This is pretty AU, so it'll be really important that you read this note so you're not confused.

Damian will be taking the place of Dick Grayson as the acting Robin in the 1st season of Young Justice. Basically, the Bat-family has been around for ages, since Dick was first Robin, but they were really good at staying out of the spotlight until the Justice League formed when and as it did in Young Justice canon. Batman kept his protege Robin (Tim at the time) out of sight. By the time Damian came around, he was less careful, and that's when rumours of Batman having a protege became common. Eventually, Damian-as-Robin made a public appearance with Batman saving someone on TV. This is what started the trend of young heroes.

As for the Justice League, while Clark, Diana, and Dinah know who Batman is and that he had more than one Robin, no one else is aware. Damian starts out pretty prickly, but when he first meets Kid Flash, they become fast friends and that helps Damian become more relaxed. Wally is not aware of Damian's identity as Robin, unlike in Young Justice canon.

I'm taking several creative liberties with Damian as well. Since he's taking the place of Dick Grayson as Robin, we're going to assume that being older and having Dick as an influence has mellowed him out considerably. This means everything that happened in Young Justice season 1 is canon excluding the tie-in comic series and season 2. The mission to the circus still happens, but Damian goes because he knows how much it means to Dick, not because it's his home. I was actually going to mention that in the story at one point, but I couldn't find a good spot.

I use a mix of pre-New 52, New 52, and Rebirth for my comic timeline. Though really Rebirth and New 52, Dick became Robin at 16? Are the creators just trying to keep Bruce younger than 30? So Dick got adopted at 9, Jason at 12, and Tim at 16-ish when his dad died.

Dick in this story is 25.

Jason is 21.

Tim is 19.

Damian is 14, and also, we're assuming his birthday is on December 1st, like Young Justice canon Dick's is in season 1.

That's all the information you should need! Make sure to leave a review and tell me what you think!

Edited as of 4/16/18.

Damian was fourteen now. He wasn't the same person he'd been when he was ten. He was more relaxed, as close as he could get to normal, he was… him. He wasn't a completely different person though. He still drew. He still had Titus and Alfred the Cat. He was still a vegetarian. Still well trained. But finally, for the first time in his life, he felt like a normal kid, or as close as he would ever get.

He could actually smile now because he understood reasons to smile and could find them. He made jokes, and Drake liked to say he was copying Grayson; Damian said he was emulating the best Robin.

He was different as Robin too, not just as Damian. He wore a different costume, one more reminiscent of Grayson's original, but with the addition of pants. (Why Grayson had thought wearing a leotard while fighting crime was a good idea, Damian had no idea.) He used a different fighting style, one that incorporated more acrobatics that Damian had worked hard to become masterful at with Grayson's help, but still utilized his League of Assassins training. (He would sometimes still slip and almost use a killing strike. It hurt that he couldn't seem to erase the last bit of the shame of his younger years.)

He hadn't killed someone since he was ten, almost eleven. And now that he thought about it, about how the deaths of his family would affect him if they ever did die, he couldn't believe he'd ever done something as horrible as taking a life or attempting to. That he'd tried to kill Drake. That he hadn't felt remorseful until almost two years later. That sometimes, he would still think killing the criminals would make their job easier.

(Hedl never stop thinking those people should die, he thought. But every time he does think it, he ignored the voice of his mother and grandfather ringing throughout his head telling him it was the truth.)

Now that he was a better person, a better Robin, he had friends, real friends, other than Colin that is. He met Kid Flash, Wally West, and the speedster quickly became one of his best friends. Wally made him feel that much more like a normal kid and made him feel so much less serious, less like he had to be on guard all the time.

A few weeks after meeting Wally, Grayson had somehow managed to convince his father to let him meet Speedy as well. It was probably an attempt to get Damian more friends after the success of Wally. It worked pretty well too; he and Roy became quick friends, mostly because Wally was friends with Damian and Roy separately, so even if they hadn't liked each other, they would have been forced to meet at least a few times. Damian likes to think that even if he and Wally hadn't become friends though, he still would have ended up friends with Roy Harper. The teen had a small amount of darkness inside of him, one that reminded Damian of himself. One that made Damian understand him.

