sassycassie-s-series

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 34

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG-11/T- (for violence)

Notes: (Masterlist) At some point I don’t think I’ll be able to link all the chapters because Tumblr hates me. Anyway, I’m rising from the void because quarantine. Enjoy!

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @welovegroot @probsjosh  @spooder-moon​ @lostredrobin @haylo4ever @na-n-na @rachelmorganroth  @reclusive-chicken-nugget​

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26, Ch 27, Ch 28, Ch 29, Ch 30, Ch 31, Ch 32, Ch 33

^^^^^

I sat on the stairs in the foyer, idly browsing my social media feeds like it was the morning paper—my Cloudburst account was always hopping—and waiting for Bruce to come home. Jon’s Superboy account was logged into finally and he was responding to every Tweet I’d made as Cloudburst, apologizing for not getting on and seeing earlier. Remarking it was nice to see me again after so long. I was smiling at his definite overuse of excited emojis but he was a sweet kid.

The front door opened.

Bruce and Alfred both came in.

I jumped up immediately. “Hi!” I greeted.

“Morning Nora,” Bruce said, sounding like he hadn’t had any coffee yet.

“Good morning, Miss McCloud,” Alfred agreed as I rushed across the foyer to hug them both.

“Morning,” I replied. I dropped onto my heels after tilting up onto my tiptoes to hug Bruce since he was so tall. “How was Metropolis?”

Bruce shrugged. “Hm. Boring,” he said.

I nodded. “I see. Y’know, I'm surprised Clark didn’t come keep an eye on us while you were gone,” I joked.

“Who says he didn’t?” Bruce mumbled, heading straight for the kitchen.

Well, crap. Hopefully Clark didn’t see anything between me and Damian if he did keep an eye on us and report it to Bruce before I could say anything.

“Huh. Fair point,” I relented. “Hey, listen, Bruce? Can we talk?”

“Those words are never followed by good news,” Bruce said, looking grumpy, as he found the half-emptied coffee pot and a mug.

I rolled my eyes. “No. ‘We need to talk’ is never followed by good news. I asked if we can talk and I was careful to phrase it that way,” I retorted. Bruce eyed me irritably over the top of his mug as he took a long drink.

“Okay. Talk,” he said after he swallowed.

I shook my hair out of my face and pushed some of it behind my ear. “Welp, long story short I don’t want to go back to the past, anymore,” I said.

Bruce coughed on his next gulp. “What?” he asked.

I was half-tempted to pull a cranky teenager and say, “You heard me!” but I didn’t. Instead I just shrugged. “I don’t want to go back to the past anymore. I know we still need to close the Time Bombs case and reopen the timeways but once they’re opened I still wanna stay here,” I said. Bruce lowered his eyebrows.

“Why?”

“There are a couple reasons,” I said, trying my best to maintain my cool as my ears grew warm. I covered them with my hair as subtly as I could. Messing with my hair was a quirk of mine so I doubted Bruce would even notice. “One of them is… I think my disappearance is, like, a fixed point in the timeline. Kinda like how in every timeline where Jason meets you as Batman, he ends up dying. Like if I went back to that Time Bomb attack eight years ago, I’d go missing some other way. Maybe then I’d never return.”

“And the other reasons?”

“I don’t want to go back and screw up this future now because messing with time scares me and I don’t know what would happen to you guys,” I continued. Bruce started taking another drink. I waited till he swallowed to continue. “And, lastly, there’s no two ways about it: I’ve fallen in love with Damian and I don’t want to leave him.” I rushed out the last part so it ended up sounding more like, “I’vefallenlovewiDamiananIdonwannaleaveim.”

Bruce had to just stare at me for several long moments while he figured out and processed what I said. During the silent moments I felt my heart rate rising and my hands start sweating nervously.

Once he understood what I said, the staring continued. But this time with raised eyebrows as he figured out what to say.

Finally, he seemed to gather his thoughts. “You’ve… fallen in love… with Damian,” he said.

“Yes,” I said plainly. I kept my sass out of my tone because I didn’t want to provoke him into a parental freak-out and/or a Batdad lecture.

“What?!” he demanded. “When did this happen?”

“Relatively recently,” I answered. “While you were gone.”

“Nora, don’t you think you’re jumping into that lake a little too fast?” he asked.

“B, there’s been attraction between he and I since I got here,” I said. “We just kept staring and sharing these moments of profound closeness and then fighting the feeling that we wanted to be together and I just… I can’t do it anymore.”

“Does he know?”

“I should hope so. The kiss was mutual,” I said, purposely leaving out everything else that happened between his son and me. Ease him into it.

“Oh so you kissed,” he stated.

“Mmhmm,” I said.

There was a pause.

“Are you mad?” I asked finally.

Bruce regarded me for another moment while I twisted a piece of my hair nervously around my fingers. He took a deep breath, set his coffee down, and sighed. “No,” he decided on. “I'm not angry.”

I wondered if I was supposed to ask what he was feeling about the idea of me and Damian dating. Or if he was feeling anything. I wondered if I even wanted to know.

Ultimately, I decided not to say anything. If Bruce wanted to say more, he would.

He took another long drink of his coffee—finishing his mug before pouring himself another one. I picked at the scabs on my knuckles while leaning against the kitchen counter and waiting for him to say something else—to express his approval or disapproval. I licked my lower lip and chewed on it with a crease between my eyebrows.

“Nora, relax,” Bruce said after a moment.

“I…” I said before just trailing off and trying to smooth out my face.

When that didn’t work, Bruce just sighed. “I'm going to go have a word with my son,” he said, taking his coffee with him.

I caught his elbow. “Don’t yell at him, please. We both… we both want this.”

Bruce just set his free hand on the top of my head. “I'm not going to yell, princess,” he said affectionately.

“Promise?” I pressed.

Bruce ruffled my hair. “I promise,” he said before leaving.

I peeled a scab off my knuckles completely—making it bleed again—and headed for the Batcave.

^^^^^

“Madam, we know it worked,” a man at the table said. “Access to the time-stream has been completely locked down. No one can travel through time except at the normal rate. What more is there to fear?”

The shadowy figure at the head of the table sighed. “Two of the missing from the initial attacks eight years ago returned after the secondary attacks now. Nora McCloud and that vigilante. Stormy or whatever her name is. The short one with the blue accents that isn’t Nightwing. There is no guarantee that the others who went missing aren’t also going to return. The Flash. Impulse. Kid Flash. If the speedsters were to come back, time travel would open up again, meaning the changes we made could be undone.”

“So what do we do?” a councilor asked.

“We capture the vigilante. See what she knows. If she’s found out why we went back to the past, we wipe her memory or take her out.”

“And the McCloud girl? She was the daughter of—”

“We can’t touch her,” the woman at the head of the table snapped. “She is practically the Princess of Gotham. We get close to her and Brucie Wayne will find a way to tear us apart. Besides, she doesn’t know anything about the purpose behind the attacks. If she did, the press would have blown that story waaay up before we could stop her. As it is, they’re too busy debating whether or not she’s dating her foster brother—meaning Little Miss McCloud has no idea.”

“Are you sure about that, ma’am? I just want—”

“Silence! I have spoken to her myself. She knows nothing. We don’t need the fire of that pathetic playboy Bruce Wayne burning under us. Everyone in the city knows how overprotective he is of those kids he takes in.”

“Yes ma’am. Apologies.”

“And if Princess McCloud did know something, she would have told me.” The woman leaned forward, revealing her face in the light. “She doesn’t keep secrets from the people she trusts.”

^^^^^

Damian leaned against the table I was sitting at in the Batcave. “Did he yell at you?” I asked, not looking up.

He chuckled quietly. “No. However he did inform me that he promised you he wouldn’t yell at me. Father is not often in the business of making promises—especially ones he cannot keep. Unless those promises are to his girls. Grayson was right the night you arrived here with me. Father likes his girls more than his boys. He may love us all the same but he likes his girls better.”

I snorted and rolled my eyes. “So what did he say to you?”

Damian pushed off the table to find another chair. He sat down near me and took my hand. “He told me you told him how we feel about each other that we wanted to be together. He said he didn’t know what to think or feel about it. We both know it is not his decision on whether or not we choose to pursue a relationship, but I believe his approval and acceptance would be beneficial to both of us. I, for one, would feel guilty attempting to pursue you without his acceptance and I believe you would feel similarly. Though, please correct me if I'm wrong.”

“You’re not,” I said. He rarely was wrong. “I would feel terrible trying to be with you if I knew Bruce really disapproved. He’s like a second father to me and I’ve been trying for years to make sure I make him proud and do right by everything he’s ever done for me.”

Damian sucked the backs of his front teeth. “Tt. I understand and agree.”

Someone cleared their throat nearby. I jumped with a yelp. Damian wasn’t so easily startled and turned in the direction of the noise.

Bruce stood there, barely out of the shadows, arms folded over his chest and watching us.

Dang it, I thought. OG Bats definitely hasn’t lost his stealthy touch.

“Hooowww… how long have you been standing there?” I asked awkwardly, picking at another scab on my knuckles as anxiety took over again.

“Long enough,” Bruce grunted. He pulled a chair over and sat so the three of us formed a loose scalene triangle—none of the distances between us equal. He leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees, hands hanging in empty space between them. “Kids, you two have grown up into mature, responsible young adults. I don’t say it enough, but I am proud of you. Both of you. And… if I seem…” He scrunched his eyebrows, searching for the right words. “Hrn. Hesitant. It’s because you’re my kids. And… and I want you to be happy but…”

“Not with each other?” Damian challenged, eyes narrowing slightly.

Bruce closed his eyes and sighed, reaching one hand up and pinching the bridge of his nose—something Damian had picked up from him, by the looks of it. “That’s not what I meant, son,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t approve. It’s just—”

OOOOOWOP! OOOOOWOP! OOOOOWOP! OOOOOWOP!

A siren started blaring through the cave. “What the heck is that?” I demanded.

—

Next (coming soonish)

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 33

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG-11/T- (for violence)

Notes: (Masterlist) This one jumps around a bit. Hopefully it’s not too difficult to follow.

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @welovegroot @probsjosh  @spooder-moon @lostredrobin @haylo4ever @na-n-na @rachelmorganroth  @reclusive-chicken-nugget​ 

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26, Ch 27, Ch 28, Ch 29, Ch 30, Ch 31, Ch 32

^^^^^

“So, what do we do, Damian?” I asked quietly as Damian and I sat in my room on the floor across from each other. Jon had left to go home to Metropolis so we were alone to have our private discussion.

Damian reached across the distance between us and took one of my hands in both of his. “I want to be with you more than I’ve ever wanted to be with anyone else. However I don’t believe we should go public with any sort of romantic relationship immediately. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you’ve been back nearly two weeks less than you have actually been in this future, which would make it seem as though you haven’t been back long enough to be in a romantic relationship—perhaps.”

“What about Bruce?”

Damian’s eyes dropped to our hands. “He returns from Metropolis tomorrow,” Damian said. “As I said earlier, he could look between the two of us and make an accurate estimate of what we’ve done while he was gone if he believed we had something to hide. I can tell him that we’ve fallen in love and intend to pursue a relationship—”

“No,” I interrupted. “Let… let me tell him.”

“Nora?” Damian asked, using my name instead of why?

I sighed. “If I tell him he might… freak out less. You know what I mean? Like, if I say I don’t want to go back to the past and explain why… I doubt he’d drop his coffee.”

I set my other hand on top of Damian’s hand holding my other one. I looked up and met his eyes.

“I love you, Damian Wayne. Strange as our situation is, it’s true.”

He gave me the widest and most genuine smile I’d ever seen from him—or either blood Wayne for that matter. “I love you as well, Nora McCloud.” He leaned forward. I closed the distance and pressed our lips together.

It was a far less heated kiss than the night before. Instead it was simple and tender, full of softer emotions than passion.

Damian pulled away first. “I believe you’re correct. You informing Father would be far safer.” He squeezed my hand. “And in a few weeks—perhaps even a month—we will announce that Nora McCloud and Damian Wayne are officially together.”

I snorted. “Press can finally have their field day about us,” I said.

Damian bounced an eyebrow. “S’pose so,” he agreed.

I smirked. “Let them,” I said.

Damian tutted. “Tt. Alright then.”

“But in private, are we officially together now?”

“Only if you agree to be.”

“I do. Heartily.”

We both snickered.

^^^^^

WHAM! My foot connected to the mugger’s chest—and I was fairly certain I heard a rib separate from his sternum. Yowch.

“Batman’s smitten,” Jason said in the open channel. Tonight it was all of us out on patrol except Tim, who volunteered to be on monitor duty. Dick and Jason had told Cass and Tim that Damian and I were in love and semi-officially a couple while we were in private.

I glanced around to see Damian standing on top of a building that made up one of the walls of the alley I was in, looking down at me. Even from my distance below I could see him grinning. I smiled back at him, whacked the mugger again and effectively knocked him out, and nodded to the man he’d been trying to steal from. “Are you alright, sir?” I asked.

He nodded.

“GCPD is on its way,” Damian supplied to me.

“The cops will be here soon,” I said to the man. “They’ll take your statement.” As I spoke I tied up the mugger. “He’ll be out for at least an hour.”

“Are you leaving?” the man asked me, looking a bit spooked by the mugger.

I gave him a smile. “Not if you don’t want me to,” I said, rocking back and forth on my heels. I realized how that could sound if taken the wrong way and quickly amended, “Not if you feel unsafe alone here with this man.” I didn’t need this guy hitting on me or trying any funny business when Damian was literally only a few stories above me. That being said, most of the creeps and misogynists in this city knew that trying anything rude with a girl in a mask and body armor—Batgirl, the Spoiler, Orphan, Batwoman, Cloudburst, and any visiting female heroes—was a recipe for getting several bones broken and sometimes a verbal smack-down.

Didn’t always discourage them from trying, but I’d dislocated eight shoulders and paralyzed three sets vocal chords in the first two years of being Cloudburst and had since lost track of injuries I’d dealt to creeps who grabbed my backside or hands or other places or made disgusting comments.

As it was, this guy didn’t say anything rude or try to touch me.

I touched my comm-link. “By the way, Hood?” I said.

“Yes Cloudy?” Jason asked.

“Shut up,” I said.

I heard lots of snickering from the rest of the Bat-family.

After a few minutes of waiting, the cops came. Once they turned up, the mugging victim thanked me. I nodded and shot a grappling hook to the roof, whizzing out of sight. Once I swung onto the same rooftop as Damian, I felt his arm ensnare my waist and pull me closer to him. He tapped his comms to mute his microphone and smirked at me. “That was attractive,” he whispered.

I snickered and muted my mic too.

He leaned closer.

I put my hand between our lips before he could kiss me. “Batman and Cloudburst can’t be together, Damian,” I said quietly.

He closed his eyes and sighed with complaint. “Why not?”

“Because as far as civilians are concerned, Cloudburst is still between five and ten years older than Batman. That would be weird. And the coincidence of Nora McCloud returning only a week-and-a-half after Cloudburst can be ignored and forgotten. But Cloudburst and Batman getting caught kissing on a rooftop a month before Damian Wayne and Nora McCloud announce that they’re together is downright suspicious,” I said. “Especially coupled with Cloudburst and Nora’s reappearances.”

Damian pursed his lips and stared at me, his green eyes glinting through the eye holes of his cowl. “Alright,” he relented. “Batman and Cloudburst have a professional relationship.”

“You can kiss me in uniform when we get back to the Batcave,” I said quietly.

^^^^^

“Their mics are muted,” Jason remarked to Dick, Tim, and Cass on a private channel. “I can see them talking through my scope but I can’t hear them.”

“What do you mean, ‘scope’?” Dick asked. “Hood, you don’t have a sniper rifle, do you?”

Jason hesitated. “… No?”

“Hood!” Dick protested.

“Hey, wingding! Now is not the time! They’re being lovey-dovey and you’re complaining about me?!” Jason snapped.

“Okay. So their mics are muted so we can’t hear them. What do you mean, lovey-dovey?” Tim asked, interrupting the argument.

“Well Damian’s got his arm around her waist and she just stopped him from kissing her. She’s got this goofy type of lovestruck grin on her face and Damian is grinning. Grinning,” Jason told the others.

Tim and Dick both “Wow”ed Jason’s description.

“Who wants to bet twenty bucks on how long they date before Damian proposes?” Jason asked.

“Me!” Dick and Tim said at the same time.

“I will too,” Cass added.

“I bet six months and under,” Dick said.

“Whoa. Cutting that one fine, eh?” Tim wondered.

“Well it’s not entirely unheard of—especially if both parties know each other well before becoming a couple,” Dick said, a shrug in his voice.

“Which they don’t,” Jason deadpanned.

“Shut up,” Dick retorted. “Sure they do. Cloudy probably knows Damian better than anyone except B, Alfred, and maybe me. Heaven knows she put forth the effort to do so.”

“Mm,” Jason grunted, unconvinced.

“I will bet six months to a year,” Cass said.

“Hmm. A year to two years,” Tim put in.

“Then I guess I bet two years or any amount longer,” Jason said.

Dick scoffed. “Oh please. I know them. Marriage is an important concept to Cloudy and Damian was raised with the League of Assassins where I'm relatively positive arranged marriages for political reasons aren’t uncommon. I doubt they’ll date that long before getting married.”

