Chapter Text
At the exact millisecond Damian Wayne was born, so was Toph Beifong. Across dimensions, the two actions occurred simultaneously; birth and death and life bending and twisting around one another in impossibly uncommon ways. The threads of their distinct lives tangled and twisted together, until even the universe itself could not tell where one ended and the other began.
And so, as Damian Wayne and Toph Beifong grew, they understood the world’s appearance to be both flat and dimensional; for sound to be both sharp and dull; for touch to be keen and touch to be deadened; for a parent’s love to be too soft and simultaneously too harsh.
Contradictions existed at every corner, and yet they were ignored with the determined resilience of two tiny tied-together souls who, in their own words, had better things to be worrying about. Namely: escaping the hawklike gaze of the flat world’s funkillers and pleasing Grandfather and Mother with their skills in the other.
Then the world that was flat became flat no longer. Sensation and a budding understanding of earth and ground exploded beneath their feet. However, between learning the techniques of assassination and teaching oneself how to earthbend (while still escaping the evil fun-killers), it was discovered that there were only so many hours in a day.
One soul won their mental game of water-earth-fire-air and chose to be the beloved blood son. The other decided that Toph would be no less than excellent in every way.
All the while, their worlds kept turning.
Damian dragged the toe of his sneaker through the dirt, dirtying the pristineness of the shoe. Lost in thought as he was, he didn’t even notice what his body was doing.
Scarecrow, he thought, desperately trying to connect the clues together. What was Scarecrow’s goal in breaking into Gotham National Bank?
Not so much as a penny or a pen had been stolen from the bank, but there had to have been a purpose for the attack. As ridiculous as Gotham’s crooks and cooks might be, they weren’t stupid enough to attract the attention of Batman (and, more importantly, Robin) for nothing.
While there had been two dozen people inside the bank—customers and bankers both—they were useless as witnesses. All of their minds had been distorted by a low-level dosage of Fear Toxin. One woman remarked that she saw a giant mouse hiding cheese crumbs in the walls. Another said he saw his ex-wife throwing boxes full of his stuff out their second story window, leaving it strewn on the lawn.
He could scoff. Chemical warfare of all sorts happened frequently in Gotham. How poorly were these people preparing themselves? How badly were they slacking in their training? In their self-discipline? Damian could keep his mind in check just fine, after all.
But no matter. The case was the important matter here: not Gotham’s widespread levels of incompetence.
What were they not thinking of? What was he not thinking of? Robin was supposed to know these kinds of things. Batman, too, but Father had been busy recently with the Justice League and some off-planet problems. That meant it was up to Damian to protect Gotham.
And, he reluctantly allowed, Drake and Grayson, who was staying in Gotham and acting as Batman while Bruce was away. But they were ultimately unimportant (and working together on a different case), since Damian had claimed this particular mystery for himself.
His leg stopped moving. Damian blinked, his mind setting back down into his body. He didn’t remember telling his leg to move. Which of course left only one other option, aside from mind control or nanobites controlling his limbs or possession or something entirely new or Alien Hand Syndrome but in his leg, which might then be considered Alien Leg Syndrome.
Shoulders moving with the heavy weight of his sigh, Damian didn’t even want to look down. He would rather be possessed than deal with whatever Toph had going on.
Although, Damian noted thoughtfully, Toph could be considered a sort of possession. Perhaps I should get her exorcised. And go with the Alien Hand in my leg, instead.
A dull, distant echo of a snobbish vexation settled at the base of his neck. Part of Damian wanted to kick dirt over whatever she drew and go back to his contemplation.
But curiosity killed the cat and erased an enemy of the bird, so he looked down.
Crudely drawn by his possessed foot was what Damian could only assume to be a bomb being shit out by a stick figure. For a long moment, he just stared at the horrible sketch. He wanted to say something rude, but figured he didn’t have to since the artist already knew his sentiments based on the current mantra of Hideous! A shame to the arts! and Weird! that was drifting through his mind.
While no words manifested in his mind, Damian could tell that Toph was cursing him out: spiritually, if not physically.
If Damian were more childish, he would stick his tongue out at the subpar artist: a title which he pointedly thought in Toph’s direction.
His foot began moving on its own again. It drew a pointy oval around the head of the stick figure, like a tear drop, and a dramatic arrow toward the bomb.
“Please tell me we are not playing murder-mystery charades right now,” Damian groaned. He glared hard at his uncooperative foot, willing it to return back to his control. It wiggled back at him tauntingly. Traitor. “And what would you know about solving mysteries anyway? You always fell asleep during Grandfather and Father’s lessons.”
In the back of his mind, Toph snickered evilly, but said nothing. His foot wiggled again.
Looks like they were playing murder-mystery charades. Damian wrinkled up his nose in annoyance. He hated when Toph got like that—all superior and haughty and I know something you don’t!! Damian comforted himself with the thought that she was a shit artist.
While he tended to rub his victories in her face, too, it was irksome to be on the receiving end of such foolishness. After all, it wasn’t Damian’s fault that the mysteries in Toph’s world were far less complicated than his and therefore made it even more satisfying to be right whenever Toph was stumped.
It also wasn’t his fault that, more often than not, Toph missed important clues because he was being a backseat mystery investigator and she spent all of her time mentally beating him back with a stick while he got to actually absorb what was going on.
Toph scoffed.
