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Father didn’t need him. There was no other explanation for why the man so bluntly dismissed Damian tonight. Father didn’t want him. He had said so when he told him Damian was unfit to be Robin, when he told Damian he was ‘too busy’ to listen to his sons ‘complaining’. Damian hadn’t wanted to complain, but Father would never know that. Father didn’t want to know, it made no difference.
Grayson didn’t want him. He had left Damian, fled back to Blüdhaven as soon as he was given the chance. Damian had been burdening him, making Dick take on the unwanted responsibility of a problematic child.
Mother definitely didn’t want him. She hadn’t even tried to spare the boys feelings when she told him he was no longer accepted in the al Ghul household. When she disowned him.
Damian sighed, letting the water of the shower wash over him, trying once again to scrub away the sins of his past. He let his head knock harshly against the tiled wall, he was a disgrace to every family name he had tried to bare. He didn’t deserve to be spared the pain.
He often thought about running away, taking to the hills or the harsh climates of the Himalayas once more. But he knew all he would do is disrupt the beauty of the nature already there.
Damian was ugly, hideous, he truly believed that. There was no reason not to, his tanned skin was littered with scars that his civilian clothing barely hid. More than once he had been questioned by concerned parents or teachers for the large white gash that ran down his eye. People said he looked like his father, others used racial slurs. Todd keeps an inventory of nicknames that insult his lack of height. Drake attempts to avoid him at all costs.
Damian is teased for sleeping with a knife under his pillow but he needs to always be prepared, he can never let his guard down, that is how he will be killed.
He has stopped sleeping with the knife. It’s not because he now feels safe.
It’s because he no longer cares.