After knowing each other for a few months, Wally and Roy had both shared their identity with each other, because they both knew that as Robin, Damian already knew their identities. He didn't tell them his identity. He couldn't bring himself to, because if he did, he knew he'd want to tell them everything about him, just like they told him everything about them. Just like Wally told him all about being bullied at school. Just like Roy told him all about Brave Bow. He trusted them with his life, but he wasn't sure he trusted them with his life story or at least trusted them to want to be his friend after hearing it.

So the years went by, and Damian started to work with more and more heroes, meet more and more heroes. It had taken a long time to be allowed to see most of them, and even though Damian knew it was because his father was distrusting, he couldn't help but wonder if maybe his father was ashamed of him. That couldn't be the truth though, so he kept those thoughts to himself.

Then something happened that made Damian so happy, so amazed; his father said he was going to be taking the first steps of joining the Justice League, along with four other young partners.

On the Fourth of July, Robin, along with Kid Flash, Speedy, and Aqualad, met at the front of the Hall of Justice. Then an emergency and Roy left, claiming the adults didn't trust them (Damian couldn't help but think it was true now. Otherwise why wouldn't he have known about the Watchtower?), and a whole thing with Superman's newly discovered clone.

His father formed a team, and they took missions, soon being joined by Miss Martian and Artemis. This left Damian with quite a few friends. Ones he just, he couldn't let them know who he was. Who he used to be.

Artemis was the one he was most worried about. She had been raised in a way that was very similar to him. Her father worked hard to turn her into a weapon. He taught her many different fighting styles, Damian was sure. So worked hard to hide any signs of killing blows, averted though they may be, in his fighting style, because unlike the others, she would recognize them.

He hid his accent within a strong Gotham drawl because even after all his time living in Gotham, he still didn't sound American; you could still hear the accent he acquired while living with the League of Assassins. Artemis would have been trained to recognize it by her father, and Damian didn't want her to think he was a killer. She had escaped from what her family wanted for her. Damian hadn't, at least not at first.

He didn't want her to think him weak. Would she even though? But no, Damian knew she wouldn't. Or at least, he hoped she wouldn't. He didn't even know what he knew. Even after being around Grayson, making friends, he still didn't fully understand relationships between people, or how to be a good friend.

And he was sure the Team noticed when he started to talk more like a Gothamite, but no one said anything, not even Wally when Damian was over at his house. He was glad nobody questioned it. It made everything so much easier. Artemis would never know he wasn't from Gotham. And that was exactly what he wanted.

For good measure, he started to use his made up words more too. She found them incredibly annoying; it made for a good way to distract her further from thinking about anything else that would give him away.

The Team expanded, and Zatanna joined. Then Rocket. Roy did too, before he became part of the Justice League, just like he'd been aiming for. But then villains took over.

They learned Roy, one of Damian's best friends was a clone. They fought the brainwashed League. After they won the fight, Zatanna kissed him, and he kissed her back. Then they all discovered the missing sixteen hours.

Right after the whole mess had been mostly cleaned up, Damian went home with his father, and was told something he hadn't expected: He was allowed to tell the Team his identity. But instead of the excitement, he was sure his father meant to give him, all Damian felt was dread.

It wasn't that he didn't want to share his identity. He did, he really did. He just knew that as soon as he did, he'd want to tell them everything about himself. And if he didn't, he'd want to use his normal voice, because he's been on TV, okay, and they would tell him he doesn't have to hide his accent around them, and then Artemis would recognize it, and everyone would hate him.

Even if Artemis didn't recognize his accent, then people would feel more comfortable asking him about why he sometimes just kind of, stopped. Not stopped working, but stopped showing emotions. It wasn't that he ever meant to, but it just happened. If he was too happy, or something like that, it was easier for him to just stop. Happiness was amazing, but he still didn't quite have the hang of it.

