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“I was ready to die for you,” Damian said, so long ago, in a voice so small , so little, so soft. “I would’ve. I would’ve. For you. ”
And then he did.
Damian remembers waking up, a too-hard and too-old mattress beneath him, to a wall full of scratches as he tried to keep a semblance of time together. He remembers his ratty blanket that he’d stolen, the lamp that he kept near him out of fear.
He remembers Hell, but he doesn’t say a single word about it.
He knows that Jason went to Heaven, that he doesn’t remember it. The saints never do, but the sinners are cursed and Damian has not been good in his past life. He has killed and maimed and destroyed, taken villages into his hands and crushed them like bugs, because his mother whispered into his ear that they were pests, that they threatened his Grandfather’s goal.
Damian has always valued family, higher than anything in his life. Grandfather had been family, once upon a time.
And so he regrets, he regrets all of the blood that he’s shed that wasn’t his, and believes that every time his own blood spills to the ground, he’s atoning for everything he’s done.
He regrets. He remembers. He remains reserved.
There’s no doubt in his mind that his brothers have an inkling of where Damian went, during his death. Everytime Damian wakes up in one of their beds, it’s a frantic fear that drives him to check the wall at the head of it- no tally marks to be found. Everytime Drake makes a comment about him being a demon, it's an irrational ire that makes Damian scream at him.
Todd and Damian, they talk sometimes. Being the only two Robins to really die- (Drake disappeared, Father vanished, Grayson- Damian doesn’t like talking about him)- beside Stephanie Brown, there’s a bond there that Damian knows not to ignore. They’re a source of comfort for each other, as much as he doesn’t want to admit it.
Not once has Damian ever said: I went to Hell, you know? I talked with demons, I survived and I didn’t let it hurt me.
If he did, would he be speaking the truth in the end? Did he really survive? Did he really not let it hurt him?
Sometimes, too, Damian remembers a time before Hell. Before demons and hideouts and memories that keep abusing him. He remembers Father, remembers getting to know him before everything happened and Father grew distant.
He remembers Nobody and the boat, the place he should’ve died at.
(But, in the end, he’d said, I’d die for you, and he paid the price.)
At least, out of Nobody came Maya. There’s a lot of things in his life that have turned out like that- a terrible mistake that he’d pulled didn’t bite him in the ass for once. Or, if it did, it came with some sort of reprieve. Like Goliath. Like leaving Mother and meeting G-
(Damian doesn’t like to talk about Grayson. About Ric.)
But, that’s not all the time. Not everything turns out good.
He got Pennyworth- (his grandfather, his-)- killed because he’d taken a step into Gotham too early at Father’s command.
Father blames Damian, and Damian blames himself. His father has always had a no killing rule and Damian has always had blood on his hands. They are not meant for each other. They are not meant to be father and son, because saints are blessed and Damian is cursed.
All he has left is Drake and Todd.
(And Gordon’s daughter, the Oracle, and Cassandra Cain, and Stephanie Brown, and Duke Thomas. And the Kents and Maya Ducard and everyone in between.)
When the night seems almost too dark, Damian hides away in Barbara’s clocktower, wearing a mask that doesn’t feel like his. He hasn’t gone out as Robin since he watched Bane snap his gra- snap Pennyworth’s neck, since Gotham was reclaimed and the Bats started roaming again.
The clocktower is quiet and safe. It’s the closest to Heaven that Damian can get.
Barbara’s soft muttering into the comms are normally enough to lull Damian into a light sleep, since he hasn’t been sleeping lately. She talks to Batman, sometimes, talks to Catwoman. Damian cuts his visits short when he hears their voices, Father’s voice too loud in his head, Selina’s smile too prominent in his mind. After a while, Damian stops hearing their voices. Barbara stops talking to them aloud, when Damian’s around.
“I stuck up for you,” she says, once. “I told Bruce to apologize.”
“For what?” Damian asks back. “What could Father possibly have to apologize to me for?”
Barbara looks at him, and her eyes look tired, her face looks sad. Losing Grayson hasn’t only put a weight on Damian’s shoulders, losing Pennyworth hasn’t only affected Damian too. Barbara is mourning because Damian can’t seem to do anything right anymore.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she tells him.
She’s not only talking about Pennyworth.
Barbara Gordon is a saint, and Damian is not, so Damian doesn’t return after that. He can’t afford to. He’s carrying a plague and only those who are immune can withstand it’s symptoms.
