Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Nest wasn’t silent, but it was focused.

Papers rustled as Dick moved another file into his ‘already read’ pile, highlighter dragged down the length of a paragraph in bright, determined yellow. Jason sat in one of the mismatched kitchen chairs he’d dragged over, boots kicked up on the edge of the coffee table, leafing through a stack of Leslie’s scanned medical notes. The laptop on his left scrolled through timestamped metadata; the one on his right displayed a legal reference site, tabs labeled custody , abuse documentation , parental rights , and psychological harm.

Tim stood barefoot at the whiteboard near the living room wall, a marker in one hand, a printed intake record in the other. His shoulders were tense beneath an oversized hoodie, sleeves pushed up to the elbows. The whiteboard had already been split into three sections: Physical Evidence , Emotional/Psychological Harm , and Legal Strategy. His handwriting was quick, sharp, and clinical.

“Alright,” Tim said, tapping the marker against the board. “What’s first?”

“Compiling all documentation and proof of emotional, physical, or psychological abuse,” Dick replied without looking up, flipping a page. “There’s some inconsistencies and notes of malnourishment in Leslie’s files. Stuff like weight loss, reduced iron levels—she clocked it last winter.”

Tim nodded and scribbled:
- Leslie’s notes: malnourishment, weight irregularities, lab results.

“Is there anything we can use as a baseline?” Jason asked, tilting his head as he zoomed in on a photo from a medical folder. “Like, documentation from when he first got here. Something that shows he was in decent health before.”

“Yeah,” Tim said, already moving to a storage bin at the base of the bookshelf. He rifled through a few folders before pulling one free. “Leslie did an initial intake when Damian first arrived. Vitals, basic nutrition profile. We can use that as a before-and-after reference.”

He returned to the board and added beneath the bullet:
- Compare to intake records on arrival.

Jason leaned forward, grabbing a manila envelope from the table. “He’s also had to show up at galas and Wayne events with visible injuries. Not often, but I remember at least two where he had a split lip or bruised knuckles.”

“Public photos?” Tim asked, flipping through a different stack beside the printer.

“Tabloids. Gotham Weekly, maybe a few from those overseas press sites after that fundraiser trip.”

Tim pressed his lips together, nodding tightly, then added to the list:
- Tabloid/event photos with visible injury (match to dates of known incidents).

Dick spoke again, setting his file aside and grabbing his phone. “I’ll start pulling those now. Reverse image search might help narrow down the originals.”

“Okay, that’s physical,” Tim said, drawing a divider line under the section. “What about psychological and emotional?”

Jason set his folder down, arms crossing loosely over his chest. “Verbal degradation.”

“Do we have proof?”

“Not audio,” Dick muttered, frowning as he scrolled through photos. “We have video, but it’s from the cave and patrol…”

“What if we say it was just audio?” Jason offered. “Say we were testing something for WE or DI and it picked something up by accident.”

Tim tilted his head, thinking. “As long as we don’t claim it’s video, yeah. That could work.”

“I think that would actually hold up,” Dick said.

Jason smirked. “Don’t sound so surprised, Dickwing.”

Dick rolled his eyes but didn’t argue.

Tim leaned in, writing:
- Audio evidence: verbal abuse, tone, threats.
- Emphasis on pattern, not isolated incident.

“Based on what I heard earlier in the cave,” Jason continued, grabbing a pen and tapping it against his lip, “it’s stuff like ‘disappointment,’ ‘uncivilized,’ ‘you’re not worthy’—that kind of language. We could get a linguistic analysis done to show consistent use of demeaning rhetoric.”

“That’s… actually a good point,” Tim murmured, and added a sub-bullet.
- Consider psychological profiling based on recorded language.

Dick sat back against the couch. “Bruce is a control freak. That’s not new, but we might be able to make the case that it moved into harmful territory.”

“He pulled Damian out of school to homeschool him,” Jason said. “That’s a paper trail we can get. We just need the withdrawal date and who signed off on it.”

Tim pulled open a drawer from the TV stand and dug out a school records binder. “Got it.”

He added:
- Withdrawal from school → began isolation.
- Loss of routine, peers, structure.

He paused. “Damian said something else. About Zitka. He said he had to hide him because Bruce was going to do something.”

Jason’s pen froze mid-tap.

