Chapter Text
The Gotham General ER was a machine made of bodies, fluorescent light, and the faint hum of monitors.
At two in the morning, it had the feeling of a battlefield after the first charge—blood cleaned, floors polished, the smell of antiseptic and over-brewed coffee fighting for dominance in the air. The night staff moved in practiced rhythm, too tired to waste words. The soundscape was measured in overhead pages and the occasional cry of a patient echoing down the hall.
Damian Wayne sat at one of the terminals, his scrubs wrinkled from twelve hours of work, posture rigid despite the fatigue that weighed on the rest of the residents. His notes were as concise as his movements: no wasted words, no ambiguous phrasing. Forty-two-year-old male, hypotensive, blunt abdominal trauma, FAST positive, sent to OR, awaiting outcome. His attendings called him “terse,” his fellow residents “creepy,” but his charts never got flagged, and that was what mattered.
Residency was a brutal treadmill—thirty-hour shifts, sleep in stolen increments, meals consumed standing between traumas. Four years of undergrad condensed into two because of AP credits and obsessive focus, four years of med school where he had to prove himself to professors who assumed “Wayne” equaled shortcuts, and now the brutal treadmill of trauma and surgical residency. But Damian thrived in the crucible. Not because he enjoyed it, but because it required a discipline that felt familiar, almost comforting. The ER was chaos, but it was controlled chaos. Patients lived or died based on skill, timing, and judgment. Factors he could command.
He rubbed the heel of his palm against his left eyebrow, feeling the strain behind his eyes. Twenty-four years old, and already he felt older than some of the attendings. That was the Wayne inheritance, he thought wryly: shortened childhoods and unrelenting expectation. He’d stopped being Robin at seventeen, severed that tether, and never gone back. Residency was, in some ways, easier. No costumes. No rooftop patrols. Just medicine and exhaustion.
“Wayne.”
He looked up. Dr. Kwan, a third-year resident with permanently mussed hair and a caffeine IV drip somewhere under his scrubs, leaned over the workstation.
“You ever sleep?” Kwan asked.
“Rarely,” Damian replied without looking up from his chart. “But then, neither do our patients.”
Kwan chuckled and shook his head. “Creepy little bastard.” He pushed off, heading toward the nurse’s station.
Damian’s mouth twitched. He didn’t mind. Accuracy mattered more than politeness.
⸻
The calm broke when the trauma bay doors slammed open.
“MVC, high speed!” one of the EMTs shouted, pushing a gurney through. “Three passengers. Two adults, one child.”
The ER snapped into motion. Nurses swarmed, doctors barked orders, monitors beeped as new vitals flashed onto screens. Damian was already gloved and moving toward the third gurney, scanning automatically.
The first patient—a woman in her forties—was pulseless, CPR in progress. The second—a man, probably her husband—was unconscious, pale, with a distended abdomen that screamed internal bleeding.
The third gurney carried someone smaller. A girl. Eight, maybe nine years old. Her arm was splinted, cervical collar in place, tears streaking down her cheeks under the oxygen mask the paramedics placed on her. She was awake, though, blinking up at the fluorescent lights with a dazed sort of panic.
Damian’s voice came out even, precise. “Airway patent. Breathing rapid but present. Saturations low nineties. IV, O2, pain control. Get me a chest film.”
The nurses moved in sync with him, tape ripping, monitors beeping. The girl whimpered as her sling was adjusted, but Damian’s tone didn’t waver. “You’re safe. Stay still.” He adjusted her mask gently. “You’re going to be all right.”
Her gaze locked on him, and for a moment, he saw it—recognition. The stunned, frozen look of someone whose world had just cracked in half. He’d seen it before. In mirrors, years ago.
⸻
Across the bay, Dr. Han called out over the din: “Time of death, 2:38 a.m.”
Damian’s hands didn’t falter, but he heard it. Parents. Gone. The girl kept asking anyway, her words trembling under the mask. “Where’s my mom? Where’s my dad?”
He swallowed once, the only betrayal of emotion, and said nothing. Lies had no place here.