“Well twenty bucks says we’ll see, then, hmm?” Jason challenged.

“Guess so,” Dick agreed.

“Yup,” Tim said.

“Yes,” Cass added.

^^^^^

“By the way, we should probably sleep in separate rooms when we get back tonight,” I said. “Because Bruce will be back in the morning and I don’t want to have to edit more security camera footage.” I’d already told Damian that Jason and Dick had taken care of the night before’s recordings. “Plus I don’t know when he’ll be back and I don’t want him to come check on you and find us, y’know, in bed together.”

Damian thought for a moment, still holding me close. “You are… correct. We should probably stay in our own rooms anyway, for as much as we can help it. As though we’re a couple who does not live together yet,” he said.

I nodded. “I agree,” I said.

Damian let me go with a little smirk and jerked his head toward the highest buildings in Gotham. “Let’s go finish this patrol,” he said.

I smiled. “Sounds good,” I agreed. He squeezed my hand before letting go. We took off running over the rooftop and leapt off the side at the same time, unmuting our comms as we went. My hair streamed behind me in the wind as we swung off toward the deeper parts of Gotham. I whooped. I’d never get tired of this.

^^^^^

Damian and I climbed out the Batmobile, beating everyone else back to the Batcave. Except Tim. Who was no longer sitting at the bat-computer and probably up in the shower. Damian and I met at the front hood of the car. Damian rested his hands on my waist, tugging me gently closer. My hands found his shoulders. “May I give you a kiss goodnight, my darling?” Damian asked.

I smiled. “You absolutely may,” I replied.

Damian bent down and pressed his lips to mine. I felt a small grin in his lips. “Everything will be alright,” he breathed when our lips parted but our foreheads rested together. “No matter how Father reacts. Everything will be alright.”

“I know,” I said. “I trust this. I trust you.” My hands slid up from his shoulders and around the back of his neck, my fingers sliding over the short hair on the back of his head.

“I would wait forever to be with you.”

“I would too. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen.” I tilted my head forward and kissed his cheek.

—

Next

[sassycassie-s-series]

I was reminded of this randomly today and I feel so warm and happy <3

someday i hope my ocs can be someones fave character. that’d b cool

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 32

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG-11/T- (for implied mature themes but nothing explicit)

Notes: (Masterlist) This story is so long. It really got away from me and got out of hand but... heck I still dig it! Also I’m aware this has taken forever to update, please don’t be mad at me.

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @welovegroot @probsjosh  @spooder-moon @lostredrobin @haylo4ever @na-n-na @rachelmorganroth  @reclusive-chicken-nugget

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26, Ch 27, Ch 28, Ch 29, Ch 30, Ch 31

^^^^^

I got swamped in a Superboy hug the second I entered the parlor. “Cloudy!” Jon exclaimed. “I can’t believe you’re alive! How come you still look the same as how I remember you? Shouldn’t you be older? How long have you been home without telling me? How come you never said anything? What’s really going on between you and Damian? What—”

“Kent!” Damian protested. “If you could shut your trap long enough for either of us to explain anything, that would be helpful.”

“Damian, play nice,” I said, giving Jon a hug back. “We’ll explain everything, Jon. Just settle down a little, okay?”

“Okay. Sorry,” Jon said.

The three of us sat down and Damian and I explained how I ended up in the future without aging after going missing for eight years. I laughed when he said that his parents hadn’t told him I was back even though his mom interviewed me—as Cloudburst—and his dad had Tweeted me when it was first discovered I was alive. “They probably thought you already knew,” I reasoned. “It’s not their fault you never check your social media.”

“Mm. Yeah probably,” Jon agreed sullenly.

Explaining that Damian and I had fallen in love with each other was a little more complicated, but after a lot of awkward silences and searching for words, we managed it. “But you can’t tell anyone,” I added at the end. “At least. Not yet. Just… don’t say anything about it. Please, Jon?”

“Can I talk to Richard about it?” Jon asked.

“No,” Damian and I said at the same time.

“Why not?”

“Because given half a chance he’d tell the entire Justice League about it. We don’t need anyone encouraging him,” Damian said.

“Why don’t you call him Dick?” I asked Jon, not meaning to change the subject exactly but genuinely curious.

Jon refused to meet my eyes. “Because it’s a bad word,” he mumbled.

I giggled. “Jonny, please never change,” I said.

Damian pinched the bridge of his nose. “Kent, you’re eighteen,” he said.

Jon pointed at me. “She’s twenty-one and she doesn’t swear!”

“Fair point,” I said, giving Damian a look. “But Jon, you still can’t say anything until we… go public about it, okay?”

“Ooh! Like a secret romance!” Jon said quietly.

“Yeah!” I agreed with a smile.

“Something like that,” Damian said, still pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

^^^^^

“Dick!” Jason hissed, hurtling around the doorframe and into Dick’s room. “Dick guess what?”

“What?” Dick asked, looking up from his phone.

“Cloudy and Damian—”

“Got it on? Did the dirty? Had some hanky-panky? Whatever euphemism you’re gonna use, I already know,” Dick said with a smile.

“How did you find out?”

“I heard shouting from Damian’s room and went to make sure nothing bad was happening and apparently Jon had snuck in through Damian’s window to ask him about something and found them lying naked in bed together. Which they still were when I got in there,” Dick said. “How did you figure it out?”

“I found Cloudy sneaking back into her room wearing the same clothes as yesterday and her hair was messier than usual. She said she passed out in the game room but I went in there after patrol this morning and she wasn’t there.”

Dick laughed. “I can’t believe it worked. And Bruce and Alfred thought a sleepover in Metropolis for that shareholders meeting or whatever was a waste of time,” he said. “BUT the two of them have sworn me to silence.”

“Yeah Cloudy practically begged me not to tell anyone,” Jason agreed.

“So we’re telling Cass and Tim right? Because they’re in on our little plot?”

“Absolutely.”

“Alfred will probably figure it out in two seconds, but let’s pray Bruce never finds out,” Dick said. “Because if he finds out…”

“He’ll kill them both. Twice,” Jason said.

“I wouldn’t go that far, but he might undo all our fine work of getting them alone all the time.”

“What do you mean? You don’t think he’d kick Cloudy out of the house, do you?”

“No. No. He wouldn’t kick Cloudy out. But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t forbid them from ever being alone together ever again while they both live in this house,” Dick said.

“And if they really love each other, one or both of them would move out immediately,” Jason mused.

“Yeah probably,” Dick agreed, chewing on his lower lip. “We gotta make sure B doesn’t find out for a while.”

“When’ll he be back from Metropolis?”

“Tomorrow, I think. It was a business trip. Something about boring board meetings at the Daily Planet.”

“So we have that long to make sure he doesn’t find out,” Jason said.

“Yup.”

“Then I guess we have some work to do.”

“Guess so,” Dick agreed.

^^^^^

“Maybe it’d be better if we just… never said anything,” I said to Damian and Jon, winding the end of my braid around my fingers.

Damian gave me an appalled look. “That was one of the best nights of my entire life and you wish to pretend it never happened?”

I sighed, refusing to meet his eyes and instead looking at my knees. “Just… just for a while. Just until we decide… what to do. Your father would kill me—and then you—and then me again if he knew what happened.”

“I assume he will walk into the house and immediately realize. He was called the greatest detective in the world for a reason,” Damian said.

I rubbed my temples. “I know. But… what else can we do?”

“Uh, guys? I feel like I shouldn’t be here for this talk,” Jon said, raising a hand like an awkward schoolboy trying to make a comment in class with a teacher he was scared of. “Really. I just came to get Damian’s help on something I’ve been following in Metropolis. You two should really talk about this in private when I'm not here.”

Damian sighed. “Fine. Come with me to the Batcave, Kent. We’ll discuss there. McCl—Nora, would you care to accompany us?”

“No, I uh, I’m going to go have a word with Dick. And maybe Jason. I’ll see you later. Good luck on your case, Jonny.”

“Thanks Cloudy,” Jon said, giving me a hug as we all stood up and left the parlor.

I climbed the stairs to Dick’s room and knocked on the door.

“Who is it?!” Dick called.

“Cloudy,” I replied.

“C’mon in!” Jason’s voice said.

I opened the door and shut it behind me. “Fantastic. Two birds with one stone. Almost literally,” I said quietly. Both of them glanced up at me. The streak of white in Jason’s hair was lit up a pale blue in the light of his laptop screen. Dick was on his bed and Jason at the desk. They both looked interested.

“I think I know what you’re going to say, Cloudy,” Dick said. I cocked an eyebrow.

“Oh yeah?” I challenged.

“Yeah. You’re going to order us not to tell anyone,” Dick continued, unperturbed.

“And we won’t,” Jason added.

“Except Tim and Cass,” Dick amended.

“What?! No!” I shrieked. “Listen, if every child in this family knows, then it’s just a matter of time before Bruce finds out and kills me, and then Damian, and then me again and then—”

“Nora! Relax,” Jason protested. He used my real name so I knew he was serious. “Big bird and I are taking care of it as we speak.”

“Huh?” I asked eloquently.

“Girl. Seriously? We’ve been trying to get you and Damian together since you got here and he pulled off his body armor and you stared at him!” Dick exclaimed. “Tim and Cass are in on it too! Why do you think we all convinced Alfred to force Damian into monitor duty for the night when you were taking the night off? His knee injury wasn’t even a pulled muscle. Two ibuprofens and he would have been fine for the night. But no. We wanted you to be alone together. We didn’t need backup at all. And hey, it worked.”

My face went slack the longer Dick talked. “Yeah but what do you mean you’re taking care of it?”

“There’s hallway footage of you two, er, kissing rather passionately that I'm currently erasing and replacing with earlier instances of you two going to your own rooms and then you sneaking out of his room this morning is also being erased and replaced with a couple seconds of nothingness until you came out of your own room all showered and dressed,” Jason said.

“Why?”

“Because we don’t want B to find out yet either,” Dick said.

“Why?”

Jason shrugged. “We don’t want either of you to move out yet and we figured one of you would if Bruce found out. Probably you.”

That was a fair point. “So… you’re not going to tell anyone?”

“Except Tim and Cass,” Dick said distractedly.

“No!” I protested. “No one!”

“We’ll keep the details secret if it means that much to you,” Jason said. “We’ll just say that you two finally admitted your feelings for each other or something.”

I sighed and put my hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Thank you. Seriously. Thank you.”

He smiled at me. “You’re welcome, Cloudy,” he said, reaching up and patting my back. “Can’t guarantee Tim won’t figure it out but—”

“But at least you’d have done your part,” I finished.

“Something like that,” Jason agreed.

I nodded—and then bit my lip. “Jay, can I ask you a question and have you give me a square answer?”

Jason pursed his lips. “I'm really more of a triangle guy but sure,” he said. I smacked him lightly upside the head. Nothing too painful. “Ow, hey!”

I looked him dead in the face. “What should I do?”

“Kid, that’s not a question I can be objective about. You know that,” Jason said. “I love you, Cloudy. You’re exactly the sister I would have loved to have my entire life but I only got you for a couple years. I want to protect you as much as I can but at the same time I want you to be happy.”

“How come you’re not asking me?” Dick asked.

“Because I already know your answer, Richard,” I said seriously. “Something corny about following my heart or doing what makes me happy. Plus I know you saw Damian as more of a son than a brother when you were both younger and I know you want him to be happy.”

Dick grumbled under his breath—something about me making a good point. I turned my attention back to Jason, eyebrows raised expectantly.

He sighed. “Cloudy: do what you want. Are you, like, actually legitimately in love with Damian?”

I chewed my lower lip for a moment. “Yeah,” I said.

“Then, heck, Clouds, date him!” Jason said. “Do what you want and what makes you happy. We both know if he’s ever less than respectful of you that you could kick his butt.” He used heck the way I believed it was originally intended to be used—like he couldn’t decide which curse word to use and ended up combining them. “Look, if you wanna be with him, then just do it. It’ll be a lot easier on all of us if you did anyway.”

I cocked my eyebrow again. “How so?”

“I swear every longing look you two threw at each other across the cave when you thought the other wasn’t looking was going to take a year-and-a-half off my lifespan.”

“He’s not alone,” Dick added. “I noticed too.”

I grunted. “Mm. Thanks,” I muttered.

“No problem. Now rest assured that everything is fine here and we’re taking care of ensuring Bruce doesn’t find out and go be with Damian if you want,” Jason said, giving me a smile. He shook his head. “I can’t believe I'm condoning anyone I'm close to being in a relationship with the little gremlin but…” He shrugged.

I ruffled his hair. “Thanks, Jay.” I looked over at Dick. “And thanks Dick, too. Both of you. For… everything, I guess.”

Dick chuckled. “That’s what brothers are for, right?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “See you later.” I ducked out of Dick’s room.

“See ya!” Dick and Jason chorused as I shut the door.

---

Next

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 31

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG-11/T- (for implied mature themes but nothing explicit)

Notes: (Masterlist) It only took me 156 (slightly double-spaced) pages to get here, but we’re here! I don’t know how to write non-slow-burns so... yeah.

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @haylo4ever @lostredrobin @na-n-na @probsjosh @spooder-moon @welovegroot

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26, Ch 27, Ch 28, Ch 29, Ch 30

^^^^^

Jon glanced at the sun as it cleared the horizon and wondered if he should start wearing a watch. After dawn meant Damian was probably awake, right? Usually the new Batman was up at four in the morning for a workout. And Jon left Metropolis at like six…

He skirted around the outside edge of Gotham City so hopefully no one would notice Superboy flying around where he probably shouldn’t have been, and ducked into the woods that surrounded Wayne Manor.

He touched down gently on the window ledge outside Damian’s window, still using his flight to keep him from falling over.

He tapped on the window with his fingernail, used a trick Damian taught him to pop the lock, and slipped in. “Psst! Hey Damian!” Jon hissed, getting into a small slap-fight with the curtains trying to find the gap so he could actually see Damian’s room. “I found this thing that I wanted to run by you—OH MY GOSH! WHAT THE HECK?! WHY AREN’T YOU WEARING CLOTHES?!”

Jon almost fell over. There was a girl in Damian’s bed! With Damian!

Damian was holding her. He was asleep on his back, one arm around the girl’s shoulders and the other across his chest to hold her upper arm. She was curled against his right side, her head in the crook of Damian’s shoulder with her face resting on his right chest, her arm bent over his torso so her hand was resting on the left side of Damian’s chest. Her other arm was under Damian with her fingers curled on his left trapezius. They were both covered in the sheet modestly but that didn’t hide the fact that they both appeared to be naked and their legs were tangled together.

Jon clapped his hand over his eyes and shut his eyelids, hoping his X-Ray vision didn’t decide to activate without his conscious control.

^^^^^

I jumped awake. Who was yelling and why? What was going on? Where was I anyway? Why could I feel a heartbeat under my right hand?

My eyes peeled open.

I was cuddling Damian’s side. He was holding onto me—which was almost more surprising than—

What happened last night.

I gasped and yanked the sheet up more securely to cover up the fact that I wasn’t wearing anything.

“Jon?” I demanded, noticing the tall teenage boy standing just barely in front of the window curtains, one hand over his eyes, though his fingers were pried apart so he could peek with one eye. His eyes were blue and his hair shaggy and black. He was about the same height as Damian—maybe an inch shorter—and a skinny beanpole.

“Wait. Cloudburst?! WHAT IS HAPPENING?! How are you alive and why are you in Damian’s bed and WHY ARE YOU BOTH NAKED?!”

Damian woke up too from Jon yelling, taking a deep breath and holding me more snugly against his side as he shuffled. His bright green eyes opened, gave me a soft sort of smile, and then also seemed to realize we weren’t alone. He glanced over at where I was looking.

“Kent?! What are you doing here?!” he demanded.

“I came to show you a file I found. Why is Cloudburst in your bed and why are you naked?”

Damian cocked an eyebrow. “Do the math, Kent,” he said.

Jonathan Kent—Superboy, who I hadn’t seen since he was 10—scrunched his eyebrows. “What math? Math doesn’t apply here. That doesn’t make any sense Dami—OH MY HECK YOU TWO SLEPT—”

“Jon!” I exclaimed, cutting him off. “We don’t need you shouting for the whole world to hear!” My face was turning red and I was wishing that I was anywhere but here. Like maybe Kyrgyzstan. Or Mars.

Damian’s doorknob started shaking, like someone on the other side was trying to come in. But I remembered Damian locking the door last night somewhere in the mess that was our makeout session.

Before I could even think of doing anything, the door opened. “What’s with all the shout—OH MY GOSH! CLOUDY?!” Dick exclaimed.

I ducked under the covers and curled up, absolutely mortified.

“Get out of my room!” Damian ordered—at Jon or Dick or both I wasn’t sure. “What part of a locked door doesn’t imply that I wish to be left alone, Grayson?!”

“You mean, you two want to be left alone,” Jon corrected.

“Shut up, Kent. You’re not helping your own situation,” Damian snapped.

I groaned and buried my face in my hands, still hiding under Damian’s sheets. This was a disaster. Not only had I just guaranteed I’d never willingly return to the past, but I got caught the morning after by Mama Bear Nightwing and Superboy.

“Sorry. I heard yelling and I thought someone was hurt,” Dick said.

“Both of you, out of my room. Now,” Damian ordered. “And do not speak of this to anyone. Do you understand me? If you say a word about what you think you saw, I will not hesitate to string you up by your own intestines. Kent, I’ll speak with you down in the parlor shortly.” There was a darkness in his tone that almost frightened me.