A thrum of triumph ran through Damian. “Oh, now do you feel like saying something?” he taunted. “Well, you can’t. Those are the rules of charades, after all.”
Like a puppeteer had turned him into a puppet and taken over his limbs, Damian’s right arm rose and gave him the middle finger. It dropped a second later after Damian wrestled back control.
“Rude!” he huffed. “Very rude!”
For a brief moment there was a standstill as both forgot what they were initially doing.
Then, as if reminding itself of what was going on, the toe of his shoe tapped the ground again.
“Right, right,” Damian grumbled. “Okay, fine, I’ll play.”
His foot pointed at the stick figure.
“That’s obviously Scarecrow,” Damian said, eyeing what he imagined to be a bag over the figure’s head. “And he is defecating, but the feces is a bomb. That much is apparent.”
Damian’s foot wiggled in agreement, then gestured toward the whole image. He threw up his hands in exasperation. “Okay, I am right as always. Big surprise. But what does the Scarecrow defecating have to do with what happened at the—!?” Damian drew up short as Scarecrow’s plan began to take shape in his mind’s eye.
The foot drew another arrow, starting at the Scarecrow and pointing away. No arrows directed the bomb to go anywhere.
“That’s it!” Damian exclaimed. Toph gave him back control of his foot just in time for Damian to take off running. “The Scarecrow didn’t take anything… he left it behind!”
“There you go, Spikey!” Toph cheered in his head. “You got there. Eventually. Way behind me, but we can’t all be me. Gotta say, I’m way better at charades than you, too. That took you forever to figure out.”
“Well,” Damian retorted hotly, skidding in through the door of Wayne Manor and almost knocking over Alfred, “whenever I play charades, I don’t use five-year-old humor.”
Left in the dust, Alfred blinked incredulously after the boy. Since when did that child play?
Alfred glanced down at the tea he had been preparing for Master Bruce’s early arrival from outer space. Master Bruce had decided to surprise the children with his early arrival, despite the warnings that it was probably not advisable considering who his children were. But what knowledge does an aging butler with years of experience have against a man who dresses like a bat in his free time?
Damian rushed down to the Batcave, taking the steps two at a time. Thankfully, Toph realized this would not be the best time to randomly take control of his leg and send him flying down the stairs, which she did with an annoying level of frequency.
At least Damian has gotten a lot of practice in falling, though. And not braining himself to death on the stone stairs.
Sometimes he wondered if Toph forgot they couldn’t earthbend in this particular universe, just like how he forgot they could in the other. That was the price of jealously claiming stake on one body from a young age, he supposed. But at least that meant, for all their mutual taunting about the other’s deficiencies, that they were very good at what they knew.
“Jack of all trades, master of none!” Toph crowed in his head. “But who the hell would say that’s better than none!”
It was her favorite saying from Damian’s universe, although she always twisted it around for her own moral benefit. That, alongside: I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it, which, no matter how many times Damian corrected her, she doggedly insisted was the better version.
“You know we aren’t supposed to be killing anyone anymore, right?” Damian asked, resigned. “We really can’t be wasting time on murder-mystery charades, especially if there’s a bomb.”
Damian’s righteous indignation on behalf of Gotham’s public received back the mental equivalent of a shrug. “Eh,” Toph dismissed. “Too early in the evening for Old Baghead to be out. You have at least a half hour, if he even planned on activating whatever he left behind tonight.”
The indignation died. She wasn’t wrong.
It was quick work to change into the Robin suit. It was less quick to leave the Bat Cave, considering when he left the changing area Drake was waiting for him, arms crossed and expression incredulous.
“What’s this about killing people?” he asked impatiently. Drake wasn’t to the point of accusatory, but he definitely sounded suspicious. “And… charades?”
“Murder-mystery charades, actually,” Toph corrected primly. She easily gave up control when Damian went to wrestle it back.
“And,” Damian continued, now even more annoyed than before, “I believe I said I was not killing anyone. An important distinction, but one that I can forgive you for not recognizing, what with your general incompetence.”
“Nice one!” Toph cheered. “Call him a Lex Luthor wannabe next, because of his bald cowl!”
Damian would not be doing that. Such immature callouts were not his style. However, he had to admit that Toph did have a point. His eyes drifted toward Drake’s hair. Was he testing out the bald look because of some early onset male balding pattern? Or because he was debating shaving his head?
Drake rudely interrupted their combined musings. “What are you looking at? And what’s going on?”
Toph’s crappy drawing rose to the surface of his memory. Right. They were on a mission. One with a potential time limit, too.
“I have a lead on the Scarecrow situation at Gotham National Bank,” Damian reported. “You must go through the witness reports as I make my way there.”
“I must?” Drake repeated.
“You should,” Toph amended, aiming to smooth over Overthinker’s ruffled feathers. “I have a hunch and don’t want to wait on checking it out. The witness statements should help make things clearer.”
Feathers sufficiently smoothed, Overthinker nodded. “Are you sure you don’t need back up?”
Toph shook her head. “No. Like I said, just a hunch. I want to look for some more clues now, before meeting up with Grayson for patrol.”
“I do not see why you must justify our actions so greatly,” Damian huffed. “Ridiculous.”
“Oh yeah?” Toph thought back. “And what do you think about the fact that Overthinker’s helping us and not holding us back, like he usually does when you take the lead?”
Damian had nothing to say to that, his pride not allowing him to respond.
Even so, they both knew the answer.