. 

It was one of his earliest memories. Mother had insisted on teaching his lessons that day, which was never usually the case. Grandfather typically insisted Damian was taught by one of the league's various heavily decorated tutors; Even so, mother occasionally took over Damian’s lessons as an excuse to spend time with him. 

She held Damian’s hand as she led him into the vast garden behind the Nanda Parbat. 

“Colors are everywhere, Habibi,” mother said, walking slowly to allow Damian to toddle beside her. “The colors people chose to wear can tell much about them. Do you know why we wear green, Damian?”

“To show our ties to nature, and our hope to cleanse and balance humanity.” Damian recited, making sure to use every long word his teachers had beaten into him to memorize. 

“Ravi has taught you well,” She slowed, and kneeled in front of a flower bush. She picked a small clematis flower. “What color is this, Damian?”

“Blue,” Damian answered quickly, pride filling his chest when his mother gave a nod of approval. 

“Your Fathers eyes were blue,” Talia hummed. “A light blue. The same color as your blanket, only more beautiful. What color are mummy’s eyes, Damian?” 

Damian pondered that question, looking at his mothers eyes. Blue had always been an easy color for Damian to identify. So was yellow, they were both bright and beautiful. The other colors were…trickier. His tutor had tried for weeks to teach Damian the difference between red, grey, and green. Damian was stumped. He genuinely didn’t see the difference that seemed so obvious to everyone else. 

“Grey?” Damian guessed. 

Talia reached out to push Damian’s bangs back, and place the Clematis behind Damian’s ear. She frowned disapprovingly. “My eyes are green.”

She reached down to pick a small flower from a nearby bush. “What color is this one?”

This time Damian didn’t have to guess. The flower was the same color as mothers eyes. “Green,” 

Talia frowned. “Yes, the stem is green. But what color is the flower?” 

Damian blinked. They looked the same to him. He wondered if this was a trick question. 

“Grey?” 

Talia pushed herself up, crushing the flower in her hand. “Red, Damian. You’re usually such a fast learner. It seems we need some more studying, don’t we? I’ll inform Ravi he needs to focus more on your colors.”  

“Yes mama,” Damian reluctantly agreed, shame curling in his chest. Grandfather did not approve of failure. Mother could only protect Damian from grandfather's scrutiny for so long. 

And eventually, Damian’s lack of understanding caught up to him. Damian was older. He thought he might have been around four, but his memory of this particular incident was fuzzy. He mostly remembers the punishment for his mistake. 

 There was no room for failure in the league. 

“Damian,” Ra’s called, staring Damian down from where he sat upon his throne with hooded eyes. “Come here,” 

Damian raised his chin and walked towards his grandfather, kneeling when he was close enough. He ignored the terrified man restrained beside him. He had been captured by Damian and some assassins a few hours ago. 

It had been Damian’s first “big boy” mission (as mother once called it) and Damian’s job was to collect information on his target before they took him. He thought he had done a flawless job, but judging by the tone of his grandfather's voice he had been mistaken. 

“Your report states your target has grey eyes,” 

Damian nodded, dread curling in his stomach. “Yes, Grandfather,"

“Look at his eyes. Do they look grey to you?” Grandfather asked coldly. 

Damian looked at the struggling man’s wide eyes. They looked the same dull grey as most colors did. 

“Yes, Grandfather,” he repeated. 

The slap echoed through the large room. 

His grandfather grabbed Damian’s chin with cold boney hands. “Are you so incompetent that you don’t know your colors? Infants can identify simple colors better than this. If you are no use to me then I have no problem disposing of you, grandson.” 

Damian gritted his teeth. “I will do better, Grandfather.”

“Better is not enough. If you can’t tell the difference between red and grey, then I will simply have to teach you,” 

Damian hadn’t bled so much before that. The memory of grey all around him stayed with him. He still could not see the “red” of his own blood. 

Gotham wasn’t much different.

In some ways it was easier on his eyes. Father wore black. Grayson’s blue Nightwing symbol was bright and easily visible. 