I heard a few noises—footsteps, a quiet whoosh—and then the door shut.

Damian tugged the sheet up. “It’s safe to come out now, habibi,” he said.

I groaned in complaint. “I cannot believe we got caught,” I muttered.

His hand rested between my shoulder blades. “It’s alright.”

“How is this alright?” I sat up, clutching the sheet to my chest. “I’ve been thinking for a while now that I don’t want to go back to my past. I want to stay here. But I didn’t… I didn’t think it would happen like this.”

“Nor did I, habibi,” he agreed.

I sighed. “What does that even mean?” I asked.

Damian brushed some of my messy hair out of my face. “It means beloved,” he replied.

My heart pounded. I scrunched my eyebrows. “But… you called me that… before last night too.”

Damian gave me a soft smile. “Of course,” he said. “I’ve been in love with you since before you returned to us.”

I took a deep breath. “Really?”

“Yes.”

I sighed. What was I supposed to say to that?

Damian noticed my hesitation. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I just guaranteed that I'm never going back to the past. Ever.”

“Why not?”

I looked him dead in the face. “Because I wouldn’t be able to look teen-you in the eye ever again.”

Damian brushed some of my hair out of my face. “Is that the… only reason?” he wondered, his fingers trailing through my hair and rubbing the ends between his fingertips when he reached them, his eyes watching their progress.

“What other reason do I need?” I asked.

He met my eyes. “Well… I was… hoping that you might feel the same way about me as I feel about you,” he said quietly, quickly looking away from my face, back down to his fingers.

I lifted my hand up and held the back of his hand where it was still playing with the ends of my hair. “Dami. If I didn’t feel the same way, I wouldn’t have agreed to… last night,” I said, ducking my head so he had to meet my eyes. “I… I'm in love with you too, baby bird.” I threaded my fingers into his hair, smiling softly.

He smiled back at me, leaning down—and pausing. “May I kiss you?” he asked.

“Always such a gentleman,” I said.

“Only for you,” he said.

I grinned and nodded. “You may.”

He closed the distance, sealing our lips together. It was a far more tender kiss than both of us attacking the other’s face the night before. I sighed into the kiss and tilted my head to the side, searching quietly for a better angle.

When it ended, Damian pressed our foreheads together. “Where does this leave us?” I asked quietly. “We’ve never even gone on a proper date.”

“That is a simple fix,” Damian said. “Unfortunately, for the moment, we should probably go catch up with my brother and best friend before they tell the whole house what they saw.” He sighed, like he didn’t find the notion pleasant.

“Right,” I said.

We kept our backs to each other as we got dressed. Damian put on a change of clothes while I put on what I’d been wearing yesterday. I’d run back to my room—hopefully not running into any of the rest of the family—and change.

Once we were dressed, we both left the room. Damian to go downstairs, me to go to my room.

“Hey Cloudy!” I heard Jason call from behind me as I was ducking into my room. “How was your night off?”

“Good. I feel much better,” I said, trying to shut the door in his face before he could see anything.

No such luck. Jason caught the door. “You sure? You look like you didn’t get any sleep,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked innocently.

“Well for one, your hair is even messier than usual,” he said.

A brief flash of Damian’s hand tangling in my hair in the dark shot through my head. I forced the image down and hoped Jason wouldn’t notice the blush creeping up my neck.

“And for two, you’re in the same clothes you wore yesterday,” Jason finished.

“Yeah I passed out in the game room on the beanbag,” I said. “I'm gonna shower and change. See you at breakfast.”

“Hey, before you go,” Jason said, stopping me from shutting the door again. “I thought I heard Jon. Do you know if he’s here?”

“No idea,” I said, trying to shut the door again.

“Hang on, Cloudy,” he said. “I stopped by the game room last night to grab a mag I hid from Dick. You weren’t in there.”

“I, uh…” I began.

Jason’s expression dropped as his eyes took in my hair and my clothes again. “OH MY %*^&ING G—”

“Jason!” I protested.

But he wasn’t done. “YOU AND DAMIAN SLEPT—!”

“JASON!” I shouted, putting my hand over his mouth. “Don’t go shouting accusations like that for the whole house to hear!”

“So you did!”

“No! Even if I did it’d be none of your business.”

“Oh, Cloudy, I knew somethin’ was going on between you two since the night you got here but, %^&* that escalated quickly.”

“Jason. Do me a favor: shut up, okay? And don’t tell anyone about your speculations because I don’t want unfounded rumors running rampant around this family or this city that could potentially end up in some misunderstanding that culminates in someone firing me from being Cloudburst.”

Jason didn’t look at all convinced that I was telling the truth, but relented. “Okay, sure. See you at breakfast.” Finally he left. I slammed my door shut.

I took a very brief shower before pulling on new clothes and braiding my hair behind me. The whole time trying to figure out what to do and what to say now. I sat on the floor in front of my mirror as I braided my hair and stared at my reflection.

Yes, I was in love with Damian. No, I didn’t want to go back to the past anymore. But how was I supposed to address that topic to Bruce and Tim and Cass? Were Damian and I supposed to keep… whatever we were a secret from them? Could we even do that? This was Bruce Wayne and Tim Drake—the two best detectives in the world. I’d be lucky to keep a hangnail a secret from them.

I tied off my braid and got to my feet. I really needed to go talk to Dick and Jon.

———

Next

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 30

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG-11/T- (for implied mature themes but nothing explicit)

Notes: (Masterlist) I have been WAITING to share this chapter for SO LONG! Oh my GOSH!

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @haylo4ever @lostredrobin @na-n-na @probsjosh @spooder-moon @welovegroot

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26, Ch 27, Ch 28, Ch 29

^^^^^

The Manor seemed unusually empty for the night.

I was taking a night off of patrol because I was absolutely exhausted and needed at least several hours more of sleep than I usually tended to get. The boys and Cass were all content to sleep an hour or two a night, but I wasn’t. I could do it for a while before my energy levels just tanked. I’d spent most of the daylight hours napping.

Which was why I didn’t realize the Manor was empty until I went searching for everyone after the sun had gone down.

“Hello?” I called, poking my head into various rooms in search of my family. “Anybody here?” I knew it was after dark so patrol had started—sunset to sunrise—but it seemed weird to have the entire mansion be completely abandoned.

Bruce’s study: empty. Kitchen: empty. Bedrooms: no one. Ballroom: no one. Parlor: nope. Dining room: nope. Library: barren. Game room: barren.

The only place I hadn’t checked was downstairs.

Scrunching my eyebrows, I crossed to the clock and shoved it out of the way.

“Hello? Guys?! Where is everyone?” I called as I trotted down the stairs of the Batcave. “Alfred? Bruce? Damian? Jason? Anybody home? Dick? Tim?”

“What do you require, McCloud?” Damian demanded, spinning around in the bat-computer’s high-backed chair that I hadn’t been able to see him in. I stopped in my tracks, surprised.

“Oh. Damian. Hi. I, uh, I was actually looking for you,” I said. “But I figured everyone but Bruce and Alfred would be out on patrol.”

“Father has taken Pennyworth with him on a business trip to Metropolis. I am here running technical backup due to my knee injury. Though I believe it is fine, Pennyworth would not allow it.” Damian met my gaze. “Why were you searching for me? Any questions about the possibility of timeway repair would be better served to Drake,” Damian pointed out. I bit my lower lip and tried not to roll my eyes.

“I never thanked you, properly, for pushing me out of the way of the Time Bomb’s self-destruct,” I said as Damian’s eyes drifted down to his knees. “You saved my life, Damian.”

Back when I was from, that would have made him straighten up arrogantly because, yes, he had saved my life. But he’d grown up a lot. Not to mention something had been… off between us since I found out I was trapped in his future.

Over-the-shoulder glances from across the cave. Difficulty meeting each other’s eyes. Electric sensations whenever our skin brushed each other’s—even on accident. Sharing quietly intimate moments together with parts of our hearts and souls exposed, trusting the other not to hurt us. Blushing when alone together.

Of all his family, I’d always been the least close to him in the past where I was from—but now with eight years of growth I’d missed out on leaving him to be my age, I’d grown closest to him.

“You’re… you’re welcome, McCloud,” he said, turning back to the computer.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I shuffled on my feet and changed the subject.

“I’m, uh, I’m going to go upstairs,” I remarked. “You hungry? Want me to get you anything? Thirsty? I think Alfred got some strawberry lemonade for me if you want some.”

“No. Thank you,” Damian replied. I headed over to the stairs. “McCloud. Wait.” I paused. Damian spun around in the chair. “My brothers don’t need me doing this tonight. They can handle themselves. I’d like to join you upstairs, if you’ll allow me. Climbing them might help stretch out my injury.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, that’d be fine,” I said.

Damian got out of the chair and strode over to me, trying hard not to limp on his left leg. I offered him my arm at the stairs. To my surprise, he took it. The stairs to the Batcave didn’t have a railing—because that was a good idea—so I helped keep him steady on his bad leg up to the foyer. We shoved the clock to cover the entrance behind us, climbed up to the second floor, and then just stood there for a moment in the corridor.

We stood a bit too close. Closer than we should have.

That same electric charge that had been in the air since I’d found myself stuck in the unfamiliar future thrummed between us. Damian, his straight posture unusually hunched forward toward me, caught his lower lip between his teeth. “McCloud…” he breathed. “You must admit… there has been something different between us since you got here. I assume you’ve sensed it as well.”

I nodded once. “I have,” I agreed. “I… I’m not supposed to feel like this about you. You’re supposed to be younger than me—like family. But you and I never had a familial relationship—and now we’re the same age.” I met his gaze, where he was staring at me.

“Careful,” he warned. There was a glint in his eyes. The darkness of the manor at midnight made the green of his irises deep and dangerous—like the heart of a thick forest.

“Of what?” I asked, confused.

“Of the look you are giving me. Continue without changing it and we may not make it to a bedroom,” he replied impishly, licking his lower lip.

I sucked in a deep breath. “Fair point,” I said, looking away.

His hand lifted up and rubbed some of my hair between his fingers. “You were always so beautiful,” he murmured. My eyes flicked back to him. He gave me a similar look to the one he claimed I was giving him. One that made my heart pound with desire.

Before either of us could say anything more, I grabbed the chest of his shirt and pulled him to me. He could have resisted—but he didn’t. Our mouths clashed together, working in almost perfect sync as hands and arms got tangled together. Damian scooped me up into his arms. I heard Damian’s bedroom door open. We stumbled through it. Damian didn’t kick it shut. We fell back against it. Damian’s hand slipped out of the mess that was our limbs, letting my legs back down to the ground, and locked the door. That same hand found the hem of my shirt, tugging it up.

I took the same cue from him, my palms sliding over his battle-hardened muscle and skin to the bottom of his shirt. His shirt got flung off to the side a few moments after mine ended up on the floor. His bare skin was smooth under my hands and his hair was soft when some of my fingers made it up that far.

Damian tasted like a minty lip-balm and that one tea he particularly enjoyed that I could never remember the name of. His smell was musky and warm—a scent I wouldn’t mind being surrounded by for the rest of my life.

Slowly we took careful steps, mouths never breaking contact, over to the bed. Damian’s hands picked up the backs of my thighs and pulled my legs to his waist. I locked my ankles behind him, giving over complete trust that he wasn’t going to drop me.

“Is this alright?” Damian breathed.

“It’s alright with me if it’s alright with you,” I said, completely caught up in the throes of passion in the moment and not considering the past or the future. What was time? What was time travel? I wanted this—I wanted him—right now.

“It’s more than alright with me,” Damian replied.

He pulled me down onto the bed.

———

Next

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 29

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG/K+

Notes: (Masterlist) Holy cow I intend to have fun with these quick updates. Love y’all!

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @haylo4ever @lostredrobin @na-n-na @probsjosh @spooder-moon @welovegroot

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26, Ch 27, Ch 28

^^^^^

“—then Abigail just tripped over her little shoes and went tumbling down the hill!” Lily exclaimed, clutching at her chest. “Thankfully it was just a tiny little hill and she’s tough as nails what with her older brother picking on her all the time but I was so worried!”

The rest of my high school friends all murmured agreements around the table.

They’d been talking about nothing but their kids for nearly an hour.

And I understood that, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t helping me feel better about being trapped in the future. I felt guilty that I hadn’t been there for all of this. That I had less life experience than they did. I knew that they didn’t hold it against me—it wasn’t my fault—but part of me wished I’d refused Damian’s offer to bring me to the future to say goodbye to Dick, Jason, Tim, and Bruce so that I’d (hopefully) still be there for my friends.

I was relieved, though, that they were talking about their kids because it meant they weren’t asking me questions about what happened to me. Questions I’d have to lie about.

So I listened. And I laughed. And I listened more. I got to know their kids through their words.

The thing about my friends from high school was we had all been loyal to each other no matter what. I didn’t feel a single condescending vibe from any of them that I was still practically a child to them after they all grew up and had kids and got married. The one that got her doctorate, Sasha, was out-of-state working so she couldn’t make it to lunch.

I looked around. The women around me were women. They weren’t the girls I played Dungeons and Dragons with in Breanne’s basement. They were still my friends and I knew they still loved me but I could sense a bit of our dynamic being thrown off. Sasha and Breanne were the only ones in the group older than me back when everything about ages made sense, but I’d always been the responsible one of the group. Now I was surrounded by responsible mothers who were all older than me. Leaving me the youngest again by a huge margin.

“Y’alright, Nor-nor?” Amy, who had been my absolute best friend since I was a very young child, asked.

I nodded. “Fine. Just… just thinking,” I said.

“About?” Kaitlin pressed.

“Everything’s changed. I missed so much. I'm listening to all this and I wasn’t here for any of it and this isn’t right!” My eyes started to well up. I blinked tears out of my vision, letting them fall down my cheeks and wiping them off impatiently. “I was supposed to be here for this. I was supposed to be your kids’ fun aunt who spoiled them rotten. The way we used to dream about, remember? It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“Oh sweetie!” Kaitlin exclaimed, wrapping her arms around me and putting her chin on top of my head. “We still love you. We don’t blame you for anything that happened. None of this is your fault.”

I sniffed. “I know,” I said. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t Damian’s either. It was those stupid Time Bombs’ fault for trapping me in the future by shutting the timeways. “I just… feel like I failed you guys.”

“Nora Jaqueline McCloud!” I heard several of my friends all say together.

I forgot they knew my middle name.

“Don’t you dare say that!” Kaitlin ordered. “You didn’t fail any of us. You had no control over what happened. And look. You’re here now. So none of it matters, you hear?” She grabbed my shoulders and made me look at her. “You’re still an honorary godmother to both June and Matthew—” Her two kids. “—so I don’t want to hear you saying you don’t belong among us anymore, okay?”

Spoken like a true mother. “Okay,” I said.

She hugged me again. “Good. Because we’re your friends and you’re our friend—no matter how much younger than us you are now.”

“Thanks Kat.”

“Of course, Nor-nor.”

The waiter came and brought back our bill receipts—that we’d all requested separately, heaven help the wait-staff—and quietly approached me. “Pardon me, miss,” he said, softly so none of my friends (who had gone back to talking about their kids) could hear him.

“Hmm?” I asked.

“I believe you tipped wrong,” he said, opening the folder that had my receipt and the cash I’d put in for a tip in it.

I glanced down. “No. No I meant to do that,” I said, noting that nothing was missing.

“Miss, that’s a one-thousand-percent tip,” he said.

I nodded. “I know. I also know that the waiters pool their tips at the end of the day and distribute it as evenly as they can. Waiting staffs don’t get nearly enough to live on anyway so I always give what I can. And my lunch wasn’t very expensive so I felt like I ought to tip high because of all the trouble you went to in order to serve me.”

“Miss—”

“Don’t worry, kid,” I said, noting that the waiter was definitely younger than me. “It’s not that big a deal on my end. Please just accept it and leave it.”

“Uh—of course,” he said. “Here’s your card and your receipt.”

I accepted both. “Thank you!” I said brightly, putting both in my wallet. The waiter left.

“What was that about?” Amy asked.

I shrugged. “I did something nice,” I said.

She tilted her head. “How much did you tip?”

“Musta been hefty if he tried to stop her,” Breanne reasoned.

“C’mon, Nor-nor,” Kaitlin prompted. “How much?”

“A hundred and fifty dollars,” I said.

Eyebrows went up. “You gave a hundred-fifty-dollar tip on a fifteen-dollar lunch?” Lily asked.

“Yeah.”

“That’s one-thousand-percent!” Amy said.

“Mmhmm,” I said. “Listen. Wait-staffs are criminally overworked and underpaid. They deal with a lot of crappy customers and I do what I can when I can.”

My friends all smiled and passed around words of agreement. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned.

Damian stood there. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “I’ll be waiting right outside in the car.”

“Be right out,” I said. “We’re just finishing up.”

He nodded and slipped through the restaurant before disappearing.

“Who was that?” Lily demanded once Damian was gone.

“Damian,” I said. “My godfather’s son.” I didn’t like to say Wayne out loud because it always attracted attention.

“That’s Damian Wayne? He grew up into quite a looker, didn’t he?” Lily said.

“Mmhmm!” Kaitlin agreed. “How old is he now?”

