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“I’ve got you now,” Goon #4 of the night says, grinning behind his ski mask. And seriously, is Gotham’s underbelly so low on money that they can’t even afford better uniforms for their low-level thugs? Damian is thoroughly unimpressed. Even the League’s standard outfits were more becoming than this.
“Do you now?” Damian asks because this is the second time he’s heard this line tonight and probably the umpteenth time he’s heard it ever.
“Take this!” the goon hollers, crushing something in his glove and letting the pieces fall on the floor. Damian gets hit face-first with a green cloud of gas and it is only his instincts that stop him from inhaling reflexively.
“Wait what?” the goon asks, looking puzzled as he examines the gas enveloping him. “That wasn’t supposed to happen!”
Which, great. Now, Damian’s dealing with an unknown chemical now as if he didn’t have enough on his plate already. It’s fine. He thumbs through his utility belt without looking down, reaching for the rebreather he keeps tucked in the pocket third from the left.
Damian reaches in and pulls out two plastic halves, the crack going straight down the Bat insignia because fate’s funny like that. Annoyed, he tosses the pieces to the floor and scans the room. It’s fine. New plan then–smash through the window.
Except there are no windows. They’re in a warehouse, brick and mortar piled up to the ceiling and a metal door sealing their only exit. Damian runs over to it and tries the handle. Locked, because of course it is.
No matter, Todd gave him those explosives last Christmas for a reason. Father would be appalled if he ever learned that Damian harbored explosives in his utility belt but what Father doesn’t know won’t hurt him and besides, isn’t his current state a prime example of why he would need them?
Damian sets the charges on the hinges, darting backwards from the door. He clamps his hands over his ears and thumbs the detonator, the metal hissing smoke before popping free. Great.
Damian’s on his way out when he hears a loud thud from behind him. Right, the goon. The goon, who he would be completely justified in leaving to his own devices and abandoning him in the gas-filled warehouse as some sort of karmic justice. No one would be able to even fault him if he walked out right now!
Damian goes back for the goon. The angel on his shoulder sounds eerily like Grayson and offers him ridiculously cheesy praise the whole time. The man is heavy and he has to half-haul him over one shoulder, his legs dragging the whole way as Damian lugs him to the entrance.
He bodychecks the door and the metal bows but stubbornly refuses to budge from its frame. Damian takes one staggering step backwards to throw himself again when the man suddenly jerks his limbs out like he’s possessed. His eyes are wide open, bloodshot-red, and his knee nails Damian straight in the stomach.
Damian chokes, inhaling sharply. And then he throws open the door, coughing up the night air. He drags the goon a good 10 feet from the building, far enough away that he’s not in danger of inhaling any more gas and then promptly leaves him at the curb. That’s his good deed for the day. (He’ll get Oracle to send EMS to his location later.)
As Damian runs, he tries to mentally triage himself, playing the last few moments over and over again in his head.
Was the goon unconscious the whole time? Why was he unresponsive when Damian first picked him up? Why did he wake up right before the exit? Was Damian clear when he took the breath? And what the hell is in the gas?
He reaches for his communicator and is hardly surprised when he can’t find it. It must have fallen out in the mad scramble out of the warehouse which is just on par with the rest of the night’s events.
He’ll have to make his own way back. Damian makes it a valiant three steps before his vision swims and he stumbles over air, catching himself against the brick wall. God, his grandfather would disown him if he saw him in this state.
So maybe he’s been slightly compromised. Best to hide out of sight until another Bat arrives, wouldn’t want to freak out a civilian in the best case or get picked up like a penny on the street by one of Gotham’s Rogues in the worst case. Someone will come to check on him, right? Sure, he’s no one’s favorite relative–except maybe Grayson who is obligated to care for him due to his old age–but surely someone would at least notice if he went missing. Right?
Damian stumbles into an alleyway, pushing himself against the wall in staggered bursts. He falls against a metal green dumpster, the lettering on the side faded beyond recognition. It’ll have to do. Damian flips the rusty lid with the last of his strength.
It smells like shit. He thinks it’s fitting somehow and crawls inside, pulling the lid on top. An assassin who can’t even kill sitting among the other rubble. He feels right at home.
The darkness is overwhelming and Damian feels the minutes blend into each other. Time stretches and splits in front of him and his stomach protests angrily. Nausea makes his head swim and bile crawls up the line of his throat but he shoves it back down. He can’t leave. Not yet. Not until it’s safe.
Someone finally opens the lid and he blinks blearily as the streetlight pours in through the opening.
Father looms above him, dark against the alleyway. The cowl is supposed to mask his expression yet Damian can already tell that he’s frowning. The disappointment is clear in the line of his shoulders, the way he’s hunched in on himself, closed off.
“I’m sorry, Damian,” he says in a tone that suggests he’s anything but. “But it’s not going to work out. You’re beyond saving.”