Fathers eyes truly were blue. They were easy to see, vastly different from the grey of his mother and grandfather's eyes. It was almost comforting. 

His older brothers all had blue eyes as well. Damian rarely saw so much color. 

In other ways it was confusing. 

“It must suck going from living in so much green nature to living in Gotham.” Grayson had once remarked at breakfast. 

“Yeah, when I came back to Gotham it was like walking straight into a noir movie,” Jason agreed. “And I’m from Gotham. I can’t imagine what a first impression would be like.” 

Todd reached over the table to ruffle Damian’s hair. “But Damian’s already all grey and broody so it must have felt natural.” 

“No, I see him more as red and angry,” Tim joked, playfully nudging Damian’s arm with his elbow. 

Damian slapped both hands away. “I will be angry if you all continue touching me,” 

Tim decided to test his fate by poking Damian’s cheek. Damian bit his finger. 

Tim screeched and pulled his finger away. “Hey, I was just joking!”

“Me too. I think giving you what you deserve is hilarious," 

“You little—“ 

“Boys,” Bruce warned from the head of the table, not even looking up from his newspaper. 

“Let the tykes play,” Jason said, taking a bite of bacon. 

“Yeah. This is how we show our love,” Tim agreed, nudging Damian lightly. 

Damian nodded in agreement but pushed his brother's arm away. He scowled when Tim chuckled at the motion. 

Bruce just sighed deeply. 

“No but I’m being serious. Gothams so grey and boring. Kids need colors for their development! What if we plant a garden or something? Or paint Dami’s room,” 

“I’m not a baby who needs stimulation,” Damian argued, and was promptly ignored. 

“That could be a good idea,” Bruce mused. “Would you like to paint your room, Damian?” 

“You totally should, we’ll help,” Tim agreed. 

“Yeah, maybe having some color could fix your grey moody personality,” Jason snorted. 

“Red angry personality,” Tim corrected. 

Dick sighed. “We’ll find a nice color to paint your room. Would you like green, bub?” 

Damian didn’t see a difference between the “green” of nature and the “grey” of Gotham. 

But then again, he had never truly understood colors. He was eight whole years old and couldn’t even understand his basic colors. Everyone else could except Damian. 

He couldn’t let his fathers family know how incompetent Damian truly was. 

So he just nodded. 

————————————————————

The mission was supposed to be simple. 

Father was banned from patrol for the rest of the week by Pennyworth to recover from an injury. Initially, Damian had been expected to stay home as well. 

Father didn’t like sending Damian alone on patrol, much to Damian’s constant confusion. He was raised by an elite group of assassins, and had been on countless solo missions. Yet, this specific rule father never bent on. 

The only reason he allowed Damian out tonight was because Drake and Todd had offered to watch him. 

“We’re busting a drug deal tonight, and the doors are all locked from the inside. We need a tiny angry gremlin who’s small enough to fit in the vents and let us in,” Jason had joked. 

Damian knew that his brothers could easily pick any lock themselves, but were just saying that to make Damian feel included. He would never tell them outright, but he appreciated it. 

That’s how he ended up where he was currently. Crawling through the air vents of an abandoned warehouse to unlock a door and allow his brothers an entrance. 

Damian could hear voices below him, muffled by the aluminum of the vent. Damian stopped above a side door, hidden from view. 

“Almost in?” Red Robin’s voice crackled through the comm. 

He pulled the vent cover off and dropped down silently, quickly unlocking the door for his brothers. 

“Done,”

“Okay,” Drake whispered when he entered. “Stick to the plan. Fan out and take down as many people as possible without serious injuries. We'll let the police deal with the drugs, just focus on the dealers.” 

Jason cracked his knuckles. “Sounds like a plan. You ready, short stack?” 

Damian rolled his eyes. “More ready than you’ll ever be,” 

Tim sighed. “Can we save this for after?” 