“Uh… he’s my age. Or… I guess… I'm his age. Now. Twenty-one. We’re both twenty-one,” I said.

My friends all shared playful looks I recognized—mostly on my brothers.

“So. When’s the wedding?” Kaitlin teased.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked.

“C’mon, McCloud!” Amy joked. “He was totally diggin’ you! And you were totally diggin’ him!”

“He literally said he was waiting for me outside,” I said. “He gave me a ride here while he went to a meeting and he’s my ride home.”

“Right—because he totally didn’t glance over his shoulder at you several times while he was leaving. Nor did you follow him with your eyes till he was out the door,” Amy continued.

“Guys. Damian and I… it’s not like that. And it’s more complicated than that.”

“So un-complicate it, Nor-nor,” Kaitlin said.

“Thanks for meeting me for lunch, guys, really,” I said, getting to my feet and grabbing my purse and sweater. “I had a great time. Let me know when you can do it again. I'm glad we got to do this.” I went around the table and gave them quick hugs before heading out the door. They knew me. They wouldn’t be offended that I didn’t stick around for their teasing.

Out in the parking lot, I caught sight of Damian’s nice Audi.

Mostly because Damian was leaning against the side of the front with his arms folded in a smedium green T-shirt that was just a tad too tight for his muscles. “Afternoon,” he greeted, pushing off the side of his car without the use of his arms and opening my door for me.

“Hi,” I replied as I ducked into his car. He shut the door behind me and circled around to get in the driver’s seat. “You know I could have driven myself.”

“Tt. Yes, but Todd isn’t the only one who enjoys driving with you.”

“I think you guys all like to see how nervous I get when y’all do reckless stuff like take corners too tight,” I joked.

“Or we just enjoy your company,” Damian reasoned.

I ducked my head awkwardly. “Thanks,” I mumbled. I shook my head. “You have impeccable timing, by the way. Did you bug my purse or something?”

“Tt. Didn’t need to. You left your spare comm-link in it.”

I sighed in frustration. “Of course I did,” I muttered. Damian chuckled. Neither of us brought up the fact that he must have, then, heard what my friends said about him—and him and me—after he left. But I could tell he was thinking about it too because we both shot each other tiny little peeks out of the corners of our eyes.

In those peeks was a silent agreement not to mention it.

^^^^^

“Damian? Damian! Damian?!” I called, bolting up the stairs and out of the Batcave, rushing around the mansion looking for him. I ignored the fact that I was still in my Cloudburst suit in the open. I needed to find Damian. Immediately. “DAMIAN!”

“You okay Cloudy?” Dick asked as I crossed into the main parlor.

“Where’s Damian?” I demanded.

Dick shrugged. “Haven’t seen him, kiddo. Sorry.”

I ran out of the parlor. “DAAAMMMIIIAAANNN!”

Strong hands caught my shoulders. “McCloud! What’s the matter?” the Batman in question demanded, pushing me just enough away from him to see my face.

I lifted my hands and put them both on the sides of his face, just to make sure it was really him.

Then I realized what I was doing and dropped them. “I, uh, I just had a really bad feeling that something was going to happen to you,” I said.

Damian scrunched his eyebrows. “Why? Who threatened me?” he asked.

I cleared my throat. “Scare—Scarecrow,” I said. “I was out on patrol and we got into a fight. I didn’t even know he was out of Arkham. He said…” I took a deep, shuddering breath. “He said that I better enjoy my time patrolling with you while it lasted because it wouldn’t last much longer. That soon one of us would be too afraid to even set foot on Gotham’s streets again, and he didn’t think it was going to be me. I knocked him out and rushed home to make sure he hadn’t come to inject you with his toxin or anything.”

Damian pushed my hair out of my face after I was done frantically explaining. “McCloud. It’s alright. I'm fine. Crane was just trying to frighten you and get under your skin. Don’t let him,” he said softly. He caught a few stray strands of hair and tucked them behind my ear. “Are you alright now? Crane doesn’t know who I am under the cowl. He can’t hurt me as Damian Wayne.” A small smirk pulled up his lips. “H*&%, he can barely hurt me as Batman when he’s lucky.” He pulled me into a hug. “It’s alright, Cloudburst. Everything is fine.” He put his hand on the back of my head. “Go shower and change. You’ll feel better after some sleep.”

“Right. Thanks. ‘Night Damian.”

“Goodnight, McCloud.”

———

Next

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 28

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG/K+

Notes: (Masterlist) This has been a long time coming but thanks to @i-sttan I’m going to put up a lot of updates in quick succession because I keep forgetting to post them ‘XD (Sorry...)

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @haylo4ever @lostredrobin @na-n-na @probsjosh @rachelmorganroth @spooder-moon @welovegroot

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26, Ch 27

^^^^^

I glanced over my shoulder at Damian from across the Batcave to see him already looking at me over his shoulder. Our eyes met and after a moment we both seemed to realize that we were staring at each other and we quickly looked away, returning to our tasks in almost perfect sync. I noticed Dick look between us off to the side, like the movement caught his attention. It was an unusually quiet morning in the Batcave where everyone was doing projects more than training.

I shook my head to clear it—and to get the soft look on Damian’s face out of my mind’s eye—and went back to my research. I’d been brought up to speed on the Time Bombs enough that I could help the rest of the Bat-Family look for an origin point or any sort of clues.

It was boring, tedious work. I wasn’t interested in it and having a really hard time focusing. I kept tapping my foot and bouncing my leg under the table and drumming my fingers to no set rhythm and completely failing to accomplish anything.

I shot another quick peek at Damian. He appeared to be sharpening a batarang or his sword or something I couldn’t see very well. His shirt was a tad too small and it was stretched across his shoulders. That can’t be comfortable… I thought distractedly before nearly whacking myself in the face with the tablet I was holding. I really needed to pay attention to what I was doing. Why was I having such a hard time concentrating?

I got up and turned my tablet off. I went over to the training mat, stretched out, and started to do an escrima stick drill Dick had taught me. I was just trying to burn off some energy.

I didn’t cry out or make any typical noises the expel all the air from my lungs the way I normally would if I was actually training—because loud “Hyah!”s were meant to get all the air out of my lungs so that it was harder to knock the wind out of me—because I was just moving around, not hitting anything.

Instead, I slashed the practice escrima sticks through the air silently, twisting around as though fighting several enemies at once.

The sticks I was using collided with something else.

Damian’s wooden training sword. He smirked at me. “Do you think you can handle this?” he asked, tone bordering on playful.

I smirked at him in return. “Probably not. Only one way to find out,” I said.

We sparred. I knew Damian was going easy on me. He was an incredible swordsman and Tim and Dick had already beaten the snot out of me while I practiced with escrima sticks since I was so unused to them, but I was holding my own against Damian better than I thought. Which meant he was going easy. Or I was actually improving my skills fighting with Dick’s favored weapons. That didn’t seem as likely.

That wasn’t to say I didn’t get smacked a couple times with a wooden sword blade, but not as much as I got whacked by Tim’s staff or Dick’s escrima sticks.

We slammed to a stalemate, both of my escrima sticks holding back his sword. We panted for a moment, staring at each other over and around our weapons. Damian was smirking playfully. “Are you handling this?” he asked.

I grinned. “Yup,” I said. I locked one leg around his knee and yanked, pushing him to the ground and landing on top of him, my face knocking against his chest. Our weapons clattered out of our hands. I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed my face out of his chest. We laughed breathlessly. “You okay?”

Damian nodded. “I'm alright. Are you?”

“Yeah I'm good,” I said. His eyes were really green in the half-light of the Batcave. They had a glitter in them that I hadn’t seen before—a glitter of humor.

He chuckled. “Good.” He caught me and rolled so he was on top of me, grabbing his wooden sword and holding it to my neck. “How about now?”

I snorted, looped my right leg around his left leg and grabbed his left arm with both of mine.  I thrust my hips up and rolled to my right, knocking him off of me. “Ha!” I crowed triumphantly. “I can’t believe you fell for that one. Oldest trick I learned before I became Cloudburst.” I laughed as I got back to my feet, scooping up my escrima sticks.

“I'm playing fair,” Damian teased.

“You never play fair. That’s kinda the point, right?” I said. We clashed again. Loud clacks echoed through the cave as we sparred. Damian smirked and I snickered. He was definitely going easy on me. I could feel him holding back.

“Scared of me, Wayne?” I teased, ducking under a slash.

“Tt. You wish, McCloud,” he retorted. We both laughed.

^^^^^

“AAHH!” I shrieked, sitting up in bed, panting and looking around wildly. I clutched my covers to my chest and tried to steady my breathing. Panting and heart racing, I blinked rapidly.

My door opened. “Are you alright?” Damian asked, looking concerned but not frightened.

“Bad—bad dream,” I managed to get out. “It, uh, it… it hurt.”

Damian crossed my room, leaving the door open, and sat on my bed next to me. Silently, he opened his arms to me. I slipped out from under my covers and hugged him around the shoulders, burying my face in the curve where his neck met his shoulder. One of his arms wrapped around my back and the other scooped my legs up. He pulled me onto his lap and stroked my hair. “It’s alright. You’re safe. I'm here. I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said. I sniffed.

“Promise?” I mumbled.

“Of course,” he replied, squeezing me tighter.

I nodded. “Thanks,” I said.

We sat in silence for several minutes. I could feel his heartbeat against my own chest. His skin was warm and smooth under my chilly hands—except for the scars I could feel. My right hand found one on his back and began to trace around the outside edge of it, the motion soothing my heartrate.

“Do you wish to tell me what you dreamt of?” he asked quietly.

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “But I… I will anyway.”

“No. No. McCloud, if you aren’t comfortable discussing it, I am not going to—”

“Damian,” I interrupted. “I need to get it out.”

He paused and leaned back enough to look me in the face. “Are you certain?”

“Yeah,” I said.

He held me close again. “Alright. But only tell me what you’re ready to say.”

I nodded into his trapezius muscle. “Right,” I mumbled. “I, uh, I was underwater. In Gotham harbor, I think. Like that time we were fighting a gang and I got knocked off the docks. Do you remember that?”

“Of course. It was only a month before the Time Bombs attacked your past.”

“Yeah. And it was dark and I could barely breathe and I could hear scary maniacal laughter. It was less Joker and more Scarecrow and it chilled me right to the bone. And then the dream jumped and I was fighting some bad guys in an alley but I’d forgotten my suit and I was literally in my bra and underwear and that was it and the bad guys were laughing at me. And then the dream jumped again and I was… I was…”

Damian brushed my hair out of my face. “It’s alright. If you don’t want to tell me, don’t.”

“No, no. It’s… it’s okay. The dream jumped and I was fighting you, Jason, Dick, Tim, and Bruce. All by myself. You were all shouting, telling me I had no place in this family anymore and I was no longer welcome to be Cloudburst. Someone was telling me to hand in my suit and then Dick pushed me off the docks and I was back in the water and it was cold and I couldn’t swim back to the surface no matter how hard I tried and then—and then I woke up.”

“McCloud. I assure you that no one in this family is ever going to kick you out. You belong here and Cloudburst is part of you. This family…” He paused. His fingers tightened their grip in a handful of my hair. “This family… loves you, Mc—Nora.”

“Thanks Damian,” I said. I smiled a bit at McNora.

There was another stretch of silence, during which I heard rain falling and a crack of thunder.

“Would… would you like me to stay here until you return to sleep?” Damian asked.

I thought for a long moment, just breathing in his scent. It was musky, but his aftershave had a spicy kick to it.

“Mmhmm,” I mumbled into his shoulder.

I felt more than heard his sigh. “Okay. I’ll be right here,” he promised. He cradled me to his chest and rocked me back and forth, lowly singing a melodic, pleasant song in what I knew was Arabic. I didn’t understand Arabic at all but I could recognize it when I heard it since Damian tended to rant in Arabic when he was frustrated or just simply speak in it some mornings when he was too tired to think about what language he was speaking in.

The tune must have been some sort of lullaby. It was short and it sounded soothing. I could tell he was repeating it over and over because I started to recognize the tune. He rocked me to the rhythm, slowly back and forth, lulling me to sleep.

I closed my eyes and listened, concentrating on the tune. Damian had a nice voice—it vaguely occurred to me that I’d never really heard him sing before and had never heard him sing in this future. But he carried the tune well and I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. He sounded so captivating. Like I could listen to his lullaby forever.

“‘S pretty,” I mumbled.

“Mm… my mother used to sing it,” he replied softly. “I'm here, habibi. I'm here.”

“You know I don’t know what that means,” I said.

“What, ‘habibi’?” Damian asked.

“Mmhmm.”

I heard a little snicker. “It’s nothing to worry about. It’s a compliment.”

“Mkay.”

“Try and go back to sleep. I’m right here. I’ll keep you safe.” He returned to his lullaby, rocking me back and forth. “Everything is alright. This family loves you and everything will be alright.”

“Mmm… Damian?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“Of course,” he whispered into my hair. “Now try to sleep.”

“Hmm… mkay…”

———

Next

[sassycassie-s-series]

OH MY GOODNESS THANK YOU SO MUCH! THAT TOTALLY MADE MY WHOLE DAY, WEEK, MONTH, SEASON, YEAR! ALL THAT!

someday i hope my ocs can be someones fave character. that’d b cool

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 27

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG/K+

Notes: (Masterlist) Wow college has been kicking my butt recently. I know this has been a while but here you go! I’m gonna try to put up more soon! This one’s got a lot going on so have fun!

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @haylo4ever @lostredrobin @na-n-na @probsjosh @spooder-moon @welovegroot

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25, Ch 26

^^^^^

“You remember my first boyfriend, right?” I asked Damian over comms while I was out on patrol and in the middle of taking down a group of drug-dealers. “He came to the house a couple times.”

Damian and I were on a private comms channel. We could hear everyone on the open channel all talking to each other in case they needed us, but they couldn’t hear us. Damian was still in bed, but allowed to talk to us on comms. Dick was just subbing as Batman for the night—and the nights that Damian had been out with the League.

“Tt. Yes,” he said. “He didn’t deserve you.”

“Play nice. We were sixteen,” I joked, kicking a dealer in the face and using the momentum to take another one down. “Do you wanna know what became of him?”

“He was arrested and incarcerated for domestic violence three years ago,” Damian said.

“That’s right. Wait. Did you keep tabs on my ex?” I demanded with a laugh.

“Not particularly. Grayson was the one who arrested him. We all realized who he was, and it was all Todd could do not to shoot him. Did he ever treat you that way?”

I scoffed. “Like he could,” I said. “The night we broke up, he tried to smack me when I said something he didn’t like. I caught his wrist and jabbed him in the solar plexus. I hadn’t even begun training with Batman yet—just the martial arts I’d done growing up.” I finished taking down the dealers, tied them up, and left them on the curb after signaling for the cops to come find them. I shot a grappling line up and zipped away.

“Good,” Damian muttered darkly. “If he ever laid a hand on you that you did not permit, I would break every one of his fingers while staring him in the face.”

“You’ve been quiet for a while, Cloudy,” Jason said. “You doing okay?”

I switched to the open channel. “Yeah Hood. Just talking with Batman.”

“Ooh. About what?”

“My first boyfriend.”

“Interesting choice of topic,” Tim remarked. “Is it at all relevant to patrol?”

“Not exactly. One of the drug-dealers I just took down looked a bit like him,” I said. “Made me think of him.”

“Huh,” Jason said. “Well, by all means, keep chatting. I won’t keep you. Holler if you need anything.”

“Will do,” I said before switching back to the private channel. “Still there, Batman?”

“Still here,” Damian said.

“You doing okay?”

“If by that you mean, ‘do I wish I was out there with you’ the answer is yes,” Damian said.

I sighed as I landed against the side of a building and looked out over Gotham. “Of course it is,” I said. “But you’ll be out with us tomorrow so be patient. We’ll be home soon.”

“What if…” Damian began hesitantly. “What if you came home early? That way I’d have some company that isn’t overbearing and loud for a while?” I chuckled as I shot another grappling line to another building and dropped off the side of the building I was on.

“You’d rather have me keep you company than Dick? I thought Dick was, like, your favorite person on the planet,” I teased.

Damian snorted. “Tt. Grayson is like a second father to me more than a brother. I’d rather have someone who’s not exactly like family.”

I scoffed. “Wow thanks,” I said sarcastically.

“I meant no offense,” Damian said.

“I know. I'm just messing around—whoa!” I released my grappling line as the GCPD helicopter banked around a building and nearly hit me. I dropped several hundred feet before catching myself on another line. I swung to the safety of a nearby rooftop and panicked.

“Are you alright?” Damian demanded.

“Yeah,” I said breathlessly. “Just about turned into a bug on the windshield of a helicopter but I'm just fine.”

“Team, Cloudburst just had a run-in with a helicopter. I'm ordering her back to base,” Damian said in the open channel. I switched over to the channel too.

“Whoa! You okay Cloudy?” Dick asked.

“Yeah. Little shaken but I'm good,” I said.

“Head home, Cloudburst. We got this,” Tim said. “Tonight’s not the slowest of nights but it ain’t the fastest either. I think we’ll be good.”

Panting, I slowly walked back to the edge of the roof. “Okay. I’ll see y’all back at base.”

“‘Night Cloudy,” Jason said.

“Night,” I replied. I jumped off the roof and went swinging towards Uptown Gotham, the Palisades, and Wayne Manor outside the city.

