Work Text:
"Damian, I have a surprise for you." Bruce unexpectedly informs Damian as he exits the limbo they drove home together in.
"Is it a new pet?" Damian asks as he looks around the manor's garden in search of any new animal to add to his ongoing herd of pets.
Bruce cringed at the mere mention of adding a new pet to Damian's animal army. "I said no more animals after the cow."
"Batcow. She has a name!" Damian corrects him without thinking. "If it's not a new pet or a new sword, I don't want it!" He tells Bruce.
"It's neither but I'm sure you'll love it." Bruce ushers Damian up the stairs to the third floor that no one hardly uses. He leads him towards a dark brown door made of heavy wood and gold lining. "Me and Alfred have been working on this for a while." Bruce explains as he exposes the massive room to Damian.
The room was just a little bit smaller than the library that laid in the manor. A giant window framed the room with natural light from the bright sun of the afternoon. There was a main table in the middle of the room that was engulfed by the sunlight. Damian walked over to the window still and dragged his finger across it, he mentally took note of the lack of dust that was supposed to cover his finger meaning the room was recently cleaned. He clears his throat and mutters out a small thank you to his father. The emptiness of the room causes the words to echo off walls.
"I noticed that you tend to get frustrated when people are around while you're drawing, so I decided to remodel one of the less used rooms to make your very own art room." Bruce gave his thoughts out. "You don't even have to use it as an art room, it could just be a lounge area."
Damian nodded at Bruce as he left Damian in his new room. "This is quite useless." Damian spoke to himself as he viewed the garden from above. He shuffles around the room looking over the shelves of books about the structure of art and multiple famous pieces. His eyes glue themselves to the sketch book that laid in the middle of the main table. He picks it up and reads the sticky note that was attached to it.
'I don't know the type of materials you like to use so I decided to give you a simple sketch book and a card to buy more art supplies.'
Damian crumbles up the note and sticks it into his pocket. He grabs the fancy mechanical pencil Bruce left behind for him and sits down on a beanbag that was stuck in the corner of the room. His pencil shrieks as he roughly drags it down the paper, he brings the pencil back up and loops it around to make the iconic Robin symbol. He taps the pencil on the paper as he gathers his thoughts. Surprisingly, for a rich kid, Damian never bothered to buy an actual sketchbook instead opting for a line notebook. He decides to simply draw the scene he sees in front of himself. The room fill with art books, tables, chairs and a big noticeable window.
The room ended up being Damian's sanctuary away from the big personalities that the manor houses. No one bothered him while he was in the room and his animals loved laying in the sun that the window gifted. He could sit and listen to his classic tunes that sang throughout the room nearly every minute he was there. After a while though, the calm started becoming dull, causing him to start using the room for its purpose; to create art. He brought one of his Wayne tech tablets to the room and used the credit card Bruce had given him along with the room. Damian bought multiple different media that he has heard of among the art community.
Less than a week later, Damian arrived home to a huge package on the table waiting for him. His siblings looked on with coursiusty but before they could ask any questions, he sped up the stairs and into his art studio. He excitedly removed the contents and organized them around the room.
He decided to start with the professional markers he ordered. Unlike his other supplies, he had at least some experience with them. He grabbed a good variety of colors and sat down on the window still to begin his drawing of the Wayne manor's garden. The garden was littered with rose bushes and perfect grass that was kept up by Pennyworth. Damian's pencil strokes were light and jagged as he sketched out the garden while looking at the environment with intense focus. He drew the area where the garden's walking path is surrounded by rose bushes. Once he finished the rough sketch, he filled in the emptier spaces with markers. He layered the colors upon each other to add depth and shading to the landscape. By the time he was finished with the drawing, it was time to head out on patrol for that night. He tapped the drawing above the bean bag that sat in the corner and ran off downstairs to get ready.
The next day after school, Damian was ecstatic to start a new piece and a new medium he has never touched in an art aspect. He hurriedly snatches the bottle of Indian Ink and the dip pen he bought along with it and races over to the main drawing table in the room. He sat down for a few seconds at the table and stared at the blank piece of paper that hunted him. He had no idea whatsoever on what to draw until he felt a wet flesh rub against him.
"You're the best, Titus!" Damian yells in pure joy. He bends down and scratches Titus from behind his ear. He leads Titus into the middle of the room with a treat he keeps around the room. "Sit." He demands.
Titus follows the directions given to him as he sits down and accepts the treat given to him by Damian. He ends up becoming comfortable in the middle of the room and lays down with his head down.
Damian grinned as he quickly began to work on his art. Unlike most of the times where he begins by sketching, he jumps right into the official piece. He dips the pen's nib into the ink and dragged it around the paper to make Titus' body. He only does the outline of Titus. Titus' back was drawn with a thick line while his tail was small and nearly unexciting looking. His eyes were drawn connected to the line that made up the side of his head. The drawing seemed to be in one constant line.
Damian stood up with his hands on the table as he alters from staring at Titus and his drawing. Proud of it, he hangs it up on the side of one of the bookshelves where he can view it whenever he walks in.
He walks back to the table to simply relax in silence as he prepares to give him mental strength for the family dinner that's being hosted that night. It wasn't until he started on focusing on his surroundings that he noticed the smear ink and painted finger prints that stained the table. He looked over at his hands and found them covered in ink. He called for Titus to follow him as he exited the room and continued on for the rest of the day.