“Tt,” 

“Okay. Robin you go right, Hood go left, I’ll take the middle.”

“What if I want to be middle?” 

“Does it really matter—?”

Damian tuned his hooligan brothers out and dropped to a crouch. He silently crept through the warehouse, keeping silent footsteps. He peered out at the dozen men standing around a table. 

Oddly enough Damian didn’t see any drugs. 

Not even any bags that could be hiding any. Instead, the men were standing around the table talking in low voices. Their body language was strange. Anxious. Not the way criminals in Gotham usually were, but excessively. 

“Do you see any drugs?” Jason’s voice crackled over the comms. 

“Negitive. Red Robin?”  Damian replied silently. 

“Nope. Not even a trace. Something’s not right.” 

“Maybe our informant was lying,” 

“But why? Why bring us here specifically?” 

Damian quieted his comms till his brother's conversation was just distant background noise. He concentrated on the quiet conversation happening between the criminals. 

“You really think the bats are going to show?”

“They better, I built this crap on my own. It took  almost two hundred dollars. I didn’t do all that to sit around like ducks and get no reward. I want to see the bats suffer,” 

“They’ll come. Vince said he gave an anonymous tip. They always check those out, right?”

“If not tonight then we’ll try again. It doesn’t matter who or when, just that the bats get what they deserve. Redhood put my brother in the hospital last week. And the tiny one stabbed a buddy of mine last year. Somebody’s got to set them straight.”

“Remember. As soon as we see a bat, we set it. We’ll have five minutes to get ourselves out. Whatever you have to do, make sure the bats are stuck in here. Knock them out or tie them up for all I care. They have to be in here when it blows,”

Damian furrowed his brow, the dots quickly connecting in his head. He raised a hand to his comm. 

“It’s not a drug deal, they have a—“

Damian’s vision went white as a sharp pain struck the back of his head. He hardly registered falling to the ground with a weak gasp, vision spinning. Damian felt himself being dragged by his cape towards the voices. 

His head throbbed and his brother's voices in his ear only made his headache worse. 

“Hey! Look at what we have here,” the man dragging him sneered and the conversation momentarily paused to listen. 

Damian was thrown unceremoniously beside the table, catching himself weakly on his hands and knees. He blinked in an attempt to clear his head, quickly taking stalk of his injury. 

Concussion, likely mild. He wasn’t bleeding too badly. He was more than capable of fighting. 

“We’ll look at what the cat dragged in,” a criminal drawled. 

“Shut the hell up, Jerry. Nobody wants to hear your stupid idioms.” Another shot back. 

“Yeah. Weirdo,” another chimed in. 

Jerry frowned an deflated, dropping his head in shame. 

“Well, now that we have our little birdy friend here, it’s time to begin. Start the timer,”

Damian heard a button being pressed and he internally cursed. 

“I hope you’ll forgive me for this, but I can’t have you escaping,” the man that had dragged him in held up the handle of a knife, probably what he hit Damian with the first time. He brought it down, aiming once more for Damian’s head. 

The hit never landed. 

A shot rang out and the man gasped, immediately grabbing his hand with a pained yell. Blood dripped down his forearm. 

“What the hell?!”

Damian’s brothers landed a few feet away and sprung into action immediately. Jason attacked; and Damian felt himself once again being pulled up. This time by familiar arms. Tim carried him quickly to the far corner of the room away from the fight. “Hey, bud are you okay? Where did he hit you?”

“I’m fine,” Damian insisted, trying to stand. Tim pushed him back down. 

“Stay down, at least for a few minutes. Me and Jason can handle the fight, okay? They have a bomb, do you think you can defuse it while we keep those goons off of you?” 

“Yes, but that’s entirely unnecessary. I can protect myself,” 

“I know Robin. Do this for me, yeah?”

“…okay,” Damian reluctantly agreed. 

Tim patted his cheek before running back off towards the battle. He returned quickly with the ticking bomb. He tore the top off easily. 

