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“Children,” Father said, when looking upon his family’s orphanage, Damian tucked against his side, “are the future. They are the purest thing in this world, and as long as they continue to be, I feel like there’s hope.”
He didn’t seem to think that when Damian was involved.
Damian’s family doesn’t know about Hell. They claim that he is a saint in a world long gone dark, they claim that he will be the best of them. Each of them- they speak as if they’d never heard where he came from, they speak as if they never knew that Damian was born of the Demon’s Head’s blood.
Maya is very much the same way, when they have their rare moments alone. She’ll pull Damian’s head beneath her chin- like sisters do for their baby brothers, she’d said, once- and rub a hand over her back. “You saved me from going to Hell, Damian,” she says. “I know better than anyone that you can be a terrible, terrible kid, but- We all have our flaws, and once you set them aside, we’re all a little bit good.”
“That doesn’t make me a good man,” Damian replies, watching the stars above them. Goliath breathes beneath him, a steady melody that threatens to drag Damian under. He doesn’t want to fall asleep just yet- the sun fuels the saints like nothing else can, but the moon is where sinners thrive.
Or, maybe, it’s simpler. Maybe it’s just that the moon is beautiful, full and silver. It captures his eyes, and Damian can’t think to look away.
“You’re not a man, though,” Maya points out. She’s on her back, short hair splayed under her head, tucked away from her neck by her arm, acting as a secondary pillow for the both of them. Damian curls up with her, his head in the crook of her neck, despite however much she may say his hair tickles her chin. Her other hand is around him, lazily drawing shapes of all kinds. “You’re a baby, who’s still losing his teeth.”
He barks at her to drop that, and all semblance of a serious conversation is lost on them.
The world doesn’t seem so bad, for a while, after Damian talks with her. Maya has a weird way of making sense to him. That doesn’t mean he really, fully, believes her. He is still not good. His hands are still tainted and his heart is still cold, but the world doesn’t seem so big.
Come morning when she pushes him aside, complaining that he snores, and that his breath stinks, Damian is too far gone in the familiarity to say anything about God, about sinners and saints and the afterlife they’re cursed to join.
He doesn’t tell her a single thing about Hell, though it is not out of worry. She won’t mother him over it. She won’t call him horrible or push him away like the monster he is. She’ll simply- probably- say, was this before or after you killed my dad?, with a smirk on her face.
Damian will play into the joke, even as Nobody’s eyes burn into the back of his brain, the memory of something piercing his body, the feeling of white hot pain.
It wasn’t the first thing that damned him to hell. It wasn’t the first time his father ever looked disappointed in his actions. It wasn’t even the last.
He can’t find himself to regret it.
(He’d freed Maya of him, hadn’t he? He’d gained her in his life, he’d-)
Maya tells him he’s not entirely a terrible person, and it’s the closest thing to good as he think he can take from someone.
Colin Wilkes, the only real hope the world has, other than Jonathan Kent, is born with a heart made out of gold and has been raised to never tell a lie.
He only ever will tell one in his lifetime, and that will be when he tells Damian, “You’re my hero. You’re a good person.”
Of course, that’s not how the conversation goes, not exactly.
The conversation starts over You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, the musical. Colin thinks it’s the best thing he’s ever seen, and Damian thinks the exact opposite. He’s gone to Hell, and somehow, sitting with Colin and listening to the soundtrack makes life a whole different definition of terrible. The only thing stopping Damian from braining himself on the nearest desk- and/or the closest sharp surface he can get his hands on- is the beaming smile on Colin’s face as he taps along to some song about dinner.
“You’re kinda like Charlie Brown,” Colin says, halfway into the song.
Damian side eyes him. “I don’t think I see why,” he utters, but doesn’t dare touch on the topic of a little red haired girl and Colin- red hair, beaming smile, bright eyes. He’s not even a saint, he’s something more. He’s an angel, he has to be, to be as brilliantly kind as he is.
Colin just lets out a little laugh, and says, “You’re a good man, Damian Wayne.”
He thinks about what Maya said, about how Damian’s just a little boy with red staining his tanned skin. He’s a little boy with pit green eyes, no older than Colin, no better than the dirtiest street rats.
Angels don’t tell lies, they positutely can’t. They are bound by God’s word.
So how does Colin do it?
“I don’t think I see how,” he says again.
Ever so softly, gently, Colin places his hands over Damian’s. “You’ve saved me before,” he says. “You’re my hero.”
