Chapter Text
Damian despite all his training, despite all his experience, despite 5 straight years of being near flawless on the field, miscalculated.
The walls tumbled down onto him. The fire burning the supports holding the ceiling up.
It wasn’t even an important mission. It was a rather slow night. Nothing but a mere break in they decided to check out. Simple. Easy.
Now he was pinned to the ground by pile after pile of dry wall, slowly making the situation more and more inescapable.
“Robin, report.” Oracle demanded through his earpiece.
“Under the rubble, northeast corner, about 16 feet from what used to be the north wall. Immediate assistance required.” He got out, having to budget his breaths that were getting increasingly harder to take in.
“Copy.” Batman replied briefly.
The precarious balance of the roof of the house was slipping, making an awful creaking noise as it fell.
…
“Robin, report.” Oracle’s too calm voice said through the comms yet again.
“..” Damian opened his mouth but there wasn’t enough room to take in any air. It was already bad enough before but the roof’s collapse had him pinned between glass shard covered carpets and now two layers of drywall and support beams.
“Robin. Report.” She said a third time, more panicked.
“..”
Damian could hear movement above him, his father digging him out.
One minute passed… then another… then he gasped as the final peice was wrenched off of him.
“Damian!” He rushed over, more frazzled than usual. “I got him.” He said into his own earpiece.
Damian clawed himself into a sitting position but.. struggled. Strange. Then his breath hitched, he couldn’t breathe, his lungs were collapsing.
Batman, trained in anything and everything immediately recognized the circumstance and rushed over.
“Medical to my location. Collapsing lungs.” There were more commands shouted over one another through the line but Damian was a bit busy fighting off the urge— no, the NEED to black out.
“Come on Dami, just hold on for 30 more seconds, they’re almost here.”
He didn’t notice but at some point he had been picked up, now in his father’s lap.
He’d seen this scene before, he wasn’t gonna make it….
“Yer gonna hate th-s..” Damian choked out.
He refused to go out like this, even if his father hated the way he insured his survival.
He retrieved one of about ten impossibly small stainless steel needles, barely the size of a finger tip, from his tool belt. A birthday gift from his mother after missing his 11th from being stabbed through the heart.
…Despite all her many many MANY faults.. she had never failed him when it came to things like this.
He pressed it into the palm of his hand, breaking the skin, and the green liquid freely flowed into his system.
By the time his father realized, it was already too late.
He went limp and blacked out on the spot.
..
One beat.
..
Two beats.
..
His eyes drifted open again, shining a bright BRIGHT green. His lungs expanded again, filling with just enough air.
Some had a bad reaction to the pits. Or more accurately, some people the pits had a bad reaction to.
Damian, in all his genetically engineered glory, had never had much a problem with that. The Lazarus goo was almost sentient in it’s obvious mercy towards him. It made sense… it met him for the first time at no more than two years old.
“C- *cough* -cancel medical attention, I’m good now.”
He said through the comms, his arm feeling like a million pounds as it dropped back down from his earpiece. He was out of it, staring at one small flicker of glass wedges in the carpet as he sat in his father’s lap, trying to find his mind again. His razor sharp senses would come back around sooner or later, always did.
“..Dami….” His father muttered, more heartbroken than he’d ever heard him sound.
At some point Bruce wrapped his arms around Damian.
At some point Damian hugged back.
At some point that morning they would talk about it in the manor gardens.
At some point Damian would call his mom.
At some point.