“That motherfu—”

“I’ve got it on audio,” Tim cut in, quiet but firm. “It’s clean. The date and time are embedded in the metadata.”

Jason’s jaw clenched. “Good. That’s good. Use that.”

Dick leaned forward again. “If that’s on record, we can argue it shows clear emotional harm. Threatening a child’s safe object or companion is—”

“—textbook psychological control,” Tim finished.

He wrote:
- Threatened destruction of a safe item (Zitka) → controlling behavior.

Jason looked down at another printed file, flipping through it with slower fingers now. “Anything else you think we missed?”

Tim’s marker stilled over the whiteboard. He didn’t look up, grasp growing momentarily tighter.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “He blames himself.”

The older boy glanced up, eyes filled with concern. “For what?”

“For existing,” Tim replied, tone steady but eyes sharp. “He told me he was a mistake. That he was born wrong. That Bruce told him he shouldn’t exist.”

Neither Jason or Dick spoke first. Tim finally reached up and wrote in the Emotional Harm section:
- Induced guilt over own existence.
- Emotional abandonment.

Jason exhaled roughly. “That’s worse than I thought. And if you dig deep enough… it’s not just the ‘shouldn’t exist’ thing. Bruce told him it was his fault. That if he hadn’t been born, everything would’ve been better.”

Dick’s voice was barely a whisper. “Why the hell would he even say that?”

Tim’s jaw tightened. “Because it wasn’t entirely consensual,” he said, voice low and deliberate. “Bruce hadn’t been careful, and Talia lied about being on birth control.”

Jason gave a low whistle. “That’s… damn.”

“Yeah.” Tim added under the list:

 - Learned of non-consensual conception. Internalized blame.

The three of them sat with that for a beat, silence settling like dust.

Eventually, Jason broke it. “Okay. What’s next?”

“Inconsistencies,” Tim said, pulling a binder from the bottom shelf. “We need to list every time Bruce contradicted himself—about guardianship, about education, even about Damian’s whereabouts. Anything that makes him look unstable or negligent.”

“I’ll start going through the school records for attendance gaps,” Dick offered, already flipping pages. “Also any medical reports that don’t line up with incident logs.”

Jason cracked his knuckles and opened a new folder. “I’ll cross-reference them with patrol reports. I bet there’s nights Damian was out injured that no one officially logged.”

Tim reached for his laptop. “And I’ll sort through audio and compile a timeline.”

As the marker scratched across the whiteboard, and files clicked open one after another, the room no longer buzzed with quiet urgency.

Now, it moved with something heavier.

Intention.

Determination.

Defense.

And the steady building of a case that, brick by brick, might be the foundation of Damian’s safety.

Chapter Text

The living room had dimmed as afternoon tipped into early evening. A single floor lamp cast a soft glow across the whiteboard, the marker-streaked surface now cluttered with bullet points and half-boxed phrases. On the couch, Dick had shed his jacket, sleeves rolled up, thighs balancing a binder full of student records marked Gotham Academy – Drake Custody Archive. Jason had kicked off his boots and was now seated cross-legged on the floor, his laptop on the coffee table in front of him, as he scanned attendance records and archived school emails.

Tim stood once again at the whiteboard, hands stained faintly with red and black ink. His fingers smelled like dry-erase and cold coffee. He didn’t stop moving.

“So,” he said, marker uncapped in a single motion, “next is probably inconsistencies.”

Jason huffed, clicking into a new document. “There’s the classic: ‘I walked into a door’ when a kid shows up with a black eye.”

Dick looked up from his notes. “Or the one about ‘spraining a wrist’ while fencing with a private tutor. Even though the injury twist was lateral and didn’t match fencing form.”

Tim nodded slowly, writing under a new header:

Inconsistencies in Reported Injury Causes

    - Black eye → ‘door accident’ excuse

    - Sprained wrist → fencing fall (medically inconsistent

“There’s also the absences,” Jason added, tapping the trackpad. “Bruce has a bad habit of pulling Damian out for last-minute ‘family retreats.’ No advance notice. School logs the absence as unexcused until someone from legal calls.”

Tim added:

- Unplanned withdrawals (‘family emergencies’) with no documentation.
- Other family members that could counter alibis- noticeably elsewhere during referenced ‘family retreats’.

Dick’s expression darkened slightly. 

Jason frowned at the screen. “And then there’s this one—school counselor report, six months back. Damian told her he’d been ‘confined to his room’ for three days as punishment.”

