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Gotham school children were inferior to him in every way that mattered. They meant absolutely nothing to him at all, their loud screams at recess and whispers in class, their disruptive nature was appalling. The material they learned was subpar and boring, but Damian was not going to disrespect a minimum wage teacher for a few cheap laughs from boys who think playing soccer makes them the coolest kids in this meaningless school. Jonathan would be saying that Damian was the coolest kid in the school, often whispering excitedly about Damian's sword he carries with him on patrol, despite both of their father's wishes.
He does not much care for the alien's wishes, and his father can, as Brown would say, 'suck it.
Nothing about this school entertains him, nothing about these students will ever get under his nerves, not even the glares they send him, the afraid stares. The way they look at him with a mix of fear and vicious hatred, as they should. He could murder them all easily with his bare hands, even quicker if his father let him bring his katana to school. Father had called it a bad look, Damian decided to pick his battles elsewhere. He doubted his sword would be necessary against these weak children.
It was just looks for a while, glares and uncomfortable looks as they moved away from, plastering their bodies to walls like he was parting the sea, it made him feel almost powerful to get his peers to fear him without getting into a single fight. His father would be upset he wasn't making friends. But friends were a useless thing, and Jon was the closest person he would allow himself to ever call such a useless term as a friend.
Then, after a few months, whispers about him got louder, they were always there before, short and terrified whispers as he passed by, snide remarks said under their breath, but they were getting louder now as the months progressed on. They soon turned into not even whispers at all, but full-blown insults are thrown his way as he walked past them.
Then he kept hearing that word thrown around, 'terrorist', Damian is no fool, he knows exactly what it means. What he doesn't understand is why it is being whispered at him as he walks down the hall. He has done many things that could be considered bad before, murder, beating up criminals to name a few, but nothing that constitutes terrorism. No one at school even knows he's Robin, so he ignores it like he ignores every hateful glare and afraid glance his way because these weak-minded children will never get to him, they will never scare him with their false insults.
They can't even say their insults to his face, they are all cowards. If he cares enough to insult his peers at least he would do it to their faces inside of being snide and cowardly. The words keep coming, and more of them pile onto the list, words he's never heard before spouted in his direction. Words that these kids know that he doesn't. It's not possible, he is smarter than them in every way, but somehow they know words he doesn't. He wonders if maybe their internet slang, but internet slang as he's seen from Steph and Dick never sounds this hateful.
Damian doesn't understand the words they throw his way, why they think they have any right to insult him at all. But he wants to know what they say, he wants to see what they mean and figure out how they could possibly know more than him. So he goes onto the school computer, knowing Tim would never find his search history here and googles the first word he doesn't recognize.
a narrow opening or crack, typically one that admits light. Well that makes no sense, maybe his peers are dumber than he thought, why would they be calling him a crack that admits light? He almost logs off of the computer, prepared to ignore his idiotic classmates, when another box of text catches his eye.
English-language ethnic slur usually referring to a person of Chinese descent. The word is also sometimes indiscriminately used against people of East Asian appearance in general.
That is what they've been calling him, a slur. Because of the way he was born? Because of his heritage, his mother? He knows what a slur is, unfortunately, but he didn't know that other children knew them, that they could be so brazen to insult him for something like this.
The worst part about it all is that it hurts. He doesn't understand why. He doesn't understand why it feels almost like a stab to the gut, the words his peers spill at him. He looks the rest of the unknown slurs up, and that's what they all are, insults thrown at Chinese and Arab people, some even for other east Asians, they must have been stupid to know where he came from.
He doesn't know why it hurts, why his chest aches and his heart seems to burn, his entire body tensed with something like anger, and his least favorite emotion, sadness. That is undeniably the easiest way to describe his ever-present and confusing swirl of emotions, anger, and sadness, sorrow, and dejection perhaps fit a little better, but Damian wants his emotions to feel simple, maybe if they are simple they will hurt less.
They don't.
He doesn't tell father or Grayson, or even Pennyworth. It doesn't matter at all, children being stupid and insulting him is none of their concern, especially when Damian feels so weak and helpless whenever he thinks about it, he hates feeling helpless. He is anything but a child who needs saving from schoolyard bullies. Damian can handle his own, and he has decided to handle the insults by ignoring all of them.
Even as they worsen, gone are the whispers of the rejected Wayne boy, the remarks about him not looking like his father, about his Father not wanting him (they're all true, and that hurts more than anything else), now replaced with insults about his heritage. They even call him a Jew sometimes as he walks down the hall, his father is Jewish, but Damian was agnostic, and these children and woefully stupid. But they're still insults against his father, Damian takes the insults as they affect him, like he can shield his father from children spewing hurtful words they don't understand the impact of.
