Chapter Text
Batman hit Red Robin.
Bruce Wayne hit Tim Drake.
A father hit his son.
The words rang in Damian's head, over and over again, every time peeling away each layer, each title, every disguise.
Every title they have, every disguise they wear, down to the bare truth of it, what it really was.
His Father, the Batman, punched his own protege, his own son, a mere child.
It was just so wrong.
Wasn't Batman only supposed to use violence against criminals and even then only when necessary?
Drake was a lot of things but a criminal was not one of them.
It didn't make a single ounce of sense.
Why did his Father punch him, he was only trying to help, it didn't make sense, but nothing he did these days did.
Ever since the blow-up of his and Kyle's 'wedding' his Father was reckless, angry and seemingly empty.
His father acted like a man with nothing to lose, like a man who already lost everything and anything that ever mattered to him.
Even though he didn't, sometimes it felt like no one mattered to him anymore.
Not his friends, not his family, not Damian.
Damian has tried to understand, he knows this must be hard for his Father, but...he doesn't think he could ever even begin to fathom why he would strike his own son.
There's no reason for it and he's the one who taught him that.
It wasn't like one day his Father just suddenly changed, it was just it took one day, one moment, for Damian to see just how much he had changed, that he was different and not at all what Damian remembered him to be.
He was no longer the Father that gladly went to Walmart with them at 3am to buy pool floaties, he was no longer the Father that traveled halfway across the world because his daughter was lonely, he was no longer the Father that stood up against the league of assassin's just to keep his son.
He was just the empty shell of what their Father used to be.