⸻
The next few hours blurred. Paperwork. Imaging. Cast Placement. Monitoring. By four a.m., the girl—stable, cast secured, vitals holding—was tucked into a pediatric observation bed with a blanket pulled up to her chin. Her hair, dark brown, stuck to her damp cheeks. Her eyes were startlingly green.
The CPS caseworker, Leah Long, arrived not long after dawn. A woman in her forties, dark blonde hair in a bun that had started to fray, tablet in hand. She met Damian at the nurse’s station, her tone professional but edged with fatigue.
“No relatives on file,” she explained, scrolling. “Parents had no listed guardianship paperwork. We’ll need to place her into emergency foster care until something permanent can be arranged.”
Damian frowned. “Emergency placement means a shelter, doesn’t it?”
The worker hesitated. “It can, yes. Or a temporary foster home, if one is available. But Gotham’s system is… overwhelmed. It could be a few days before we find a local placement.”
A few days. A child, freshly orphaned, shuttled into a bed in a group home, surrounded by strangers. He could see it already: the blank stare, the silence, the way trauma carved itself into bone.
Damian’s hand curled into a fist before he knew it. Not again.
He looked over at the girl. She was curled on her side, arm in a thick black cast, blanket swallowing her small frame. Her eyes were wide open, staring at nothing.
And before he even thought about the consequences, he was speaking. “She’ll stay with me.”
Leah blinked. “Excuse me?”
Damian’s tone was clipped but steady. “I’m a registered foster parent. I completed certification years ago. Check your system.”
The woman raised an eyebrow, but tapped quickly on her tablet. A moment later, her expression shifted. “Damian Wayne.”
“Yes.”
“You were approved… three years ago. Never had a placement?”
“No.” Damian’s gaze flicked back to the girl. “Never had to. Until now.”
The CPS worker studied him for a long moment, clearly weighing the idea of handing a grieving child over to a young resident doctor whose file no doubt carried the name Wayne. But the system was drowning, and a stable placement was better than no placement.
“All right,” she said finally. “Temporary foster placement. You’ll need to sign the release forms, provide your address, proof of employment, and emergency contacts. Expect a home visit in a few days as well.”
Damian nodded once. “Of course.”
⸻
He signed the papers. Leah gently explained everything to the girl and packed the girl’s few belongings—hospital blanket, discharge folder, plastic bag with her shoes—and by the time the sun had crested the horizon, Damian was walking her to the parking garage.
The girl’s cast made the straps of the borrowed backpack awkward, so Damian took it from her and slung it over his own shoulder. She walked silently at his side, small steps echoing in the concrete space.
When they reached his car, he opened the passenger door and waited until she climbed in. She fiddled with the seatbelt buckle until he leaned across, clicked it into place, and shut the door gently.
He slid behind the wheel, started the engine. For a long stretch of road, there was silence except for the hum of the tires.
Finally, his voice broke it. Low, even. “Do you have a name?”
She hesitated, eyes fixed on the window. Then, softly: “Maya.”
Damian nodded once. “Maya.” He repeated it, carefully, as if sealing the word into permanence.
She sniffled, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “Where… where are we going?”
“My apartment,” Damian answered simply. “You’ll stay there.”
Her brow furrowed. “Just for a little while?”
Damian’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “For as long as you need.”
⸻
When they reached his building, Maya’s eyes darted around the lobby. It was clean, modern, with a bored concierge nodding them through. The elevator ride was silent, Maya clutching her blanket like armor.
Damian unlocked his apartment and pushed the door open. The space was minimal—white walls, dark furniture, shelves lined with medical texts and a few worn novels. A scattering of cat toys on the floor. The faint sound of claws on hardwood as Titus trotted into view, tail wagging.
Maya’s eyes widened. “You have a dog.”
Damian crouched to scratch Titus’s head. “Yes.” He glanced up at her. “Do you like dogs?”
She nodded hesitantly. Titus licked her cast, and for the first time, she smiled—small, uncertain, but real.
Something in Damian’s chest shifted.
⸻
By the time Maya fell asleep on his couch, curled under a blanket with Titus sprawled at her feet, Damian was still standing in the doorway, arms folded. He told himself it was temporary. A week, maybe two. Until CPS found another placement.
But deep down, he knew.
This was how it started.