Damian is insulted on his father's behave, and utterly baffled that children would ever have so much hate in their hearts over things that do not concern them.
It only gets worse as the spring fades into a hearty summer, school uniforms switching from occasional pants to always wearing shorts, blazers stuffed into bags or over their arms, the insults get louder, they even begin to shove him as he goes between classes, giggling amongst themselves. Damian just straightens his jacket and ignores them, they cannot, will not, affect him.
But they do, despite his demeanor and his ability to not care about anything else, these words hurt. They sting and they burn, they stab and they punch, and it hurts like the bruises he gets on patrol. It's so silly, to be affected by words this badly, to wonder what he did so wrong to deserve any of this. Maybe for his murders, maybe the world is giving him pain back, but does it have to hurt this bad?
He still cannot fathom why the insults hurt this badly, why they affect him, why they make him feel so small and weak, maybe because it's over things he cannot control. He's not affected when his brothers call him a demon, at least he wasn't. Now it feels like every time they call him that he's transported back to the halls of his school, getting shoved around and having slurs shouted in his face by kids who think it's funny.
It's not funny to him.
It all seems to rear its ugly head on a beautiful day in June, almost to the end of the school year, while he is texting on his phone to Jon. He's stupid for letting his guard down, even for a moment to eat his sandwich in peace on the bleachers and text his friend. Jon is a friend now, maybe he always was. His phone is promptly snatched out of his hands by pale fingers, then his metal lunchbox Grayson gifted him is kicked from its spot on the bleachers, falling beneath them. It was a gift, a stupid lunchbox with an illustrated Nightwing on it, his logo planted everywhere in blue on the black base.
Damian hated the lunchbox, but he was filled with rage like he had been thrown in Lazarus' pit when he realized what they had done.
"Oh who you texting-" another slur that has Damian cringing away, hiding in his jacket. "Oh my god, boys look at this, guys a queer!" Damian doesn't understand the word the blonde said, but it's thrown like all the other insults that have been said to him throughout the months, and he stands up violently, the other three boys stumble, but the blonde remains steady on his bleacher's stair.
"Hand me my phone." Damian commands sternly, but the kid doesn't even flinch, just laughs at him, "No you little queer," only then does he seem to falter, thinking for a moment about what he wants to say next. "You don't belong here." He says to Damian quietly.
"My father practically pays for you to go to school here, I believe I have every right to my enrollment" Damian stated, and the blonde shakes his head angrily. "You don't even belong in this goddamn country. We've been telling you all year, and you've yet to listen. So we're gonna make you."
That's when he delivers the first kick, it sends Damian back, his foot catching on the stair and he falls into the metal bleachers, head narrowly missing a step. It doesn't matter, the pain they inflict next is worse, Relentless punches to his gut, a kick to his stomach, shoulders, they step over his body like it's a plaything.
All Damian can think about is his father's words, carefully instructing him to not get into any fights, verbal or physical. He thinks of his last school the fight he got into that made him move schools, the disappointment on his Father's face, the way he never wants his Father to ever look at him with that look in his eyes again, disappointed and upset at him. Not even anger, anger would've been easier. He remembers Father saying he was proud of him for not getting into any fights, for making friends in the teen titans, Father was proud of him when he didn't engage, so Damian just curled into a ball, letting the hits keep coming.
When Damian wakes he knows it is well past when Alfred would come to pick him up, his body feels like it's taken multiple beatings from Gotham's rogues, but nothing he cannot handle. His phone is at the bottom of the bleachers, and he sits up carefully, his entire body aching in protest of this.
He lets it protest as he staggers down to his phone, it has only been an hour since he was supposed to be picked up, so he doubts they have called in Superman yet. Good. This shouldn't be turned into a bigger thing than it is, he doesn't know how he will hide the wounds from his father, but maybe he doesn't have to if he tells his Father the kids walked away with no injuries. Father will be proud he didn't hurt his peers.
11 missed calls from Pennyworth, 15 from father, a staggering 30 from Dick, 8 from Tim, 2 from Cass, and hundreds of texts to him personally and in the disgusting family group chat. His fingers feel almost numb as he types into the group chat, he sends that he is okay and that he is on the soccer field at school.
He then remembers his lunch box, his half-eaten sandwich. He drags his body under the bleachers to search for it, and finds it, dented in multiple places from the metal beams hoisting up the bleachers, his own blood splattered on it. It must be worse than he thought, perhaps a busted lip, he doesn't feel any arm or leg bones broken, a few bruises, but one of his ribs might be broken.
He settles in on the turf, waiting for someone to arrive on the scene soon enough, because they no doubt will. It's Father, and he's brought the whole cavalry, all in civilian clothes, thank God.