So yeah, telling the Team wasn't going to happen anytime soon. Not if he wanted to keep making jokes with Wally. Not if he wanted to cook with M'gann. Not if he wanted to watch static with Conner. Not if he wanted to spar with Artemis in their easy fashion. Not if he wanted to talk about books with Kaldur. Not if he wanted to get to know Raquel at some point. And most importantly, not if he wanted to find a way to keep his tongue from tying up around Zatanna.

So for now, Damian would continue going there as Robin and taking turns patrolling with his father in Gotham, and Grayson in Bludhaven. He would enjoy the time with his father and laugh during his time with Grayson. He and his father would share a companionable silence they both valued, and him and Grayson would rip apart words and laugh at the sheer dumbness of the English language.

Laughing was something he enjoyed to do, and even more so around Grayson, who was really still a big child at heart. He did laugh around others but around Grayson the most. For some reason, the man had ways to draw laughter out of him in a way nothing else could. Drake would joke about how Damian grew a twisted sense of humour, which yeah, it was, but he didn't think anyone was complaining; not with his attitude change since the age of ten.

With the laughter came an ability to control himself when Grayson wasn't there. Which he was unsure how he felt about. On one hand, he wasn't as likely to make impulsive decisions. On the other, self-control meant that everyone felt safe making fun of him or teasing. Especially Drake. And especially about Zatanna.

Damian ignored them and resisted the urge to use one of the many knives laying around the Manor, or his sword. He didn't use that anymore though, not unless he was the only one in the Batcave. Something about using a tool that had taken lives didn't sit right with him. Not anymore. So most of the time, his sword sat in display case 13 gathering dust, along with the rest of his League of Assassins gear. He would always keep it though because as much as he didn't want to admit it, it had been a gift from his mother and he treasured it.

He knew his family wouldn't say anything if he looked at it every once in awhile if he practised using it in the Batcave, but he didn't want to use it, even look at it, where they could see. What if his father thought he was going back to killing people? What if the others did?

Overall, Damian felt like he was a better person though. Sure, he hadn't shared his secrets with the Team yet, like they had with him and everyone else. And he was sure that they thought the vigilantes in Gotham weren't connected. After all, Red Hood was a killer, with tales of him fighting Batman popping up as much as tales of him helping Batman. It was quite hilarious when the team would talk about and share theories about Gotham's vigilante community, or debating over the chance that they were all related. Strangely though, no one ever approached Damian and asked him. It only seemed to be Gothamites that realized there had been more than one Robin, and even they thought Grayson and Todd were the same one, though many did realize that whoever the first Robin was, he became Nightwing. After all, Robin-the-perpetual-teenager was a bit much, even for them.

The other vigilantes were talked about often as well by the team. Black Bat, for example, Everyone knew that she was connected to Batman in some way, mostly because of the name. For her, there were many stories, ranging from a former assassin, his father's illicit child, to a demon. And Batgirl, Damian shuddered every time he heard people speculating that she was Batman's girlfriend.

Were they all a big family? A completely random assortment of people following in Batman's footsteps?

A gang they were tracking had once speculated that they were all a part of his harem. This one, to Damian's shame, had had him seeing red, and it took Colin tackling him to realize he'd pulled a Batarang like a dagger, to use against the one who insulted his family like that. Patrol had finished after that.

But while the rest of the Team seemed content to think these things and discuss them while leaving Damian out of it, Artemis had no such qualms. She asked him anything about them she wanted to, usually with a smirk. Damian was sure she knew there had been a few Robins. He was also sure she knew Red Robin had been Robin at one point as well, which was a step farther in logic than almost anyone in Gotham made. Even though she knew all this though, she never told the team, just kept asking Damian questions that he avoided.

He couldn't answer them, because some hit too close to home. They would lead to things being discovered about him, things he didn't want to be discovered. So for now, the Team didn't have to know his face, or his name, to accept him as their friend. Damian was content with this. His hidden accent kept him safe, his almost Grayson like behaviour kept him safe. Kept them safe. They never needed to know that their Robin had once easily and even proudly, killed anyone for any reason. Their idea of him could remain… untarnished.