^^^^^

“Ho!” I sighed, flopping onto my bed, all showered and in my pajamas.

“Evening,” a voice said from my doorway. I jumped and whirled to see Damian leaned against the doorframe. In his pajamas. Which included an obvious lack of a shirt.

“Damian! You scared me. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

Damian rolled his eyes. “Tt. I appreciate Pennyworth looking after my health but I don’t require thirty-six-hours of bedrest.”

“Don’t let him hear you say that or he’ll up your sentence to seventy-two hours out of sheer spite.”

“Fair point,” he said with a smile. He crossed my room and perched on the edge of my bed, regarding me calmly. “Perhaps I’ll just hide in here then.”

I snickered. “Trust me, if Alfred suspects you’re disobeying bedrest this is the first place he’d come looking,” I teased. Damian pondered for a moment. I got up and threw a blanket over him. “But now you can pretend you’re resting with me.” His grin grew wider when he freed his head from under the blanket.

“Clever solution,” he complimented.

I brought my laptop onto my bed and opened it up. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s see what gossip we can dig up from the last couple years that you can explain to me.” I logged into Facebook and started scrolling through the “Mutual Friends” list between me and Damian.

Upon scrolling and clicking, I found Barbara Gordon.

Knock-knock! Knuckles echoed off my door.

Damian was instantly on his feet and blending into the shadows of my closet. “Alfred?” I asked loudly.

“No, kid,” Bruce’s voice said. “It’s me.”

“C’mon in,” I said.

Bruce opened the door and stepped over the threshold. “How was patrol?” he asked.

“Fine. Got a little spooked when I almost went splat on the GCPD’s helicopter windshield so I turned in early,” I said.

“How are you adjusting to the future?”

“Better than I ever would have thought.”

“Remember what I said to you when you turned eighteen?” Bruce asked.

I licked my lip and bit it, nodding.

^^^^^

“Happy Birthday, Nora,” Bruce said quietly after the party was over and the rest of the family was getting ready for patrol—though I was taking the night off since it was my birthday.

“Thanks,” I said, feeling awkward.

“Something you wanna say, kid?”

“I'm eighteen. I'm an adult. So I'm no longer your responsibility.”

“You could put it that way,” Bruce deadpanned.

“So… are you going to kick me out? Let me find my own life?”

“No.”

His flat delivery rubbed me the wrong way. “Why?” I demanded, sharper than I intended. “Because I'm part of your Mission now?”

He scoffed. “No. Because you’re part of my family,” he retorted.

I took a step back in surprise.

“And you’re welcome to call Wayne Manor your home for as long as you like—and whenever you like.”

I threw my arms around him. He awkwardly stood there for a moment, like a tree, until I felt him give me a hug back.

“It’s alright, kid. It’s… it’s going to be fine.”

^^^^^

“Yeah I remember,” I said.

“When you first arrived here, you had to find your place in this family. And now, again. Your little time-travel adventure has put you in a different position in this family. But make no mistake, Nora, you are still part of this family. You’ve been here a month and I… I realize that I haven’t really even… been here for you.”

“Bruce, really, it’s okay. I mean, you’re still Bruce Wayne and you’ve got a lot on your shoulders even without being Batman. And I’ve had the boys to keep an eye on me and help me out. I get it,” I said. “Really. I’ve been adjusting better than I thought.”

Bruce looked thoughtful. “I… I'm glad,” he said. “One more question, though.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“Why is my son hiding in your closet?”

I couldn’t help but snicker. I could practically read Damian’s mind—he was probably swearing internally. “We thought you were Alfred. Damian came to check on me after I got spooked on patrol but Alfred doesn’t want him out of bed till tomorrow morning,” I explained.

Bruce smiled—actually smiled. “I won’t tell Alfred,” he said, sounding amused. “You can come out now, Damian!”

Damian poked his head out of my closet, my spare blanket still wrapped around his otherwise bare shoulders. “Good evening, Father.”

“Evening,” Bruce said. “You two have grown close since Nora’s arrival here.”

“Yes,” Damian agreed. “It has been easier to… connect given we are the same age now.”

“And since he’s loosened up a bit,” I added.

“Tt. I am not going soft, McCloud,” Damian grumbled.

“Did I say that?” I retorted playfully, grinning. “I didn’t say that.”

Bruce smirked. “I'm glad you two get along even better now,” he said. “I’ll leave you to what you were doing. Goodnight.”

“‘Night Bruce!” I called as he retreated.

“Goodnight, Father,” Damian said.

My bedroom door shut behind my godfather. I bit my lower lip, suddenly feeling slightly awkward at being in a closed room with Damian. I shook my head to clear it and smiled. “Anyway. What were we doing again?” I asked, looking down at my laptop to see Barbara’s Facebook page open.

“Tt. Scrolling through looking for old gossip for me to explain,” Damian said, sitting next to me on my bed.

“Oh right. Yeah. Let’s do that!” I said.

^^^^^

McCloud snoozed on Damian’s shoulder, eyes closed and laptop still open. Damian was awake, distractedly playing with the ends of her hair. She’d drifted off while he’d been explaining all the romantic relationship drama that she had missed between their friends. She’d fallen asleep with a peaceful smile on her face.

He looked down at the top of her head, her soft flyaway hairs tickling his face. He smiled and brushed some of her hair out of her face. He was so in love with her. He wished he could stay like this forever. With her by his side, her head on his shoulder and asleep.

His imagination brought up a fantasy of a day sometime in the future. A daydream of he and McCloud in an apartment of their own somewhere in Gotham—perhaps married, and happily together. They could be in exactly in this position, except his arm could be around her shoulders and holding her close to his side. A wistful grin played at the corners of his lips. Oh how he would like for that to happen.

But she likely didn’t feel the same way. Yes, she had been acting affectionate toward him as of late, but she acted affectionate to just about everyone. That was the way she was.

He sighed and shut her laptop, moving it out of the way so he could gently ease her into her bed and tuck her in. Carefully, he tucked her covers under her chin and folded up the blanket she’d put on his shoulders. He had half a mind to borrow it until morning—the scent of her shampoo and shower gel clung to it and it would give him an excuse if Pennyworth caught him in the corridors—but decided against it. He placed the blanket back in her closet and slipped out of her bedroom.

“Goodnight, my only,” he whispered, standing at her doorframe, casting a longing look over his shoulder at her. Before he could do anything else, he ducked out and stole back to his quarters.

Next

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 26

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG/K+

Notes: (Masterlist) This is a kinda long one at 2,212 words, but WOOHOO more stuff is happening! We’re getting over closer to their confession y’all! If you’re wondering, no I don’t really know how to do short series XD Just LOOOOONG slow burns XD

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @haylo4ever @lostredrobin @probsjosh​ @spooder-moon @welovegroot

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24, Ch 25

^^^^^

Damian glared at Dick over the top of his sketchbook. Per Alfred’s orders, he was on bedrest until the next morning, and it was the day after he arrived. So, another twenty-four hours in bed. McCloud had gone to bed herself after Damian’s hand twitched in the cave and woke her up at 2:30AM, so Alfred sent her to bed.

Which meant that when Damian got transferred up to his own bed, Dick decided to keep him company.

At first it wasn’t so bad. Dick just sat at Damian’s desk on his laptop and started going over crime rates and actually helped Damian type up his mission report to submit to the Watchtower’s records. And then… Dick got bored.

“C’mon, Little D,” Dick teased. “Don’t you think Nora Wayne has a nice ring to it?”

“Grayson, so help me, if you make one more joke regarding the feelings I have for her I will strip you to your mask and briefs and string you up on the GCPD tower with the Bat-signal shining right on you for everyone to see,” Damian growled, going back to a sketch of Titus he’d been working on that morning. Dick spun around in the desk chair, giving Damian a skeptically raised right eyebrow.

“I'm so glad you’re willing to just admit to my face that you are such a goner for her,” he said brightly.

“Grayson, I'm warning you,” Damian snapped, jaw clenched.

“Just admit to me you think Nora Wayne has a nice ring to it and I’ll let it go,” Dick said playfully. Damian closed his eyes with a resigned sigh.

“Tt. Alright. Whatever. It has a nice ring to it. Sure.” And I most definitely have not already thought of that many times over, he added silently.

“Glad you agree. Because if she became Nora Wayne, you’d no longer have to call her McCloud all the time. Heaven forbid you call anyone by their first name. I imagine Alfred and Bruce would be delighted to have a Mrs. Wayne again.”

“And if she chose not to give up McCloud?” Damian challenged.

Dick shrugged. “Then that’s her choice. You still wouldn’t have to call her McCloud anymore. You could call her something cute instead.” He paused. “Like honey or baby or something.” Damian scoffed and rolled his eyes.

Through the slightly open door, they could hear familiar music drifting from down the hall.

A smile pulled on Dick’s face. Damian slowly lifted up his sketchbook and hid behind it to avoid further teasing.

McCloud was singing Phantom of the Opera from her bedroom. Her door was probably open and she might have just gotten out of the shower or something. She had a nice voice. It was Broadway-levels of loud without being Broadway trained. She tended to belt dramatically and not care how it sounded. Like the time before the charity ball when she thought she was alone and sang Total Eclipse of the Heart in the Batcave.

Dick peeked up over the top of Damian’s sketchbook. “You hear that?” he asked with an ecstatic smile.

“Yes,” Damian said flatly, not giving his eldest brother the satisfaction of a reaction.

“She’s singing both parts of a duet,” Dick pointed out.

“Indeed,” Damian agreed, tone completely monotone.

“Sooo… why don’t you sing the other part?”

“I don’t sing,” Damian snapped.

Dick sighed. “Cloudy is the only fun person in this family,” he muttered. Damian rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue.

^^^^^

“Gooood morning, Cloudy!” Jason greeted brightly as I went down into the kitchen to get some breakfast before checking up on Damian again.

“Morning Jay,” I replied tiredly, through a wide yawn.

“Sleep well?”

I tilted my head to either side to loosen up the muscles. “Kinda,” I replied.

“You ditched patrol to snooze on Damian’s bedside. Must be a little stiff.”

“Technically, I fell asleep before you left and no one bothered to wake me up.” The sarcasm in my voice wasn’t lost on Jason. He snickered.

“That’s fair,” he relented.

I munched half-heartedly on a bowl of dry cereal that I wasn’t in the mood for and sighed. “I'm gonna go see if he’s okay.”

“Loved your shower performance, by the way,” Jason offered.

I pushed some of my damp hair out of my face. “Thanks,” I said, leaving the kitchen with my bowl of dry Cookie Crisps. Alfred would be cross if I got cereal dust on anything, so I carefully managed not to. Besides, the boys left half-eaten candy bars on the floors of their rooms and had gotten chocolate on the carpet more times than I bothered to count. My room was spotless by comparison.

When I reached Damian’s door, it was half-open. I could hear Dick humming inside, and if I listened hard enough I could hear the scratching of Damian’s pencil too. I lifted one hand and knocked. “Morning,” I called.

“Mornin’ Cloudy!” Dick replied loudly.

“Good morning, McCloud,” Damian added.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

There was a pause. “If you’d like,” Damian said.

I ducked through the door.

Damian was sitting up in bed on a pile of plush pillows with the sheet over his lower body. His upper body was bare, save for the bandages wrapped around his injuries. His bruises were smaller—healing. His sketchbook was on his lap. I could see a drawing of Titus on the page. I examined his injuries briefly—and absolutely did not pay attention to his physique—and perched at the foot of his bed.

“How you feelin’, Damian?” I asked casually, popping some cereal into my mouth.

He shrugged. “Absolutely fine. But Alfred won’t let me do anything till tomorrow morning.”

“That’s a good thing,” I said. “Gives you more time to heal.”

Damian regarded me, searching my face like he was searching for any sign of mocking. But I wasn’t mocking him. Just genuinely believing that Alfred’s orders were sound. I chewed on another small handful of cereal and threw a piece at Dick when he opened his mouth. He caught it expertly and laughed in victory.

“Tt,” Damian muttered.

Dick shut his laptop. “You gonna keep him company for a while, Clouds?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Okay. I'm gonna go get some stuff done. I gotta go make some calls,” Dick said, leaving the room. He didn’t shut the door behind him, which I was grateful for. A shut door would make me uncomfortable.

“Bye!” I called after him.

“Bye!” Dick singsonged. He whistled down the hallway.

I turned my attention back to Damian. “Cookie Crisp?” I asked, offering him the bowl.

He shook his head. “That much sugar would make me ill,” he said. “Thank you for offering though.”

I shrugged and ate another handful. “No problem,” I said. “How are you feeling, really?” I asked.

Damian glanced over my shoulder at the door. “I'm alright,” he said. “My injuries ache and throb but nothing else is new. I just… the mission failed. It’s no one’s fault. But it was my idea so it seems like my fault. It’s my fault I was injured this badly. It’s my fault we didn’t get the speedsters back. It’s my fault that I worried you when I turned up barely conscious. It’s my fault—”

“Stop,” I said. “It’s not your fault. You’re too hard on yourself. You blame yourself for things you have no control over. So you couldn’t get the speedsters out of the Speed-Force. So what? You tried. And that’s what matters. It’s not your fault that I'm here, out of time, either. It’s the Time Bombs’ fault. So do yourself a favor and relax.”

Damian opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it when I cocked an eyebrow. Then he sighed. “Fine,” he muttered.

I crossed my legs under me at the foot of his bed and leaned forward. “So how’s your Titus picture?” I asked.

“Fine,” he answered, turning the sketchbook to show it to me.

“Looks great,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said automatically. He bit his lip and looked up at me. “Really. Thank you.”

I smiled. “Of course. How did you sleep?”

“Fine. I should be asking that question to you though.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I woke up at about one-thirty in the morning to you sleeping with your head on the edge of the gurney.”

“Oh. Yeah I slept okay till Alfred ordered me to bed about an hour later when I woke up because you twitched.”

“Apologies.”

“Nah it’s okay. It was better for my neck to go to bed like a normal person,” I joked. Damian smirked. It wasn’t so tired and weak anymore. I liked his more alert smirk. It had a mischievous quality to it that made me feel like a kid meeting a new friend who was ultimately going to get me in so much trouble for doing something my parents told me not to do like swim in a creek or something.

“Then perhaps I’ll rescind my apology,” he said.

“Nah. I’ll still accept it because it used to be rare for you to apologize.”

“Tt. I was a bit of a brat when I was younger, wasn’t I?” he mused, grinning slightly.

“Mmhmm!” I agreed, eating more cereal. Damian snorted. “But,” I added, “you were also a good kid at heart who was doing his best with what he had to work with. You weren’t raised like a normal kid and frankly arrogance can be confidence if you can back up your claims. Which you often did.”

Damian regarded me. “Thank you,” he said. “That is… very kind of you.”

I smiled. “‘Course,” I said.

Damian looked between me and his sketchbook for a moment. “There’s… there’s something I want to show you,” he said thoughtfully.

“Uh… okay,” I replied.

He threw his covers off.

“Hey, wait, Damian,” I protested, “Alfred said you’re supposed to stay in bed till tomorrow.”

Damian gave me a cocked eyebrow, waiting for me to back down. I gave him the same look, refusing to back down. Waynes were ridiculously stubborn, but I wasn’t a doormat either. “You wouldn’t be able to reach what I’d like to show you, McCloud,” Damian said, getting out of bed. “And getting something from my closet won’t hurt me.”

I glared at him from the foot of the bed as he crossed to his closet and pulled down a box that was up on the high top shelf. He brought it over and dropped it by my knees. He sat on the other side of the dusty box and let the lid flop carelessly on the floor.

Inside was a pile of old sketchbooks, several of the bottom ones with yellowing pages.

I tensed up. Damian didn’t really show off his art to too many people. Sure he showed me his painting of the picture I’d posted on Twitter and his designs for my charity ball dress, but his sketchbooks were far more private. I only saw the drawing he did of me when I first got to the future because Jason dropped the sketchbook on my lap. I looked up at him, with surprise on my face.

“You alright?” he asked with a small grin.

“You’re… trusting me with this?” I replied.

“Of course. I'm showing you the practice sketches of the drawings I used to give the family every year for the day you went missing. Grayson would keep his for a while and then insisted I keep the drawings I gave to him.” He dug into the box and pulled out a folder that had several pages of sheet protectors in them and passed it to me. I pulled it open. “Those are the finished products. They look the best,” he added.

I flipped through the drawings. Each one was beautiful, and I could see how his art style improved over the eight years I’d been missing due to the time jump. There were eight of them. “Did you use references for these?” I asked. “Because I'm pretty sure I never looked like that.” I pointed to the one of me—dated 2025—in a flowing gown dancing with a partner whose face couldn’t be seen. The gown looked like it was being blown by a fantasy wind that also caught my hair.

Damian grinned. “No. I made that one up. Grayson asked if I would draw you dancing because he said he would forever remember you as a dancer. I decided I could take some liberties with it,” he said. I chuckled.

“And the one with the wings?”

“I was fourteen and Grayson said you were an angel. What would you expect?”

While I looked through the finished sketches Damian had drawn for Dick in greater detail, Damian pulled out the others he’d done for everyone else, explaining them and reminding me that the family loved me. I looked between the drawings and their artist, feeling flattered and amazed that he always depicted me in such beautiful ways. Most of them had me laughing and smiling in some way.