Dick’s brows knit. “What?”

Tim scrolled further down. “It gets worse. The counselor logged that he seemed serious at first—withdrawn, flat affect. But when Bruce came in for a follow-up, Damian called it a ‘joke.’ Said he was exaggerating. The counselor flagged the retraction as possibly coached.”

Jason leaned back, arms crossed. “Three days locked up? That’s solitary. That’s—” He cut himself off, jaw tightening.

Dick shook his head. “Bruce doesn’t—he wouldn’t—” But his voice faltered, and the silence after said enough.

Tim’s tone was quiet but steady. “Even if Bruce didn’t, the fact Damian thought to describe it that way means it’s how he experienced it. And if the school heard him say it once, they’ll always suspect it’s true.”

Jason muttered, “Because it probably is.”

Then, quieter, almost fragile, Dick spoke in a low voice. “He ever talk about it again?”

Tim capped the marker, setting it down with deliberate care. “Not directly. But… after that, I started hearing little things. Half-finished sentences. The way he’d deflect when anyone called him ‘good.’ Like the idea didn’t fit.”

The silence stretched, filled only by the faint hum of the lamp.

Jason opened a second window and began drafting a request for old nurse logs and counselor emails.

Tim watched them for a beat, then asked, “Weren’t there behavioral concerns, too?”

The eldest hesitated, steadying himself before flipping a page. “Yeah. One time, when I came to pick him up, his teacher said something about him being withdrawn. That he wasn’t talking to anyone. And when Bruce picks him up he tries to find ways to stay longer, even if it means getting in trouble later.”

Tim’s hand tightened slightly around the marker, but he kept his voice even. “That could help us. If we can get her statement, even informally.”

His jaw clenched, grief and rage mixing. “I should’ve seen it. All of it. I should’ve known.”

“You couldn’t have,” The younger said gently, pausing by the edge of the whiteboard. “Bruce is good at all this. He controls the narrative. That’s not on you.”

“But it feels like it is,” Dick muttered. “You’re my little brother, and you’re standing here building a case to save our little brother because none of us did it soon enough.”

“Maybe,” Tim said, setting down the marker. “But I wouldn’t change it. Not for anything.”

Jason didn’t speak, but the corner of his mouth twitched in something almost like a smile.

“I think not too long after that incident,” Dick said slowly, “Damian got pulled from that school entirely.”

“Yeah,” Tim confirmed, walking back to the couch and pulling open a drawer under the coffee table. He shuffled through old correspondence. “Bruce transitioned him to homeschool with barely a notice. The email to the school was two sentences. No syllabus. No educational plan. Just... removed.”

“That made it easier,” he said grimly. “To conceal injuries. To avoid teachers and nurses who might’ve asked questions.”

Dick flipped to the next page. “And no mandated reporters.”

Tim returned to the whiteboard and wrote, slower this time:

- Transition to homeschool → removed oversight from teachers, counselors, nurses.

- Facilitated concealment of harm.

“I’m going to look into academic records for the homeschooling period,” he said, stepping over to one of the laptops. “If Bruce can’t produce lesson plans, transcripts, or progress reports… that’s going to look very bad for him.”

Jason leaned back and stretched. “Especially if we can prove the ‘homeschooling’ was mostly just Damian left alone in a study room while Bruce was on patrol or overseas.”

Tim nodded. “We’ll request everything. If it doesn’t exist—”

“Then we’ve got another brick in the wall,” Dick finished.

Tim marked a final note on the board:

- Missing educational oversight = academic neglect.

The board was nearly full now. Every bullet was another piece of the puzzle. Another truth that needed to be said aloud.

They weren’t just building a case.

They were documenting a childhood that had been quietly stolen.

Chapter Text

The room had changed within the hour.

The air felt heavier, the whiteboard more crowded. Dick had started sticking Post-it notes around its borders, unable to wedge more between the dense writing. Jason had shed his jacket, working in a black t-shirt that matched the tension in his jaw. While their younger brother was curled up on the floor, laptop across his knees, a stack of printouts growing taller beside him.

The Nest, once a haven, now resembled the quiet center of a storm, full of shuffled papers stained by coffee and illuminated by the soft hum of righteous fury.

“We need to list the bullshit,” Jason said flatly. “Every time Bruce fed the public, the school, or anyone else a cover story so wild it made less sense than the truth.”