Damian stares at him, hardly blinking at all. His green eyes are wide when they meet Colin’s honey brown ones. His breath is gone, lost as he nearly drowns, too lost in the crevices of Colin’s face.
Colin quirks a smile, and repeats, “You’re a good man, Damian Wayne.”
Damian has no idea what to call Jonathan Kent. Sinner is in no way close, despite how bratty he can be. Saint, possibly- God, Damian doesn’t know.
He’s a Kryptonian. Kryptonians have a different God, a different afterlife, a different hell. He is unbound by religion and by Earth. (His only connection is his mother, this Lois that he loves so dear. She is just as much a saint as Barbara, and Damian hasn’t allowed himself the comfort of Barbara’s clock tower because he’s a sinner, and these women are saints.)
He hasn’t been around Jon much, too uncertain if he’ll poison him too, or if he’s immune to Damian’s disease too.
Jon doesn’t have much to say about morals, though, about Heaven and Hell and sinners and saints. He’s three years younger than Damian, and all he thinks about is homework and punching the next harmless bad guy into next week so he can be just like Superman himself.
(Superman is a God among people. He is the one God that Damian will not bow to. He is the one man Damian will not worry about, as a sinner or a saint, as a demon or an angel.)
(Clark Kent scares Damian to Hell and back.)
His family might not know, but children are good and pure, and when Damian lets it slip, they set out to fix it.
It’s Scarecrow’s fault, for nabbing Colin again. He kidnaps Colin from the orphanage while Damian’s visiting, while the opening number to You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown blasts throughout their room. In the end, Scarecrow takes Damian too.
When it turns out that two heroes are on their trail- no doubt, Damian thinks, it’s Batman, Red Robin, someone else. It’s one of the bats, and they’re not coming for him, but they’re coming nonetheless. So, when it turns out that they’re on their way, Scarecrow jumps ship, flooding Damian’s veins with more fear toxin than he’s ever had in his life.
(He doesn’t touch Colin, he has no time before his walls are coming down.)
Damian’s vision floods with nightmares, with his mother, with Ra’s and Father and everyone he’s ever loved, screaming at him, blaming him, telling him that he’s a monster, a disappointment.
He scrambles for his lantern, to blind the nightmares and force them away- demons cannot thrive in the light, they are drawn to the moon and the moon alone- but there’s a sharp prick in his neck and blood rushing through his ears.
“I don’t want to go back!” he screams. “Please, please don’t make me go back-”
“Damian,” someone breathes, too loud, too sharp, right into his ear.
He blinks to life all over again, breathing in the musty air of Gotham’s warehouses, taking in the scent of- of- of children’s strawberry shampoo?
His eyes fly open and awareness floods his body as he peers up at Jon, at Maya and at Colin. They’re surrounding him, faces creased in worry for him- for Damian Wayne, the boy with a higher body count than any child ever has, the boy with a terrible temper and a pushy persona, who no one was supposed to get close enough to see him for him.
“We won’t let you go back to Talia and Ra’s,” Maya says, and she says it with such conviction that Damian wants to believe it.
Instead, he finds himself croaking out with a sob, “I can’t go back, I can’t-”
“I don’t think he’s talking about the compound,” Jon utters, as he makes Damian sit up.
“Where, then?” Colin asks, and his voice is so utterly soft. “Damian, where can’t you go? If you don’t tell me, then we can’t help you.”
Damian reaches up and takes Colin’s arm in a death grip. He sits up, trying to breathe, but something feels ever so terribly wrong. It’s bubbling up his throat, burning like coals. It hurts so bad, that he forces himself to spit out the words lodged in his throat, in a high pitched whine.
“I’ve died before,” he gasps, like a madman. “I’ve gone to Hell- You can’t send me back, I won’t survive it, please-”
His very last gasp is very much like a plea for air.
(He remembers nothing more, after that.)
“Children,” Father says, “are the future.” His arm is wrapped around Damian’s small shoulders, pressing him tightly into Father’s side. The orphanage- bearing Damian’s grandmother’s name- lies just before them. Father looks delighted to be where he is, to be looking out at these children who aren’t Damian- aren’t broken, or shattered. “They are the purest thing in this world, and as long as they continue to be, I feel like there’s hope.”
“Do you feel like there’s hope, still, when you look at me?” Damian asks, back.
Father meets his eyes and lies.
(Sinners and saints coexist, and children are the very space in the in between.)