“Is this about the man in the warehouse?” Damian asks frantically. He’s shivering, when did it get so cold in here? “I saved him, didn’t I?”
“It’s about more than that,” Father says, shaking his head. “You have to go.”
“Grayson?” Damian calls out, throat parched. He hates how small his voice sounds. He hates how young he sounds. (And another part of him reminds himself that he is young, that that’s just how he sounds.)
“I’m sorry, Damian, I tried,” Grayson says and the worst part is that Damian knows he’s right. Grayson has the biggest heart of anyone in his family, of anyone he’s ever met and if he can’t love Damian, then nobody can. He must be truly lost beyond any point of redemption. “But these are my brothers.” He has his arms around Drake and Todd and Thomas, enveloping them in a hug Damian longs for so badly he can taste it on his tongue. “My brothers are human, not a weapon.”
“I understand,” Damian says, blinking past the heavy clumps in his lashes. His vision goes blurry as Drakes takes a step towards him, smiling the whole way. “Come to gloat, Drake?” He hates how his voice betrays him, breaking on the last syllable. It’s fine. This is fine. He’s left his family behind once, he can do it again. He’s older now, more experienced. (And some part of him thinks it’s worse this way. That it’s crueler to let him have a taste of the warmth before kicking him away.)
Drake leans forward and rips the “R” straight off his chest, leaving a gaping hole over his heart in its stead.
“I’ll be taking that back,” he says and slams the lid closed.
Damian’s left shaking in the dark, clutching his own tattered cape around him. It feels like a noose wrapped around his neck, impossibly heavy on his shoulders.
His mother’s face appears in the darkness, steps forth from the shadows.
“Back already?” she asks, disappointed and unsurprised all at once. Like Damian’s return to the League was an inevitability. “At least, you can do the one thing you are capable of doing.”
Kill. Since birth, Damian has had only one purpose, only one use case. The rest was unnatural, like forcing a shape through a mold it didn’t belong in. He was only playing at family but this is his real purpose, this is his innate nature.
He reaches for his katana and dread seizes his gut when it slips out of his grasp. That hasn’t happened since he was two. Damian tries again, fumbling with the hilt but his hands are shaking too badly to be of any use. His mother watches him silently.
“I have no use for broken weapons,” she finally says and pushes him once, sending him reeling. He’s spinning in an abyss, swallowed up by the void. “Don’t you know that, Damian?”
He knows. It was one of the first lessons he’d learned in the League. He’s disposed of many broken weapons himself, always the perfect blade, always the perfect pupil. And now look at him. Disgraced and disowned.
And then in the darkness, a familiar red cape descends from the sky like an omen.
“No,” Damian breathes out because he can deal with his family tossing him out, he can deal with his own mother calling him a disgrace but he can’t handle Jon’s disappointment. Jon is the one and only person to stay with him not out of a familial obligation but out of choice. He is the only one who Damian chose and who chose him back.
“I only became friends with you because my dad said I had to,” Jon says, colder than he’s ever been. His face is devoid of his usual smile, mouth carved into a flat line. “Thank Rao he said I could finally stop.” And then Jon floats closer to him until he’s almost right up against his mouth, hovering but not touching. It’s the moment Damian’s dreamt of for years and yet the only emotion twisting in his gut is fear.
“And by the way, I think it’s really creepy that you have a crush on me. How could I ever love someone like you?”
Damian buries his face in his hands and screams.
Something is really wrong with Damian. Jon’s in the middle of writing his English essay–or trying to, at least–when he hears Damian’s heartbeat spike like a rollercoaster.
And sure, Jon’s heard the whole spiel about personal boundaries and respecting peoples’ space and yada yada. Hell, he’s probably heard the angry rant from Damian about ten times over. But this is different. He’s never heard Damian’s heartbeat race this fast, not even that one time they watched The Conjuring at Titans Tower last Halloween and Damian had claimed it was all Hollywood magic while his heartbeat ran fast as a hare.
Jon weighs the repercussions of rushing to his aid. Damian will probably get annoyed at him (again) and give him another lecture on minding his own business (again), which isn’t even that bad because then Jon gets to see the little furrow in Damian’s brow that appears every time he’s irked.
Jon’s out the window in seconds, following the sound of Damian’s heartbeat. It trails off into Gotham, which sounds about right, and he lands in an abandoned alleyway, praying that Batman doesn’t appear over his shoulder. He is Damian’s best friend but somehow he doesn’t think that’ll absolve him of the No metas in Gotham rule.
“D?” Jon calls out hesitantly.
Damian’s heartbeat is definitely here but the alleyway is deserted. His first thought is that Damian has somehow gained his own meta-powers and knows how to go invisible. (It’s not even that uncommon given their circle of friends.) His second is that Damian’s been transported to some spiritual realm or alternate dimension that has caused his physical self to cease to exist. His third is to scan the dumpster with his X-ray vision.