“Okay. I know you already know how to do this, but all you need to do is separate the wires and cut all the green ones. Leave the red ones alone, got it?”

Damian’s heart sank. 

Tim paused to take down a criminal who had run at them. “I have to go help Hood. Green, Robin.”

Damian watched as his brother ran back into battle. He looked down helplessly at the mess of tangled wires. Half of them were a dark grey, the other half a slightly lighter shade. Both were a neutral grey.  

Grey just like his mothers eyes. 

Just like flowers. 

Just like blood. 

Damian looked down at the timer. Three minutes now. 

Damian couldn’t just cut and hope for the best. Not with his brothers here. He couldn’t take chances with their lives like that. They were too important. But if he were on his own…

“Robin? Why haven’t you cut any wires yet?” Hood barked, grunting as he took a punch. 

“Green, Robin. Cut the green!” Tim called. 

“You’re cutting it close, bud. You know I don’t have the fondest memories of bombs and would rather not repeat any of that,” Jason grunted. 

Damian pushed himself to stand. 

He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t just allow the bomb to go off, father would never forgive him for hurting his brothers. 

If Damian were on his own he could take the risk with no consequences. 

After all, mother always said to prioritize the mission over yourself. 

Damian grabbed the bomb and ran. 

“Robin! Hey—“ 

“Robin! Robin what- Robin!” 

Damian ignored his brother's yells, turning off his comm completely. He ignored the ache of his skull and he ran. He ran as fast as he could with the nausea curling in his gut. He just needed to get far enough away that his brothers would be safe. Then he could stop. 

Damian ran. 

And ran. 

When he finally stopped there was a minute left. He prayed this was far enough.

Damian panted, hands shaking as he separated the dark grey from the lighter grey. By the time he managed to get the tangled mess separated there was ten seconds left. 

10

9

8

7

Damian’s hands shook as he pulled out his batarang. This was a gamble at best. A 50/50 shot. 

6

5

4

If he cut the right wire then he survived. 

The wrong wire, and everything was over. He'd be dead instantly and might even hurt his brothers.  

Damian didn’t mind if he was killed. His mind was completely on his older brothers. His decision could harm them. 

3…

2….

Damian closed his eyes and cut the light grey wire. 

He held his breath, expecting to feel sudden pain. Instead, there was nothing. He just stood there, bomb in hand. The timer was gone. 

It had worked. 

Damian’s relief was physical. He let out a sigh so large it almost hurt, and he dropped to his knees. 

He laid down slowly on his back, closing his eyes. Allowing his heartbeat to settle and his nausea to calm. 

Everything was fine.  

Damian wasn’t dead. His brothers weren’t hurt. Father wouldn’t hate him. 

Everything was okay. 

Damian’s headache was just beginning to fade when he was practically ripped off the ground. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Jason barked, grabbing Damian by the arm and hauling him up roughly. His grip was painfully tight, and Damian wasn’t quite sure if his brother knew how tight he was holding Damian. He’s never usually this rough  with him. 

“Do you know how stupid that was?! You had no idea when that thing was going to detonate and instead of cutting the damn green wire like we told you to you decide to- to what? Take a jog with a live bomb and hope it doesn’t blow you to pieces? Then just lay here like you’re dead and not answer any of our calls?! What were you going to do if—“

“Jason,” Tim interrupted, panting as he jogged to a stop. “You’re hurting him,” 

Jason looked down at his hold. He let go quickly as if he’d been burned and moved to hold the bridge of his nose. He turned away as if he couldn’t look at Damian.  

Much to Damian’s dismay, Tim hadn’t come to Damian’s defense. Instead he gave Damian a hard glare. “I don’t know what you thought you were doing, but whatever it is, it isn't more important than your life. You’re eight years old Damian, eight year olds don’t run away with ticking time bombs strapped to their chests! What’s wrong with you!”

Damian’s eyes felt hot. “I did what I had to! I wasn’t going to risk the bomb exploding and killing us all?”