“I really don’t know what to say,” I said. “They’re all incredible.”

Damian ducked his head and avoided my eyes. “Thank you.”

Next

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 25

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG/K+

Notes: (Masterlist) This is a kinda long one at 2,167 words, but WOOHOO more stuff is happening! We’re getting over closer to their confession y’all! If you’re wondering, no I don’t really know how to do short series XD Just LOOOOONG slow burns XD

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @lostredrobin @probsjosh​ @spooder-moon @welovegroot

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24

^^^^^

Creeeak! SLAM! Thud!

I looked up from my phone and leapt over the back of the sofa, bolting from the parlor out into the foyer, already in a fighting stance. Who was invading the manor?!

I slid to a stop on the polished wooden floor in my socks with my hands clenched in fists.

When I whipped my hair out of my face, my hands dropped.

Damian had collapsed to the ground, duffel bag next to him. One arm was trapped underneath him like he’d collapsed while holding an injury and the other was splayed out on the floor.

“Damian! Oh my word!” I exclaimed, dropping to my knees by his side. I rolled him so his arm was no longer trapped beneath him and he was lying on his back on my lap. “Oh Damian. What happened?” I breathed.

His face was bruised. So were his exposed arms—but they had cuts and scrapes too. His dark skin was colored even darker in patches by purplish-greenish bruises and dried blood. His normally-spiky hair was hanging limply around his head. His eyes, usually so fiery and crystal-clear green, stared at me, half-closed and glazed.

“Damian. Damian, it’s me,” I said, brushing bangs that didn’t usually touch his forehead out of his eyes. “It’s Cloudy. C’mon, Damian. Say something.”

“Mission failure,” he mumbled.

I turned my head to shout over my shoulder. “DICK! JASON! BRUCE! ALFRED! HELP! IT’S DAMIAN!”

Damian winced at the volume of my voice, forehead creasing under wisps of bangs that had crept back onto his skin. I pushed his hair out of his way again, trying to keep his eyes on me. The weight of his upper body in my lap and his tense, hard muscles against my legs reminded me for the zillionth time that he wasn’t a thirteen-year-old pipsqueak anymore. That he’d grown up to become Batman.

“Damian, look at me. Come on. Please. What happened?”

Damian just tutted—weakly. “Tt.”

I heard the wssshhh noise of someone sliding on the floor in socks and Dick’s gasp. “Baby bird!” he exclaimed, dropping next to me. “Oh wow. You look terrible.”

Damian looked like he was going to flip Dick off, but his hand only lifted a few inches and then flopped back onto the floor.

Dick glanced at me. “Open the clock. Let’s get him down to the Batcave,” he ordered, dragging Damian’s upper body onto his own lap to free me. I scrambled to my feet and rushed to the clock, pulling it out of the way. By the time I got back to Dick and Damian, Jason had materialized from thin air—as any bat was wont to do—and helping Dick hoist Damian up.

Jason outweighed Damian by ten pounds, but Damian was three inches taller. It was safe to classify Damian as the biggest of his brothers, and there would have been no way for me to carry him into the cave. I was fairly strong, especially for my size, but I didn’t think I’d be able to get him downstairs by myself. Thank goodness Dick and Jason were significantly stronger than I was and could get him down to the med-bay.

I guided them down the stairs and through the cave, making sure they didn’t knock Damian into anything.

Bruce rushed over as Dick and Jason set Damian on a gurney. “Damian,” he murmured. “Are you alright?”

Damian, only half-conscious at this point, just grunted. “Mm.”

Alfred crossed to us and politely elbowed us out of the way. Dick and Jason fell back the farthest, me and Bruce closer. Bruce because, well, Damian was his son; and me because if I fell back any farther I wouldn’t be able to see past Dick and Jason’s bulk.

Tim and Cass joined the tense little party of waiting to see if Damian was going to be okay. Cass took my hand quietly. We exchanged a look of worry before turning our attention back to Alfred examining Damian. Damian may have had a tendency to rub everyone the wrong way at one point or other—especially when he was younger—but at the end of the day, everyone loved him. Because, for all the faults of the bats and the birds, we were all family.

I squeezed Cass’ hand. She squeezed back. And then again, harder, getting my attention. I turned to look at her. “You worried?” she signed, one-handed.

I nodded. Cass just looked at me for a moment before nodding back. We turned back to look at Alfred. I tapped my foot on the floor and bit my lower lip, watching Alfred with a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff—a sphygmomanometer—as he looked Damian over.

“It would be easier,” he said without looking over his shoulder at us, “if I could continue without an audience.”

Jason set his hand on my back and jerked his head towards the stairs. We all headed up them, except Bruce. I watched over my shoulder as Cass pulled me out of the cave. Tim shut the clock once we were all out. Cass let my hand go. “It’s gonna be okay,” she signed with so much confidence that I almost believed her past my own anxiety. “Damian is strong.”

I nodded. “I know,” I signed back. “But I still worry.”

Cass gave me a contemplative look. “I know,” she signed.

“You okay, Cloudy?” Dick asked.

“Fine,” I said. “Just concerned. You?”

Dick shrugged. “Same boat I guess,” he said. “Worried about Damian.”

“We all are, curse our bleeding hearts,” Tim put in. Jason snorted.

^^^^^

Neither Alfred nor Bruce emerged from the cave for what felt like hours—but was probably… oh… maybe forty-five minutes? Jason, Tim, and Cass had moved away from the area around the entrance to the cave to get other stuff done. Dick and I sat nearby and waited.

Finally, Bruce came upstairs. “Simple exhaustion, a bad beating, and dehydration. If you want to see him, it should be one-at-a-time. He needs to rest, so no hyping him up, you hear?” he ordered.

“Of course,” I said.

“Ladies first,” Dick said, gesturing that I should go see him first.

I nodded and ducked back into the cave. I trotted down the stairs and bit my lower lip as I approached Damian lying on the gurney. I sat on the chair next to the gurney. “Hey,” I greeted softly.

“Hi,” he breathed. His hand twisted so it was facing the ceiling and his fingers straightened. I took the cue and slid my fingers through his, holding his hand.

“How do you feel?” I asked. There was an IV drip in his non-dominant arm, probably for rehydration—or maybe it had some pain medication. Or maybe both.

I didn’t know what Alfred did with IVs.

Damian grunted, giving my fingers a small squeeze. “‘M alive,” he mumbled.

“Yeah but how do you feel?” I pressed.

“Like I got dragged behind a cart again,” Damian said.

I scrunched my eyebrows. “Again?” I quoted.

“Mmhmm… training… with… the League of Assassins…” he muttered.

“I hate those guys,” I grumbled under my breath. I leaned closer. “What did Alfred say?”

“‘M gonna be alright,” he said tiredly. “Just need rest and rehydration.” His fingers squirmed in mine. I moved to let go, but he tightened his grip. “Not yet,” he said. “Please.”

“Okay,” I said. I leaned forward and brushed his hair out of his face. “I went and saw Michelle while you were gone. Jason’s remote polygraph said she wasn’t lying when she said she didn’t have an affair with my dad, but she had a hard time meeting my eyes.”

Damian gave me a look with scrunched eyebrows. “You didn’t wait for me to come with you?”

I shrugged. “Jay pretended to be my chauffeur and I was feeling brave that day.”

“I see,” Damian said, thoughtful and quiet. He still sounded exhausted.

We sat in silence for a moment, I wanted to get up and leave so Dick could come down and check on Damian, but Damian wouldn’t let my hand go.

“I missed you,” he said quietly after a moment.

I gave him a smile with the left side of my mouth. “I missed you too. Don’t tell Dick. He was teasing me about it,” I replied.

“I won’t. Promise.”

“I was really worried too.”

“Mm. Apologies.”

I pushed some of the hair that I’d already pushed out of his face even farther back with my free hand. “It’s okay. It comes with this life. We all always worry about each other, don’t we?”

“Mmhmm. Always.” He brought my hand up to his face and pressed my knuckles against his lips. “But I'm okay. Promise.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “Whatever you say, Dami.”

“You don’t believe me,” he observed.

“You’re the one covered in bruises and cuts,” I pointed out.

“Tt. S’pose you’re not wrong,” he said.

“Ooh. You tutted instead of grunting. You must be feeling better,” I teased. Damian chuckled weakly, patting the back of the hand he was holding with his other hand. There was a tiny smile on his face, but it looked like he was having a hard time doing it. I got off the chair. “Get some rest. Dick will probably come down once I'm gone to make sure you’re okay.”

“You’re not gonna stay?” Damian asked.

“Bruce said one-at-a-time since you’re exhausted and need rest. Dick wants to see you too.”

Damian squeezed my hand hard—and winced doing it. “Come back when he’s done. Please,” he said.

I nodded. “Okay. I will.”

I slid my hand out of Damian’s and left the cave. Dick was sitting nearby.

“Your turn,” I said.

He nodded, got to his feet, and went into the Batcave. I took his seat and waited for him to come back.

He was down in the cave for about ten minutes. When he reemerged, he smiled at me. “Damian asked if I’d send you down again,” he said. I nodded.

“Yeah. No problem,” I said. I stood up and went back down.

Damian was dozing on the gurney. I sat back in the chair I’d been in before. His eyelids fluttered open, saw me, and closed. He turned his hand and straightened his fingers again. I took his hand. He grinned slightly. “Just… just stay,” he murmured.

“Of course,” I said.

He hummed with contentment and closed his eyes again. I heard him take a deep breath and sigh out his nose.

^^^^^

When Damian woke up, he noticed immediately that his right hand was asleep, but other than that he felt fine.

He peeled his eyes open.

He was still on the gurney in the Batcave, but the rest of the cave had changed since he went to sleep. The medical area around him had been cleaned up, and there were signs everywhere else of the rest of his family heading out for patrol. A discarded—likely dull—batarang on a table, a gauntlet that had been in need of repair missing from the stand it had been on, Drake’s staff removed from where Todd had hid it among the brooms and mops.

Damian glanced down to see why his hand was asleep.

McCloud was asleep on top of it. She held his hand with both of hers, her forehead resting on the back of her hand that was threaded through his. Her hair was a slight mess, but not as wild as it usually was when she slept.

Damian couldn’t help but smile. He couldn’t even see her face and yet she was still beautiful.

The digital watch on her left wrist said it was 1:27AM. Everyone else was still out on patrol and would be for several more hours. Apparently it was a slow night because Pennyworth was sitting at the Batcomputer, but he was silent. No one was frantically shouting through the speakers for technical assistance.

To be frank, Damian was surprised that Pennyworth was allowing McCloud to sleep with her head on the gurney. Surely she’d be sore and stiff and achy later. Why did he not order her to her quarters? No one refused Alfred’s orders—least of all McCloud.

Unless he hadn’t seen her… but that was absurd. Pennyworth noticed everything that happened in the household. He must have seen her…

She cooed in her sleep and shuffled, her forehead unsticking from the back of her hand and coming to rest on the right side of her face so she was toward Damian. Her face was always peaceful in sleep. She looked like a painting of someone relaxed in an idealistic, utopian society. Or like someone painted a character from a magical fairytale that had been blessed by fairies with the gift of beauty.

Damian grinned and closed his eyes again. Maybe… just… a couple more hours… would do him… some good…

Next

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 24

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG/K+

Notes: (Masterlist) Another chapter with a lot going on. Sorry this slowed down. Holidays and school and stuff. Happy New Year, coming up! For those of you wondering when a confession is coming: soonish!

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @lostredrobin @probsjosh​ @spooder-moon @welovegroot

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23 Dear any newcomers, I know this seems like a lot of chapters and OMG overwhelming but they average out at about 1,700 words so they’re not very long, promise.

^^^^^

Diana grabbed Damian’s arm before he could dodge around her. “Damian,” she said quietly. Clark edged around them and disappeared down the hall of the Watchtower.

Damian sighed. “Prince,” he replied.

“How much do you trust me?” Diana asked.

“I trust you to watch my back,” Damian said. “I trust your relationship with the members of my family, my father in particular.”

“Do you trust me enough to discuss your feelings for Cloudburst?”

Damian stared at her. “My feelings regarding Cloudburst are no one’s business but my own.”

Diana didn’t look at all convinced. “Damian. I saw the way you looked at her during the charity ball. I’ve been meaning to ask about it but haven’t had time till now. I know you care for her,” she said, still not letting go of Damian’s arm so he couldn’t escape.

“Why do you care?” he muttered half-heartedly.

“I care because I believe in love and I think you should too,” Diana said.

Damian carefully extracted his arm from Diana’s powerful grip. “Whether I love Cloudburst or not doesn’t matter. This life doesn’t have time or room for love. If it did, she would never be safe. I couldn’t do that to her.”

Diana sighed. “Cloudburst accepted the risks of this life herself,” she pointed out. “If she were a civilian perhaps we would be having a different conversation. But any danger she gets in, it won’t be caused by being with you. Unusual as her situation is, being so used to being older than you, I believe you both deserve a win.”

Damian cleared his throat. “Now is not the time to discuss this. Let’s redouble our efforts to retrieve the speedsters,” he said, dodging around Diana and walking away.

Diana just grinned, all of her suspicions confirmed.

^^^^^

I took a deep breath and looked up at the McCloud Software tower. I let out the breath, trying to relax. Cracking my knuckles behind my back, I tilted my head down to look at the front door. Employees strode in and out in sharp suits. I looked down at my outfit. Skirt, blouse, flats.

Jason put his hand on my shoulder. “You’ll do fine, kid. You’ve faced down terrifying villains with courage. This is going to be a walk in the park,” he said reassuringly.

“Don’t call me kid just because you’re older than me now,” I snapped, voice shaking with nerves.

“I called you kid when we were the same age. You’re tiny. It’s hard not to.”

I clenched my jaw. “Fair point.” I squared my shoulders. “Okay. I'm gonna do this.”

Jason, disguised as a chauffeur, followed me into the building. I marched up to the main reception desk. The receptionist didn’t look particularly attentive. “Do you have an appointment?” he asked, bored.

“I'm here to see Michelle Eden,” I said.

“Name?” he asked.

I put my hands on the top of the tall desk. “Nora McCloud,” I said.

The receptionist froze and looked up at me. “Miss McCloud!” he breathed. “Y-yes. Of course. I’ll let her know you’re on your way up.”

“Thanks. Unlock my parents’ elevator too, if you would,” I said.

“Of course, ma’am.”

Jason trailed me over to the private executives’ elevator. It dinged open. We ducked in. “Nothin’ weirder than being twenty-one and being called ma’am instead of miss,” I muttered.

“Well, you are the heir to the company,” Jason pointed out.

“Mm,” I grunted.

Jason snickered.

We rode the rest of the way up the building while I tapped my foot anxiously on the floor. “Relax, Cloudy. It’s gonna be okay,” Jason said.

“Mm.”

Jason snorted. “You’re starting to sound like Bruce. Just grunt instead of answer,” he observed.

“Shut up, Todd,” I snapped.

The elevator slowed to a stop. Jason set his hand on the small of my back. “I got your back in case this goes sour,” he said.

I nodded. “I know. Thanks Jay,” I said.

The doors opened. Jason’s hand dropped.

I stepped into the executive suite. Most of the higher-ups’ offices appeared to be dark—abandoned. Not surprising. I imagined they were on some tropical vacation somewhere, enjoying themselves and not doing any work.

“First thing I'm going to do is fire half the execs,” I muttered under my breath. Jason snorted.

One office was occupied. The one that used to be my dad’s. The one I used to play in and ditch an hour of school to meet him for lunch in.

Michelle Eden—CEO

I didn’t even get the chance to knock before the door was flying open. The woman who’d once been like an aunt or second mother to me stood there. She had more wrinkles and gray hair than I remembered. But I supposed running a company was stressful. I wondered if she had ulcers.

“Oh Nora! Oh my goodness!” she breathed. Her arms flew around me, crushing me to her.

Michelle was a beautiful woman, no matter what people said about the effects of aging on women. She had lush dark auburn hair and piercing gray eyes. I’d call her voluptuous before I’d call her curvy. She wore a crisp business suit—slacks and matching blazer almost the same gray as her eyes and a cream blouse—and sensible heels. She looked the part of a modern, powerful female CEO.

But I didn’t feel relief at seeing her. I just felt my misgivings at her alleged affair with my father.

“Nora, sweetheart. Come in, come in! Let’s order something to eat. I want you to tell me everything!” she enthused, pulling me into her office. Jason stayed right behind me. I waved him off.

“It’s okay, Charles,” I said. “I trust her.”

Michelle shut the door to her office in Jason’s face. “Who’s he? He’s a looker, huh?” she teased, like she used to when I was younger and had a crush on one of my dad’s assistants who was really cute. I wondered if he still worked at the company…

I shrugged. “Just my driver. I get fatigued so easily right now that I don’t trust myself driving,” I lied.

Michelle patted me on the shoulder with a sympathetic smile. “Always the responsible girl, aren’t you?” she asked. “Just like your mom.”

We sat on the sofa in her office. “Thanks,” I said.

“So, what about those rumors floating around that you’re dating your godfather’s youngest son?” she asked with a playful grin.

I snorted. “Rumor, not true,” I said. “When the time-stream spat me out, Damian was suddenly my age and he really helped me get better.” I cleared my throat. “What about the rumor that you had an affair with my dad?” I looked her dead in the face. “And be honest with me. I'm not a kid anymore.”