Sure enough, there’s a figure curled up inside which wow, Damian did say he was resourceful but this is taking it to another level.
“Didn’t take you for a dumpster diver,” he says and flips the lid.
Inside, Damian is completely unresponsive, mumbling something over and over to himself. He doesn’t react to the light and Jon’s frown deepens.
“D?” he asks but there’s no response. Probably some chemical, magic or poison at play or maybe all of the above. It is Gotham, after all.
He scoops him up in his arms and is horrified to find that Damian is shaking. Not even just lightly rocking back and forth, his whole frame is racked with fear. He’s curled up into a ball and he fights Jon every inch of the way, kicking and thrashing against his chest. Thank Rao for super-strength.
He flies him to the Batcave because they’re the resident experts on Gotham poisons. He uses the special skylight they had installed for his dad because even though Batman has a No metas in Gotham rule, he’s still his dad’s best friend of over a decade. He’s descending slowly through the air when Damian grips anxiously at his chest and looks him dead in the eye. His eyes are bloodshot red.
“I’m sorry, Jon,” he says and Jon stiffens at the mention of his own name. He’s heard it a thousand times but it sounds so raw and vulnerable in Damian’s voice. “I love you, I’m sorry, I know I’m not enough but I love you, I love you, please don’t go…”
Jon freezes for all of two seconds before his superhero-instincts kick in. He smooths Damian’s hair with one hand and hauls him tighter to his chest.
“I’m not going anywhere, D, you’re gonna be okay,” he says, repeating it over and over like it’ll come true if he says it enough.
Red Robin’s manning the comms when he lands, one arm in a sling. He reaches over to smack a button on the display in front of him and hollers, “He’s here, guys!” presumably to the rest of the Bats on the other end.
“Can you help him?” Jon begs because Damian’s still shaking, unintelligible cries on his lips and who knows how long he had been in that dumpster before Jon found him?
Tim shines a penlight in his eye and checks his pulse.
“Think it’s a new strand of fear toxin,” he says, already making the antidote. “Jason said he saw Scarecrow running loose a couple hours ago.” He motions for Jon to lay Damian on the cot nearby and he does. It feels sacrilege to let him go after holding him for so long but Tim knows what he’s doing. He’ll be okay. He has to be okay. Jon can’t their last fucking conversation be Damian professing his undying love before Jon even gets the chance to–
“You did good, Jon,” Tim says and Jon can only hope he was good enough.
Damian wakes up to the beeping of a heart monitor and Drake slumped over his legs. The rest of his siblings are piled up in a heap behind them, Todd drooling on Grayson’s shoulder, Cain and Brown cuddled under one blanket. Thomas is in his own folding chair because he’s the only competent one there and Father is slumped over the Bat-computer.
Damian wiggles his legs experimentally and Drake stirs at the motion. He wakes the rest of Damian’s idiotic family up in the process, like an awful line of dominoes.
“You’re up,” he says, wiping at his eyes blearily. Damian carefully checks his hands but they appear to be empty. He glances down at his own uniform where the “R” is still proudly emblazoned on his chest.
“Next time, warn us before you take a trip on Scarecrow’s toxin?” Todd asks, his tone light but there’s a deep crease in his forehead.
“Or use your communicator,” Grayson pipes in helpfully and Damian shakes his head.
“It was broken.”
“Bad,” Cain reprimands him and hits him on the head. He smiles softly despite the lack of force behind it.
“Oh my god, D, you’re awake!” Jon hollers, barreling full-force into him and Damian’s cot goes skidding across the floor because Kryptonians at full-speed and Bat-tech don’t mix.
“It would appear I’m conscious,” he remarks dryly.
“I’m so glad because I have to tell you something,” Jon says, dropping his voice low. “I’m in love with you too!”
What. What the fuck. For the millionth time that night, his world spins.
“You love me?” he asks quietly because the very idea feels unfathomable.
“Course I do,” Jon replies easily, hugging him tighter. “What’s there not to love about you? Besides the fact that you’re a prickly asshole when you haven’t had your morning coffee and an asshole the rest of the time.”
There’s no real bite behind his words and Damian smiles before his brain snags on the phrasing. His eyes narrow.
“What do you mean by ‘too’?”
“You said you loved me when you were… when you inhaled the fear toxin. You kept begging me not to leave you.”
Jon’s face is buried completely in his shoulder now, face obscured but his shoulders are shaking. Damian frowns, trying to move him.
“Is everything alright?”
Jon finally lifts his face and Damian can see that Jon is crying.
“I was so scared, you don’t understand! Next time, confess to me like a normal person instead of when you’re drugged up on fear toxin.” He’s crying and smiling at the same time and Damian wriggles one of his hands free from the cot’s blanket to cup his face.
“Tt. You are the son of Superman and I am the son of Batman. There is nothing normal about us.”
Jon grins at him, leaning forward to close the distance.
“Yeah, you’re right. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”