Tim has a lot to say, for someone who’d once sworn he hated Damian with his whole being. They’ve gotten past it, after Damian’s resurrection, after the funeral. Since he’s Damian’s newest guardian- has been, on and off, since Father has a habit of being unsuited for the role- Damian has been living with him and Jason.
In the nights that Damian finds himself curled up beside Tim, Tim has a lot to say.
Bruce might blame you, but I don’t, he says, first. It wasn’t your fault, Damian, he says. I came to save you from Darkseid because I loved you. So did Bruce, once, he says.
Damian can’t find it in himself to believe him, anymore. Maybe once he’d have listened to his brother’s words, have clung to them with all of his might, have prayed that they were law because when the world is falling to pieces, there’s only one thing to do and that is to pray.
God has never been on Damian’s side, though. Not lately. Not recently. (Not ever.) The saints flock to Him, but Damian is no saint and he has no God to run to.
“You’re good,” Timothy Jackson Drake whispers, in the dead of the night. “You’re good.”
“Liars don’t go to Heaven,” Damian Wayne (a boy with no middle name, because this is not the first name that his mother has given him) replies, voice booming among the quiet. “You don’t deserve to go to hell.”
Tim Drake isn’t quite a saint, none of the Bats are anymore, but Hell does not suit him. Damian won’t let him go.
They haven’t only both died, but Jason Todd is the closest thing to a sinner as Damian has found. He has blood on his hands, but he’d never been forced to do it, not like Cass had. (Cass is a saint, and nothing can make Damian say otherwise. Cass is the best of them, the only one who deserves to take the cowl after Father is gone, because she is the only one great enough to bear the title. She’s the only one strong enough not to crumble.)
Jason has killed, Jason has died, Jason has breathed and lived and seen.
“I wish I remembered the afterlife,” Jason says, on the roof one night, when Damian comes to join him. “All I remember is crawling out of my grave.”
“And Mother?” Damian suggests.
“And Talia,” Jason amends. He looks down at his hands. “The pit. My eyes used to be blue, y’know? Just like Dickhead’s- like Bruce’s.”
Father is a sore spot for them both. They’ve both failed him in every way possible, taken his name and his legacy and gave him something to hate about it. They’ve both tried and failed and ruined. Their hands are red and their eyes are green and Mother has not left either of them in peace.
“You went to Heaven,” Damian says. “You died for nothing, and you were rewarded a blessing.”
Jason snorts, eyes cast towards the sky. “Believe me, kid, I’m no saint. I- even back then, I don’t think I deserved Heaven. But- you, kid? God, believe me when I say that you deserve Heaven more than all of us combined. You died for this city. For her people.”
Damian died and went to hell, but he did not die for the city he stands in, he did not die for the people in it.
(I’d die for you, rings in his head. I was ready to die for you.)
“I didn’t do it for Gotham,” Damian says, and his voice feels like it should shatter. It holds strong. He remembers tally marks and lanterns and ratty things that he could call his.
“None of us did,” Jason replies.
Jason isn’t a sinner. He might be close, but he breathes like a saint, lives like a bastard, cries like a fourteen year old boy with the entire world ahead of him.
Stephanie Brown died, once. Damian doesn’t know where she went.
“I went to Heaven,” she claims, “they had big pearly gates and the guy taking our admission slips looked like Bob Ross.”
“Saints don’t remember the afterlife,” Damian says. Steph isn’t in any way a sinner, she has no blood on her hands and she’s crawled her way up from the bottom of the barrel. He tells her about liars and how they go to Hell.
“I guess you don’t remember yours, then,” Steph replies. “You’re gonna be the best of us, one of these days. It just takes a little time.”
She died, once. Damian thinks he knows where she went.
Duke Thomas never died. Damian hopes he never will, not until he’s old and his hair has gone silver and his bones start to ache. He reminds Damian of sunflowers, of golden summer days.
“I am Robin,” he’d said.
Damian isn’t, anymore, so maybe Duke can be. He’s a saint through and through, and he deserves the title more than Damian ever did.
“I was ready to die for you,” Damian said. The R on his chest feels dull and heavy. “I would’ve, too.”
“I know, Dames,” Dick said back, ruffling his hair. “But you don’t have to. I don’t want you to, ‘cause I like you alive and happy and with me, okay?”
Damian looked up at this man, with a smile larger than life itself and brighter than the sun in the sky. “Okay.”
Liars don’t go to Heaven.
(Damian is a liar, and the day that Heretic slid his sword through Damian’s chest, it was for Dick Grayson and no one else.)