Tim nodded slowly. “Start with the retreats.”

The eldest of the three shifted in his seat. “The unsupervised ones?”

Jason scoffed. “Yeah, like the ‘spiritual cleansing in Bhutan’ or the ‘family reconnection in Patagonia.’” He grabbed a pen and started scrawling on a legal pad. “No contact. No check-ins. Damian just vanished for three to five days with Bruce. No school, no explanation.”

“Half the time,” Tim said, typing quickly, “the rest of the family was verifiably in Gotham or elsewhere. I’ve got timestamps. Damian was never with the group.”

He opened a shared document and began listing:

• Private retreats (Bhutan, Patagonia, “desert training”) — no school notice, no backup contact, complete isolation.
  
  

“And they never had anyone else there. No Alfred, no medical backup, no security detail,” Dick added, frowning. “Just Bruce and Damian.”

Jason grunted. “That’s not a retreat. That’s isolation.”

Tim added:

• No third-party oversight during ‘trips’ → unchecked power, control.
  
  

“What about the excuses for injuries?” Dick asked, flipping back through his notes. “I remember one where Damian had a hairline fracture in his arm, and Bruce told the ER staff he fell rock climbing in Nepal.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “The kid was twelve. There was no trip to Nepal. It was January.”

Tim scrolled through a tabloid article. “And he told Gotham Academy that Damian bruised his ribs from a ‘rare horse vaulting accident’ at the manor.”

“Horse vaulting,” he repeated, deadpan. “Inside the city limits. With no horses.”

Tim added to the board:

• Implausible injury excuses: “rock climbing in Nepal,” “horse vaulting accident,” “slipped while scaling the west tower.”
  
  
• Used to deflect attention from bruising, sprains, and fractures. No matching documentation.
  
  

Dick sat back, arms folded. “We should highlight how none of the claims match medical follow-up. Most of the time Damian didn’t even get real care.”

Tim looked up. “Exactly. Half his treatment came from Alfred or Leslie. Bruce only brought him in if it was too visible or couldn’t be ignored.”

Jason sat forward, suddenly tense. “Do we have dates where care was delayed? Where he went without treatment?”

“I have at least three,” he said, pulling up a private file. “Two minor concussions that didn’t get medical attention until days later. One time Damian re-dislocated his shoulder during training and Bruce just… popped it back in and moved on.”

Jason cursed under his breath.

Tim added to the board:

• Withholding medical care → concussions, untreated injuries, delayed response.
  
  
• Bruce refused an external evaluation of Damian
  
  

Dick leaned forward, voice low. “Can we talk about the routines?”

Tim blinked, then nodded once. “Yeah. We should.”

“He had Damian on a sleep schedule that would’ve broken most adults,” Jason said. “Waking him before dawn, nightly training, no breaks.”

“No consistent mealtimes,” The eldest added. “Everything was conditional. Earned. If he underperformed, meals were delayed or cut.”

“That’s discipline in Bruce’s eyes,” Jason muttered. “But it’s control. Flat-out abuse.”

Tim started a new section titled Patterns of Control:

• Extreme physical routines → disrupted sleep, conditional meals, constant exhaustion.
  
  
• Punitive structure disguised as training.
  
  

“And then there’s the isolation,” he said quietly, eyes fixed on the screen. “No contact with school friends. Tutors dismissed without notice. No extracurriculars unless Bruce was directly overseeing them.”

“I remember Damian asking about joining chess club,” Dick said, voice tight. “Bruce said no. Said it was a distraction.” 

“He didn’t want Damian having anyone who wasn’t him.”

Tim’s voice was flat as he wrote:

• Intentional isolation → removal of tutors, blocked social opportunities, no independent activities.
  
  
• All support filtered through Bruce alone.
  
  

For a long moment, no one said anything.

The whiteboard was nearly full again. The documents were becoming damning. Not just because of what had happened—but because of how intentional it all looked now, laid out, dissected, undeniable.

“Okay,” Tim said quietly. “This is enough for tonight. We’ll revisit patterns of escalation next.”

Jason leaned back in his chair with a slow exhale.

Dick got up, walked to the kitchen, and poured a glass of water with shaking hands.

And Tim just sat there, fingers still resting on the keyboard, staring at the list they’d made.

Because Damian had lived it.

And now they were naming it.