“There is no risk, Damian! Cut the wire we tell you to! It was a homemade bomb, how much more simple can it get?” Tim yelled back, flailing his arms helplessly. 

Jason turned back angrily, pointing an accusatory finger. 

“Youre lucky if we ever let you patrol again because it’s clear you don’t understand what your life means. You can’t just gamble on it like that! What were you going to do if it went off?! Let us pick up your pieces to bring home to dad?”

“Jason,” Tim scolded. 

“No, I’m begin serious. This is serious Damian. When we say cut the green wire that means cut the damn green wire!” 

“How am I supposed to know what that means?! That doesn’t help me at all! I didn’t know which one to cut, and I wasn’t going to take a chance with you there!”

Tim went quiet. 

“The hell do you mean you don’t know?! We told you a thousand times! Cut. The. Green. Wire!” 

“I tried!” Damian stomped despite himself. 

Jason threw his hands up and turned away in frustration. Angerly muttering. 

Tim was silent for a moment, tilting his head. He kneeled in front of Damian to get his attention. 

“Dames, hey. What color is your suit?” Tim asked softer than before, tapping a finger against Damian’s chest. Damian looked down at his suit. It looked grey to him. But he knew it wasn’t. Not really. Not to everyone else. Everyone seemed to know the names for the different types of greys and Damian didn’t understand how. 

“Red,” he answered, biting his tongue when his voice wavered. This was stupid. He wasn’t a child who couldn’t emotionally regulate confrontation. 

“Why’s it red, Dames?” 

Jason had turned back and was staring at Damian. He was squinting his eyes like he does with particularly difficult cases he was trying to solve. 

“Because you told me it was. Robin is red,” Damian insisted. 

“What color are your eyes, buddy?”

“…I don’t know,” Damian’s voice was dangerously close to a wine and he couldn’t stop it. His body betrayed him by letting out a sob. The adrenaline crash mixing with high emotions into a childish mix mother would loathe. “Grey,” 

“Green, bud. Your eyes are green," 

“I don’t— I don’t understand,” Damian snapped, chest heaving with his attempts to hold back his sobs. His attempts were in vain. He hugged his arms to his chest.  “Everyone seems to know the names to all the greys and I don’t! I don’t know, I don’t understand why one is called red and one is called green when they look the exact same! I—I tried so hard to get it but I don’t, I—I tried to tell the wires apart but I couldn’t. They look—they both look grey!”

Damian was pathetically sobbing by now, chest heaving like he was some little kid. 

“And—and I didn’t know which one to cut so I had to guess and I wasn’t going to take chances with your lives. So I had to do it on my own where nobody else would be hurt,” 

“I know bud.” Tim pulled Damian into a hug as if he were a small child in need of comfort. Damian isn’t sure what came over him, but he didn’t pull back. Instead he just pathetically sniffled against his big brother's chest. 

“What? What does this have anything to do with his suicide attempt? What is he talking about, Tim?” 

“He’s colorblind, Jason.”

Damian sniffled miserably, trying to stop crying. He frowned in offense. “I’m not blind! I can see,” 

“Colorblind Buddy. It means you can’t see certain colors,” 

“Oh, crap,” Jason realized quietly. He gave a long sigh and walked over, kneeling beside them. He reached out and rubbed Damian’s back.  

“Hey, look at me. When we run into stuff like this, we make sure everyone’s evacuated safely. Nobody is going to sacrifice themselves. You gave us a heart attack, Dames.” Tim said. 

“Sorry,” Damian sniffled. 

“We’re going to talk about this later,” Jason promised, “But for now, let me look at your head.”

“I’m fine,” Damian insisted. 

“After tonight you don’t get to say you’re fine until you’re thirty. You’re lucky if we even let you get a paper cut ever again.” Tim squeezed Damian playfully but softly. “Let’s head home, bud,”

“And don’t think we’re letting you get out of this. You’re explaining this to dad as soon as we get home,” Jason warned.  

Damian groaned, but for the first time in his life, things didn’t feel so grey.