She looked contemplative. “And the penny drops,” she said with a resigned sigh. “This isn’t just a social visit to catch up.”

“I wish it could be, but I am my parents’ daughter. I have to think about this company and my parents’ reputations and how it reflects on this company, Shelley.”

“I want you to listen to me very carefully, Nora,” she said seriously. “Your parents loved each other very much. Your mom would be the first to admit that your dad was a bit of a handful—and maybe even a pain in the neck—but they loved each other.”

“And what about you?” I pressed. “That doesn’t answer the question.”

Michelle took a deep breath and took a drink from her mug where it had been sitting on the coffee table. “I knew Lyle far longer than even Jaqueline did. We were childhood friends. And yes, I loved him.”

“But?” I pressed, sensing the “but” in her tone.

“But I would never try to take him away from Jaqueline. They needed each other.”

“That still doesn’t answer whether or not you actually had an affair with him or not,” I pointed out. “Shelley, I want to trust you. I really do. But you gotta be real with me.”

“I did not have an affair with your father. I promise. I loved him, but I didn’t love him romantically,” she vowed.

“The emails that were leaked with the hack were what, then? I read some of them. They were remarkably sappy.”

“They were planted. Defamatory.”

I smiled. “I believe you,” I said, not sure if I was lying or not. I’d need some input from Jason first. “How about some lunch? Let me tell you everything.”

Michelle grinned. “That would be splendid.” She got up and poked her head out of her office. “Trina! Reschedule any of my appointments in the next hour. I'm going to have lunch with Nora!”

She came back in and handed me a menu. “What do you want? We have quite the selection.”

^^^^^

Damian glanced at his teammates, and then looked to Vibe. “Ready?” he asked.

The metahuman bit his lip. “I thought only speedsters could go through breaches,” he said. “No one else is fast enough—”

“I'm almost as fast as the Flash,” Superman said. “Batman and I will go through with you and, if you’re willing, follow you to the other speedster. We’ll need a guide.”

“Right,” Vibe said. He popped his goggles on. “Let’s try this. One breach to Earth-Two, coming right up.” He put one fist forward. A tear appeared in the air, looking like churning blue-gray clouds. Vibe sighed as Superman put him and Damian under his arms and shot through. Damian didn’t close his eyes. There was no outward indication that he was scared.

But Clark heard his son’s best friend’s heart racing. He was frightened.

^^^^^

“So?” I asked Jason in the privacy of the execs’ elevator. “Was she lying or telling the truth?”

Jason pulled out his phone. “By most accounts, she seemed to be telling the truth about not having an affair with your dad.” He showed me the screen. Remote Polygraph said the label at the top of whatever app he was using. “Pupil dilation, heart rate, muscle tension.”

“But not by all accounts?” I asked.

Jason pursed his lips. “Well, there’s her eye gaze, that the Polygraph wasn’t picking up on. She didn’t meet your eyes much when she was promising that she didn’t have an affair with your father. I think that’s a sign of possible lying. Perhaps there was romantic tension there but it never got physical.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Wish Diana wasn’t off with Damian and Clark so I could ask her to come snag Michelle’s wrist with the lasso of truth and make her be one-hundred-percent honest with me.”

Jason rested his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Cloudy,” he said.

We reached the lobby. Jason led me to the car and opened the door for me. I climbed in. He got in the driver’s seat. “Do you like playing chauffeur?” I asked jokingly.

He laughed. “H*$% yeah! But only for you and Cass. Anyone else is a pain.”

I chuckled. “Thanks Jay.”

“For what? Driving?” he asked.

“That and being here for moral support,” I said.

He nodded. “No problem, Clouds. I'm still your brother and still working at being a good one.”

“You are a good brother, Jay. You were just the brother I needed when my parents died.”

“I was a vengeance-crazed vigilante h*$%-bent on revenge,” Jason pointed out.

I grinned. “Fair point,” I commented.

^^^^^

“So, how are you surviving without Damian here?” Dick asked casually as I unhooked Titus’ leash in the garage after I took him for a walk.

I scrunched my eyebrows and straightened up. “Just fine, thanks,” I said. “Why?”

Titus bounded off.

Dick shrugged. “I don’t know. You two have grown really close and I was wondering if the separation anxiety was going to kick in.”

I snorted. “We’re not attached at the hip, Grayson,” I said.

“Ooh! Cloudy called me Grayson. I must be in trouble,” he joked, lounging over the hood of his sedan. “And I know you’re not attached at the hip. But adjusting to the future has probably been difficult for you and I know he’s just kinda been by your side to help you through it. So, are you okay without him?”

“I'm fine and dandy, Dick,” I said.

Dick gave me a look. “You miss him,” he stated.

I glowered. “I’m worried about a lot of things, Dick. He’s been gone for like a day and a half. I haven’t had time to miss him yet.”

“Hmm,” Dick grunted. “Sure.”

“Is this in any way relevant to anything or can I go shower?” I asked.

“No, no, by all means go shower,” Dick said, waving me away with a grin. “I was just wondering since, you know, you’re giving his dog a walk and all.”

I scoffed. “He asked me to take care of his pets if he doesn’t come back, Grayson,” I snapped playfully. “Might as well get them used to me again. Titus and Alfred the Cat remember me but his other pets… not so much. Most of his pets knew me but never really… liked me.”

“They sensed you didn’t trust them,” Dick remarked as I headed for the door that would lead me into the manor and out of the garage.

“Yeah probably,” I said, ducking through the door.

Next

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 23

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG/K+

Notes: (Masterlist) This chapter has a LOT going on in it. Hope I don’t overwhelm anybody. Sorry this took a while!

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @lostredrobin​ @probsjosh @spooder-moon @welovegroot

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22

^^^^^

I slipped the carton of ice cream out of the freezer and ran the ice cream scooper under hot water to help it scoop the ice cream better. Once my small bowl had a satisfactory amount of ice cream in it, I put the ice cream back and set the scooper in the sink to wash when I was finished. I sat at the counter and began to eat.

The light to the kitchen flicked on. “McCloud, what are you doing?” Damian demanded. He was so small. Smaller even than me. At twelve-years-old he should have already been my height or taller. But he wasn’t. He was so small.

“Ice cream. Want some?” I asked, pointing my spoon to the freezer.

“Tt. I think not,” he said. His hair was sticking out at odd angles, like he hadn’t quite washed all of the gel out of it, and he looked sleepy. “Consuming something with that much sugar would upset my digestion.”

I shrugged. “Yeah but it tastes delicious and is totally worth it,” I remarked around a mouthful. “If you don’t want ice cream, wanna sit and chat or are you going back to bed?”

Damian took a step back—and then hesitated. “I suppose sitting for a moment would do me no harm. Is there anything in particular you would like to discuss?” He climbed onto the stool next to me. Both of us were too short to reach the bars at the bottom of the stools so we kicked our legs.

I pursed my lips around a bite of ice cream. “How are you, Damian?” I asked. “Like, everything-speaking. Emotionally, physically, mentally? Are you alright?”

Damian opened his mouth, probably to say something snarky, but I cocked an eyebrow. “I’m adequate. Physically I'm healthy and most of my injuries from patrol are minor. Mentally I am of sound mind. Emotionally I am… the same as always. Unremarkably indifferent.”

“So on your way to becoming an emotionally-constipated tree like your dad,” I said jokingly.

Damian spluttered. “No! No I am not!”

“Damian. You and I were taken in at nearly the same time. I was here just slightly earlier. In all that time, I’ve seen you smile… maybe twice. Maybe.”

Damian tutted. “Tt.”

I got up and got out another bowl. “You’re eating some ice cream with me,” I said.

“McCloud—”

“Nope. No buts. Just do it.”

We sat at the counter and talked for a long time. I even got Damian to smile. To loosen up and let go just a little. He was wound tighter than any clock I’d ever seen and seeing him relax made me smile.

^^^^^

“Cloudy? Clooouuudyyy? Earth to Cloudburst!” Dick’s voice registered barely in the back of my mind.

Shwing! A batarang flew past my face, missing my nose by an inch. It lodged into the training dummy off to my side. I jumped and whirled, instantly on alert and prepared to strike. Dick was standing there, halfway out of his Nightwing uniform with his eyebrows raised at me.

“Cloudy, you’ve been off in La La Land for like an hour,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Just worried,” I said.

“About Damian?” Dick asked.

“About Damian. About confronting Michelle about whether or not she actually had an affair with my dad. About taking my company back. About everything.” I rubbed my eyes with my fingertips before pushing my hands through my hair.

“Wait, you’ve been here for a month and you still haven’t gone to talk to the woman who was basically family yet?” Jason demanded.

“No. I’ve been busy,” I said.

“Doing what?” Jason prodded.

“Adjusting to being in the future,” I retorted sharply.

“That’s fair,” Dick put in before Jason could say anything else snappy.

I shook my head to clear out the fluffy clutter. “I'm, uh, gonna go for a run. Be back later.”

^^^^^

“—you think, Batman?” someone asked.

At the mention of his name, Damian’s attention returned to the Justice League gathered around him.

“Apologies, I tuned out. You all must have been rather boring, as usual. What was the question?”

“Do you think the plan will work?” Diana pointed to the construct Green Lantern had made in the middle of the table with her sword. Damian licked his lips, tracing the lines of each team member’s plotted course.

“No,” he said. “Too exposed.”

“Too exposed?” Aquaman quoted. “Batman, these paths are as covered as we can get.”

“And we’re going to have to take risks if we have any hope of getting the speedsters back. And we need them before we can do anything else with this mission,” Superman pointed out. “No one else here has access to the Speed Force and, as far as we know, no one else on the planet does either. This is the only way.”

Damian pursed his lips. “What about another planet?” he asked.

Everyone turned confused—and somewhat appalled—expressions to Damian. “What?” Wonder Woman finally asked after several moments of silence.

“A-noth-er plan-et,” Damian repeated, slower.

Several eyerolls were seen around the Justice League table. “What do you mean, another planet?” Green Lantern asked. “Because, kid, I’ve seen other planets and speedsters are pretty unique to Earth… why are you glaring at me like that?”

“Do not—call me—kid!” Damian ground out. “I am an adult and I have earned my place at this table the same as all of you. I may not be the Batman you were used to, but I. Am. Batman.” His fists were clenched on the table so hard that the leather of his gloves creaked.

Diana leaned over and covered her mouth with her hand. “Cloudburst, Damian,” she whispered. “Think of Cloudburst. Her smile. Her laugh.”

Clark was drumming his fingers on the table and trying not to listen.

Damian closed his eyes and reined in his temper. The tension in his jaw and hands eased out. He took a deep, cleansing breath and sighed. “What I meant was, there’s a metahuman in Central City called Vibe. He can open breaches to other dimensions with Earths similar to ours. Some of the ones nearer to us have speedsters too. Other Flashes who have access to the Speed Force and can hopefully find Barry and Wally.”

Everyone looked at each other.

“That… that’s a good idea,” Superman admitted.

Damian’s arrogance as a teenager would have said something like, “Of course it is—I came up with it.” But he was mellowing out a bit as a twenty-something. So instead, he nodded to his best friend’s dad and said, “Thank you. I believe so as well.”

“Worth a shot,” Green Arrow said. “Vibe is kind of a friend of mine. I’ll give him a call.”

^^^^^

“Dude, Cloudy’s phased out again,” Tim said to Jason, pointing at where Cloudburst was sitting at a table in the Batcave, tracing her fingers idly over the surface and staring into the darkness of the cave unblinkingly. Her eyes were glazed and her breathing at absolute minimum—the kind where she’d realize she’d been practically holding her breath for who-knew-how-long and would heave a huge sigh in order to re-oxygenate her blood.

“Hey Cloudy?” Jason called, quiet enough that he wouldn’t jar her out of the phased-out reverie she was in but loud enough that she’d hear him.

“Mm?” she grunted distractedly.

“I shot the Joker while you were missing,” Jason said casually. “Killed him almost instantly.” It was a lie, but it was a test of how much attention she was paying them.

“That’s nice Jay,” she said. “Good job.” Apparently not much attention.

“Bruce ran the Batmobile into a tree yesterday and broke three ribs and punctured a lung,” Tim added.

“Cool,” Cloudy said flatly.

Dick was trying really hard not to lose it. He was turning red and holding his sides to stop from laughing. Cass was smiling where she was stretching.

“Nora, your hair smells like coffee and campfire smoke,” Cass said, using the two smells Cloudy hated most to see if that was enough to get her to notice that they were all talking nonsense and lies to mess with her.

It wasn’t. “Thanks Cass,” Cloudy said.

“Hey Cloudy, we know Damian’s in love with you and you’re falling in love with him,” Dick said, barely managing to hold back his giggles.

“That’s interesting, Dick,” she mumbled, still gazing into the darkness blankly.

“Cloudy, are you even listening to a word we’re saying?”

^^^^^

I shook my head to clear it and spun around in my chair. “Sorry, what?” I asked. I felt a little short of breath. I must have been concentrating so hard that I forgot to breathe and my body didn’t take over very well.

“We’re just talking crap waiting to see if you’d notice,” Dick said.

“… Oh. What did you say?” I asked.

“I shot and killed the Joker, your hair smells like coffee and campfire smoke, and Bruce broke three ribs and punctured a lung yesterday,” Jason recapped.

“After smashing the Batmobile into a tree,” Dick added.

I blinked. “And I didn’t notice any of it?”

“Nope,” Tim said. “It was actually hilarious. You should have seen how red Dick went trying not to laugh.”

I started to smile. “Sorry guys. I'm just still tired from my run,” I said.

“It’s all good,” Dick said. “It was really funny.”

“Can I braid your hair, Cloudy?” Jason asked, changing the subject. I shrugged.

“Sure if you’re gentle. One tug too hard and I’m kicking you in the nose,” I said.

“That’s fair,” Jason said. My hair was still damp enough after my shower that he could braid it without too much trouble. His hands in my hair didn’t feel as good as Damian’s had when he styled my hair for the charity ball, but it didn’t hurt either. So I just let him. All the boys liked playing with my hair at one point or another. I liked mine long and I was usually around. Cass’ hair was often short and Babs and Steph weren’t always around.

While Jason braided my hair, he prattled. “I was thinking the other night that maybe you should consider a dating app,” he said.

I snorted. “Yeah no thanks,” I said.

“Why not? Got your eye on someone else?”

“No.” I wasn’t sure if that was a lie or not. “Just don’t feel like I should be dating a month into living in the future. What if I fall for someone and then the timeways reopen? What happens then?”

“You don’t have to go back to the past, Cloudy,” Jason said. “Maybe you’ll wanna stay here.”

“With my twin brother eight years older than me?” I teased.

He tugged on my hair. “Well sure, but also with Damian your age. You two have been spending a lot of time together since you got here and I think it’s been good for both of you. Don’t tell Damian I said that though. He’d smack me. With a sword.”

I laughed. “No he wouldn’t. He’s not what he was when he first came here anymore,” I said. “I see it more abruptly than you would have. For you guys it was probably a gradual chill-out happening over the course of years. For me it was sudden. It’s easier, I think, for me to see how much he’s changed—and how much he’s stayed the same in other areas.” I snickered. “He has loosened up a little.”

“Mm,” Jason grunted, reaching around to pull one of my hair ties off my wrist. He tied off my hair. “Whatever you say, Cloudy.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks.”

“Anyway. Maybe you’ll wanna stay here. At least this way we know you’re safe.”

“Fair point,” I said. “We’ll see, Jay. I don’t know yet. The future is as uncertain as the past right now.”

“True,” he agreed with a smile. “Personally, I hope you stay.”

“Thanks.”

Next

[sassycassie-s-series]

Admin Note

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[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 22

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG-11/T- (For mild violence---nothing too graphic)

Notes: (Masterlist) This one’s got a little backstory of what Cloudy missed based on headcanons I LOVE and a some other stuff she missed XD (It’ll make sense. Hopefully...).

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @lostredrobin @probsjosh @spooder-moon @welovegroot

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21

^^^^^

Tim spun his staff between his hands, facing off against me for a little sparring to help me learn how to use escrima sticks in different types of fights. “So, whatever happened to the rest of your immunizations?” he asked as we both stretched. I twirled my practice escrima sticks in my hands.

“I got them all,” I said. “Just not when everyone was around because I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. Every day for the first week I was here.”

“Alfred let you leave the cave on patrol when you hadn’t finished your immunizations?!” Tim’s jaw dropped in shock, but the corners of his lips were turned up in a smile.

“Yes. I had this year’s flu shot and that was going to be enough as long as I was careful,” I said. “Which I was.”

“What about your Cloudburst interview? Have you done that yet?”

“I did, actually. Lois Lane was kind enough to interview me for the DP. While everyone else was out too. Where have you been, living under a rock?” I teased.

Tim looked up at the stalactites hanging from the roof of the Batcave. “No. Been living under geologic formations created when water drips from a ceiling over millions of years that closely resemble rocks,” he said.

I cracked my knuckles by pressing them against my hips. “Smart-aleck,” I accused, dropping into the stance Dick showed me, elbows bent and escrima sticks held up.

He laughed and twirled his staff. “Can’t help it when you make it so easy,” he replied.

I attacked first. Smiles dropped and concentration took over our expressions.