"Damian!?" Father calls desperately when he sees him, and then he's running, and skidding down in front of him, no doubt ruining his perfect suit. His brothers all stand behind them, even Todd, with varying degrees of horror on their faces.
"Who did this to you? What happened? Was it rogues?" Father says, and he sounds almost, in despair, fearful, Damian tilts his head in confusion. "Are you afraid, Father?" He asks simply. "Of course I am afraid son, I was worried you were dead." He says honestly, and Damian curls up, feeling something like guilt for making them worry.
"Wasn't' rogues" He says softly, "Meaningless school children." He explains bluntly, words are beginning to feel hard for him, his body aches desperately. Father grimaces.
"If this is how you came out of it I wanna know where those kids' bodies are buried!" Todd remarks, same parts anger and sarcasm. "I didn't hit them. I didn't lay my hands on them."
"What?! Why the hell not?" Brown asks desperately, and Damian shakes her head. "Father gets disappointed when I hurt innocents," Damian mumbles, Father frowns, flinching back like he had slapped him. "Are you proud?" Damian asks sadly, he doesn't want to see that look on his father's face ever again, this disappointment.
"Damian." He seems to think for a moment. "I'm proud of you, let's- let us take you home and patch you up, yeah?"
They treat him like he is glass for the next 24 hours, he can't even go to school in the morning, all his uniforms miraculously disappeared, and later that evening after plenty of rest and bandages, does his father come into the room, sits down on the bed with him, and asks what happened.
"As I said that day, schoolyard children. I didn't hurt them." Damian reiterates.
"I know you didn't, how did it become a fight?" His father asks carefully. Damian clears his throat, wondering if he should tell his father the whole truth.
"They came up to me, they took my phone while I was having a very engaging conversation about types of dinosaurs with Jon, and they called me a name, or an insult perhaps, that I had never heard. They called me queer for my messages with Jon. For why I do not understand. I demanded they gave me my phone back and they refused to listen, instead of saying I had been ignoring them all year, and they wanted me to return to my country." He says it all as if he is typing up a mission report, and Father seems to get more disgusted as the story goes on, almost panicky. He rubs his temples.
"Wait. All year? Ignoring what all year?" Father asks incredulously. Damn, Damian had not been paying enough attention, he let it slip. He wonders if it will make the pain go away to tell someone about it. Father says he can come to him for anything, and Damian thinks maybe he should.
"They had been saying things to me all year, different insults, slurs." He lists them all off alphabetically like he's memorized them in his mind, Father looks like he might vomit.
"Damian. What those children said is not okay, ever." He explains sternly. "I know that father."
"Why didn't you come to me?" He asks, "they're children, they pose no threat you needed to be worried about."
"Your happiness is what I worry about Damian. What those children said is awful, horrendous and they disgust me. You must know that those words mean nothing, they do not define who you are, they are just insults created because people were scared of people not like them, their bigotry has only been passed down. Nothing they said matters. None of it is true."
Damian takes a moment to let father's words sink in. It's all true, the words mean nothing, they are simply a means to tear him down that Damian let happen, he let himself get torn down. His mother would be so disappointed in him. Somehow, that makes him understand that it was okay to get torn down, he's learned so much since he left his mother behind, he learned the opposite of what she had taught him, he learned it's okay to emote, even if it is hard for him sometimes.
He has learned it's okay to let himself be upset over things that do not matter, learned to to talk about his emotions even if he rarely ever had the words to articulate his feelings. He sometimes stims, that's so much easier than words, and words feel particularly hard after yesterday, after it all begins to sink in.
He feels the tears before he even knows he's crying, and tries to ignore his mother's voice in his head calling him pathetic, berating him for his own emotions, instead, he just wants to think about his father, as he moves clumsily into his dads arms, body aching. His father accepts him into his embrace as if it is the easiest thing in the world, moving them so their laying, relieving some of Damian's pain.
His father holds him tightly, not tight enough to hurt, but enough that touch is comfortable and welcome, makes him feel grounded to the world. "Father, should I have fought them?" He asks quietly. "A punch or two, or three would've sufficed. I would like their names when you are ready to tell."
He has no doubt what his father will do, get them kicked out of school, maybe bankrupt their rich families, or something else extremely dramatic in typical Wayne fashion. Damian cannot find himself caring, just happy that he doesn't have to carry the weight of their words anymore.
Instead, he can carry the words his family tells him every day, that they're proud of him, that he is a good Robin, good brother, and a good son, Jon calls him his best friend. Damian thinks being the best friend Jon has is better than being the best fighter in the family, the best of the league, or anything else.
"I love you, my son." Bruce whispers into his hair, and Damian smiles fondly into his shoulder, "I love you too, Baba."