Tim was the most proficient staff-wielder… I’d ever met or faced off with. Maybe the most proficient on the planet. Though maybe I was just biased because I considered him a brother. He was skilled at it at seventeen, and he was even better at twenty-five. And I was still terrible at using escrima sticks so I felt the same way I had when Damian and I faced off against Tim and Bruce while I was sparring Bruce: I received more hits than I dealt.

Eventually I just threw the escrima sticks off to the side, got in close enough to fight hand-to-hand, and dropped into my normal fighting style.

That evened out the odds nicely, even though I heard Dick complaining that I wasn’t supposed to ditch my weapons in the middle of a fight. I ignored him. Tim did too. The problem with my style and his was a staff could keep people farther away and I got in close because I didn’t have much of a reach, so they clashed.

I knew Tim hated it, but I loved it because if I could manage to get too close, it was harder for him to defend himself with a staff.

We only sparred for a couple minutes because Jason and Cass wanted some time on the mat and booted us off. We left willingly, both sweating and panting.

I collapsed on the cold stone floor, using the chill to cool me off.

Damian sat cross-legged near my head. “You alright?” he asked, tilting his head to the side so that I wouldn’t look sideways to him.

I shrugged. “Yeah. I’ll get a couple bruises but so will he,” I said with a grin. “How about you? You alright?”

Damian rolled his eyes that I turned the question back on him. “I'm fine,” he said.

“Good.”

“Cloudy!” Dick complained, coming over and sitting on my other side. “I don’t think you understand the idea of a training exercise. You’re supposed to keep your weapons in your hands!” He playfully nudged me in the arm with his toes.

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “I'm sick of getting the snot beat out of me every time I step on that mat,” I said. “I know I can win the way I fight, and sometimes I’d rather win than learn.” Dick sighed dramatically. “I can do more escrima training later. I just felt more like being Cloudburst than Nightwing.”

Dick pursed his lips at me thoughtfully. “That’s fair,” he relented, getting back to his feet and strolling off.

“I understand the sentiment, McCloud. I was Nightwing for a while,” Damian said.

I turned to look at him. “Really?” I asked.

“Yes. When Father chose to retire from being Batman, I was growing out of being Robin, but didn’t feel ready to take up the mantle of Batman. Grayson wore the cowl for a year while I took up Nightwing. Just to move on from Robin and confirm I was ready to do it. When I felt ready, he took Nightwing back and I became Batman,” Damian said. “It was… Tt… a learning experience.”

“Wow. I missed a lot,” I said.

“Mm,” Damian grunted. “Nothing that mattered.”

“You being Nightwing for a year sounds like it mattered.”

Damian shrugged. “At the time not so much. In hindsight, perhaps it did.”

“You’re so dramatic.”

“Tt. Runs in the family.”

I laughed and sat up, smiling at him. “You say that like I don’t already know,” I joked.

He gave me a smirk.

“If you two are done flirting,” Tim said, peering at the massive Bat-computer screen, “Damian’s getting a ping.”

Damian pulled his phone out of his pocket, making a face. He tapped his screen a few times, slid the Enrypt option, and held his phone to his ear. I watched curiously. A ping from what? Why was he encrypting the call?

“This is Batman,” he said when the other side picked up. He paused, listening. “Tt. Right… I see… Absolutely not. That is out of the question… I’ll be there shortly… Batman out.” He hung up. “I have to go. League thing. I’ll return within the next few days.”

“League thing?” I asked, feeling like an idiot. “What League?” My mind whispered the League of Assassins—Damian wasn’t still involved with them, though, was he?

“The Justice League,” Dick put in.

“Since when is Damian in the Justice League?” I demanded. “I’ve been here for a month and no one decided to tell me that Damian is a member of the J.L.?”

Dick, Damian, and Tim exchanged a look. “We figured you’d deduce it given Batman is sort of famously the Justice League’s strategist and… pretty much leader,” Dick said.

I shook my head. “It never even crossed my mind that someone else had to take Bruce’s place in the Justice League too. Weren’t you Batman in Gotham, Dick, for a while after he came back so he could be Batman elsewhere—like with the League? When the thought crossed my mind, that was kind of what I thought would happen.”

“No. I am a member of the Justice League. As is Grayson. And Drake,” Damian remarked. “However, they requested me specifically, so I’m leaving Gotham to all of you while I'm gone. Be careful and try not to burn down the city.” He gave us all a look.

I returned a sarcastic expression. “How faithless can you be in us?” I joked.

“Tt. I have the utmost confidence that you will keep them in line, McCloud,” Damian said with a little grin, retreating over to the stairs. I rolled my eyes and waved him off.

“Go have fun. Tell Diana and Clark I say hi if you remember,” I said.

“Anything else?” Damian asked.

“No. You?” I joked.

“Well, if you’d like to come help me pack I would appreciate it,” Damian said.

I ignored the glance Dick and Jason shot each other and shrugged. “Sure,” I said, jogging over to the stairs and taking them two at a time until I caught up to him near the top. He pushed the clock out of the way and made a sweeping gesture to indicate I should go out first. I did. He shut the clock behind us. “Did they say what you’re up against?”

“Yes,” Damian said.

“Aaaaannnd… are you gonna share it with me?”

“Tt… No.”

I blinked. “Why?”

Damian regarded me thoughtfully. “I… I don’t want to worry you, McCloud.”

I snorted. “Damian, I'm gonna worry anyway,” I pointed out. “It’s kinda what I do. Might as well give me something to direct my worry at.”

“Really, McCloud, you’re better off not knowing,” Damian said.

I cocked an eyebrow. “That dangerous, huh?” I asked as we reached his room. He shrugged. “Okay then. Guess I won’t ask again. What can I help you pack?”

Damian yanked a duffel bag out from under his bed. “Grab my suit—the three-piece two-button with the green tie,” he said, unzipping the bag. “Probably won’t need it but just in case.” He shrugged.

^^^^^

Cass narrowed her eyes as she leaned against the table where Dick was repairing his suit. She tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up. “What’s happening with Cloud and Damian?” she signed.

Dick set his suit down with a sigh. “Damian has had a crush on her for years,” he signed back. “And now it looks like Cloud might share the feeling. Jason and I are trying to get them together.”

Tim slid over in his traction-less shoes. “I want to join,” he signed quickly. “Cloud likes Damian—I know Cloud likes Damian.”

Cass and Dick both lowered their eyebrows and signed, “How?” at the same time.

“Few days ago Damian had no shirt on and Cloud stared at him. I told her she had seen him with no shirt before and she said something like—” He shifted his shoulders to his left as though taking on Cloudy as a character. “—‘Yes but last time I saw him with no shirt he was thirteen and not built like a house.’” He dropped back into the middle space where he’d been standing before. “I think that means she likes him but won’t say. I told her that. She disagreed but her voice went high so…” He shrugged. “Yeah I want in.”

“You’re in,” Dick signed.

^^^^^

“McCloud,” Damian piped up from the relative quiet that was me handing him clothes and him folding them with military precision before placing them in his duffel bag. “In the event that I do not return…”

“Don’t,” I warned, not looking up from the graphic T-shirt I’d picked up that looked suspiciously like one I used to own—but a size bigger. “Don’t say that, Damian. You’re going to come back. You’re Batman. You have to. You have a city to protect and a ridiculous number of pets to look after. Don’t talk to me like I'm going to lose you too. I’ve already lost enough… we all have.”

Damian’s finger gently rested under my chin and tilted my head up to meet his eyes. “I have no plans to die, McCloud. But it’s poor planning and preparation to assume and guarantee I won’t. If I don’t come back—”

I put my hand on Damian’s mouth. “Don’t. Just… Don’t. I don’t care what you’re going to say. You’re going to come back and say it to me in person, okay?” I looked him dead in the eye as I removed my hand from his lips.

“If I don’t come back please take care of Titus and the others, please,” he said, rushing it out before I could shut him up again.

I nodded. “Of course I will. But come back so you can do it yourself. Your pets like you better than me.”

Damian thought about that for a moment. “That’s not true. Titus likes you well.”

“Mm. Maybe,” I said, passing him the T-shirt for him to fold and pack.

We finished his packing up and headed back down to the cave so he could take the batwing to wherever the Justice League needed him.

He caught my arm before we could reach the clock. “McCloud,” he said, urgently. I was instantly on edge. Had something broken into the house? Were we about to get attacked?

Instead he just spun me so I was facing him, dropped his duffel bag, and put both hands on my shoulders so he could stare me in the face.

“I am going to do my utmost to return, McCloud, I promise,” he said seriously. “Don’t mistake my preparation for the event of my death for masochism.”

I shook my head. “I… didn’t,” I said. “I just want you to fight to come home.”

He pushed some of my hair out of my face with the same charged, intense look he’d given me the night he found me in the past—like he was trying to memorize every detail of my face. “Of course I will,” he said. “I give you my word.”

Next

[sassycassie-s-series]

All My Fault 21

By: SassyShoulderAngel319

Fandom/Character(s): DC, BatFam - Damian Wayne/Batman

Rating: PG/K+

Notes: (Masterlist) I signed the whole story in ASL that Cloudy signs. That was fun!

Tag List (Open): @batboys-and-other-messes @lostredrobin @probsjosh @spooder-moon @welovegroot

Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18, Ch 19, Ch 20

^^^^^

Cassandra Cain-Wayne, Bruce’s only adopted daughter, pushed open the heavy front door with one hand, her duffel bag in the other hand and head hanging low. Her black hair was still short and at twenty-nine she looked the absolute closest to what I remembered. Almost like she hadn’t aged at all.

I’d looked up from my phone—where I was sitting on the bottom couple stairs—the moment I heard the doorknob turning. I grinned like crazy but didn’t want to say anything. She looked so tired I’d probably spook her out of her wits.

Then again… I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Cass scared.

“Guys! Cass is home!” I shouted.

Her duffel bag dropped and she looked up at me, eyes wide. I smiled, big and bright and happy.

“Cloud?” she signed. She’d always used the sign for cloud to refer to me. “True business?”

I grinned and signed, “True business,” back to her. “Really me,” I added.

She ran at me. I got to my feet as she crossed the foyer and threw her arms around me. I hugged her back, squeezing tight so she knew I was here.

When she let me go, her eyes searched my face and my body. “Still twenty-one,” she signed, eyebrows down in confusion but not a question.

I nodded. “Yeah,” I signed.

“What happened?” She pulled me down onto the stairs, so we could just sit and talk.

I sighed and cracked my knuckles, getting ready to tell the story. “Okay. So Damian now—age twenty-one Damian—jumped back in time eight years. First night the Time Bombs attacked.” My hands moved rapidly as I worked to sign the whole story out. It had been a while since I told a full story to Cass in sign language. It was easy to get back in the groove, but I had to build up to it. “The explosion that separated me from Robin-Damian was caused by a Time Bomb that now-Damian pushed me away from. Saved my life. He saw it was me and asked if I would come here to say goodbye to Dick, Jason, Tim, and Bruce. Soon after we arrived, the Batcave shook. Tim ran to the computer and found out the timeways had been shut. Now… no time-travel. Never again.”

Cass nodded, watching me and my hands.

“How long have you been here?” she signed.

“Month?” I replied, hand moving slowly as I tried to remember. I nodded. “Yeah. Month.”

“And no one told me?!” Cass demanded.

I shrugged. “Sorry,” I signed. “We couldn’t get in touch with you. Undercover mission and all.”

She pursed her lips. “Right,” she relented, knocking her hands together harder than necessary. She perked up a little. “But, you’re home now!”

I smiled. “Yup!”

Tim came barreling out of the Batcave. “Cassandra!” he shouted. She smiled and jumped up, both of them smashing into a hug. I smiled wider at them. They were pretty close back in my time, and apparently not much had changed. That was nice.

Tim and Cass started chatting—Cass’ hands flying quickly as she complained that she missed me coming back—and I slid up the stairs.

I knocked on Damian’s door. He grunted. “Is that an invitation to come in or an acknowledgment of my existence?” I asked with a grin.

A long silence followed my question.

Damian opened his door.

His arms were smeared with paint, though he’d just wiped anything wet on his hands off on a towel thrown over his shoulder. “What’s up?” he asked. He had on a paint-splattered green tank top that might have been a bit too small, but I was trying really hard not to notice.

“Cass is back,” I said.

“Yes. I heard your shout,” he replied.

“So how come you didn’t come down to see her?” I asked.

“I was letting you tell her about your return. I imagine she was quite surprised,” he answered.

I smiled. “Yeah. Yeah she was.”

Damian smiled. “I’ll go down and greet her in a few minutes. It sounded like Drake was taking his turn,” he said. “Would you like to see what I'm painting?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied, ducking into his room as he opened the door wider in invitation. “You ever finish my hand on that drawing you did of me? The left hand was the only thing not done.”

He smirked as he led me over to his easel. “Tt. Of course I did. We both went back to sitting in the same positions. Nothing about my visual reference was particularly compromised,” he said. He gestured to the easel. “Like it?”

It was a full-size painting of the picture I’d taken and posted on my Cloudburst social media to show I was back—my boots at the edge of the skyscraper, waiting to leap off for another night of standard patrol. The buildings were a slightly lighter shade of gray to the ones in the picture—he had it open on his tablet off to the side—and my boots were also a bit brighter blue than they really were, but everything else was just as it looked in the picture. The paint was smooth and the right lights were on in the adjacent buildings.

“Wow,” I said, unable to come up with anything else to say that encompassed what I thought. It was incredible. Beautiful. I glanced back at him. “It’s amazing. I… I'm at a loss for words.”

Damian snickered. “I do believe that is a first for you, McCloud,” he commented with a grin. I nodded. He was entirely right. It was hard to get me speechless. And yet he’d done it. Damian had painted something so astonishing that I had no words to express the sensation of seeing it.

“Why… why this picture?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I had a reference readily available and I was bored.”

I blinked. “Bored,” I quoted. “You painted this because you were bored and it looks like it needs to hang in an art museum. When I'm bored and something possesses me to paint I end up with a wildly abstract mess that has no meaning behind it except that I liked how the colors mixed together.”

Damian regarded me thoughtfully. “That’s a perfectly valid way to paint,” he said.

“Yeah, but, like, this is real art!” I said, doing the Will Smith thing where I overdramatically gestured to Damian’s painting with both arms.

“Tt. Art is in the eye of the beholder, McCloud,” he said, giving me a serious look.

“And this beholder knows that the way I paint ain’t art, Dami,” I retorted sarcastically. Damian rolled his eyes.

“I seem to recall you have two paintings by your own hand hanging on the wall of your bedroom,” he remarked, folding his arms over his chest and giving me a smirk that had playfulness in it.

“Yeah. One of which was the first time I’d ever used oil paints that Dick hung up when I went out for the weekend and the other of which you did the background for and I filled the foreground in with black since it was cast in shadow after you drew the foreground in with pencil,” I pointed out. Damian shrugged like he was asking what the big deal about that was. “‘By my own hand’ on that second one is debatable.”

“You don’t give yourself nearly enough credit,” he remarked.

I glanced between him and his painting. “Yeah but I'm not an artist. You are. And this is… so indescribably gorgeous I don’t even have words for it,” I said. Damian opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “Let’s not debate about the legitimacy of the way I paint, okay? Go downstairs and say hi to your sister.”

“Tt. So demanding, Cloudburst,” he said, a clear joke in his tone that I still wasn’t entirely used to. I was glad he’d loosened up and lightened up a little, but I was still a little too used to the obnoxious brat he was as a teenager. He acted serious and mature a lot, but he’d slowly been revealing to me that he did, in fact, have a sense of humor. And I really liked it. He sighed. “Fine. Let’s go downstairs.” I preceded him out the door since I was closer to it and then swept my arm towards the stairs, walking next to him instead of in front.

When we got to the top of the stairs, Tim and Cass were still chatting—by the looks of it about some crazy experience of Cass’ that appeared to involve jumping off a skyscraper with a faulty grappling line.

“Welcome home, Cassie,” Damian greeted. Cass was one of the very few people who Damian didn’t refer to by surname. Sometimes he’d call Dick “Richard” instead of “Grayson,” and of course Bruce was always “Father,” but other than that it was mostly just Cass. Sometimes he’d call me by my first name—but that was usually for the sake of people around us. Like at interviews.

Cass beamed at Damian and beckoned him down the stairs. He descended and gave her a hug. I leaned against the top of the bannister with my arms folded and smiled.

“Why do you have paint all over your arms?” she signed, still smiling widely.

Damian shrugged. “I was painting,” he replied casually.

“Painting what?” Cass asked.

“A picture Cloud posted online when she came back,” Damian replied, pointing back at me before signing “cloud” just to establish he meant me rather than an actual cloud that somehow knew how to use social media or something. “I can show you later.”

Cass nodded. “Yeah. I want to see later.”

Bruce emerged from the Batcave, smiling. He held his arms out for his daughter. She rushed over and embraced him. “Welcome home, Cassie,” he said quietly, resting his hand on the back of her head. “You must be exhausted. Go shower and get some rest. One of us will bring your bag up and take care of it. You just get clean and get to sleep. We’ll talk more later, okay?”

Cass looked up and nodded at him with a smile. Bruce ruffled her hair.

“Attagirl,” he said. She let him go and walked quietly up the stairs. At the top, she gave me a grin and retreated to her room. I smiled after her.

Tim was already grabbing her duffel bag from near the door. “Glad she’s home,” he said.

“Me too,” I said.

Next