Damian was on a roll. For the next day, he returned to the room to experiment with acrylic paint. He doesn't tend to draw people - a creepy version of Batman does not count- so he decided to challenge himself with the subject. He didn't have any photo of any of the people he knew, so he decided to just make one from his head. He started by mixing multiple colors to get a deep skin tone for the person. He began to paint the likeness of a face and strong shoulders. He uses a different part of his palette to mix together a medium brown and begins to paint long straight hair with one side of the head having thicker hair. He gave the woman an outfit with a gold and green theme then he used the same green to give her eyes. He used the gold to give her golden earrings that elegantly hung. He was about to add a nose and mouth when he finally realized something that he should have noticed before.
This woman wasn't just a random person. His subconscious made him draw Talia Al Ghul, his mother. He took a deep breath that wrecked his chest as he felt his eyes start to sting. His mouth twitch into a frown as he stumbles back a small bit. The painted version of the woman that had sung him lullabies yet at the same time always pressed a sword against his throat when they saw one another stare at him.
He was drowned in a variety of intense emotions ranging from betrayal, longing and admiration. Even though she isn't the most ideal mother, he still misses her. He still wants to have her around and be able to talk to her when he wishes without having to hunt her down to the other side of the globe. A sense of bitterness clouded his mind as Damian remembers the conversation he had overheard between his classmates about how they went shopping with their parents; something he most likely will never be able to experience.
He doesn't know what came over him when he used a pair of scissors to stab the canvas where the mouth would have gone. He jabbed the scissor into the canvas over and over again as he breathed heavily and allowed a few tears to drop. Once he finished, he felt conflicted. On one hand, he stabbed it so much that a massive hole took over the portrait but on the other hand, he destroyed the only thing he had that resembled her since he lacked photos of her.
"What's done is done." He mutters to himself as he hid the painting behind one of the bookshelves, out of his eyes.
The experience caused Damian to neglect the room for a whole week. He didn't even go near the stairs to get to the floor where his art room is sitting. It wasn't until a fight within the family broke out that Damian secluded himself in his art room. He was drawing his typical vent art while sitting under the main table to get his emotions out. It wasn't that long before he felt burned out from the negativity that filled his sketchbook and mind. He closed his sketchbook and crawled out of the small space.
He stands beside the table for a moment, just spacing out until the sun warms his skin. It was nice outside after all so he opened the massive window to let the warm sun and fresh air into his room. He spotted the watercolor he had bought on the bookshelf near the window. His thoughts altered from the family feud and onto what he should paint with the watercolors.
He takes his phone out and scrolls through Pinterest to find a simple yet good reference photo of any type of animal for him to paint. He didn't trust himself to draw something free hand between his failed painting attempt and his vent sketches that he just finished. He clicked on a photo of a panda munching on some bamboo and started examining it to figure out the best area to start replicating. Just as he was about to move to the table to get set up, a bat that had escaped the cave flew in and attached itself to the ceiling.
Damian quickly exited the app and snapped a picture of the bat. He forgot to take the flash off which ended up scaring the poor bat which made it fly away. He didn't care that much since he got a good photo to draw.
He poured a good amount of water from his water bottle into a plastic cup and dropped a paint brush next to it. He set the watercolors up on the table and began sketching out the outlines of the bat. Once he finished the outline, he dipped the wet paintbrush into the paint holder and began painting in the bat. The black ended up being light as it dried. He paints in the background of his art room without sketching to give the painting a unique and messy vibe. The painting ends up being one of Damian's favorites for how even though it's technically his comfort zone, it still has a completely different atmosphere from his other drawings. He tapes the painting below the window still and leaves the room to deal with his family's fight.
The next day, Damian came back to experiment more with his art like he was doing for a while. He decided to try the new media he found the least interesting, charcoal, to him they were just fancy pencils. As soon as Damian finished placing the charcoal on the table, he took off his phone case to reveal a photo of Jon and Maya. He still did need to practice drawing people so he chose his two best friends. The photo was a cut out of a photo strip he had received from a photo booth. The picture showed Maya holding up two peace signs and Jon having a tilted finger gun under his chin.
He went straight to work immediately by starting with Maya and then working on Jon. Once he finished, he took a good look and sigh as he noticed that Jon's side was smudge. The smudging wasn't intense or too noticeable but to Damian's perfectionist brain, that amount of smudge was a failure. He started debating if he should just ignore it and start on sharing or if he should just say that it's finished.
His thoughts were halted when the door opened and silently closed but 'silently' to a trained assassin was just loud enough. His instance kicked in as he sat up from the chair and quickly spun around in a fighting stance to meet who dared to disturb him.
"Woah, Shortstack!" Kate put her hands up in a false surrender.
"Kane." Damian greets her. "What are you doing here?"
"I have an extra ticket for the new museum exhibit. The exhibit is about ancient art and since you're into that kind of stuff, I thought you would be interested in coming." Kate explains as she shows him the tickets.
"That does sound interesting." Damian replies as he starts putting the charcoal away. He pauses as he gets back to the table and sees Kate examining the drawing and the photo at the table. He clicks his tongue as he scowls at Kate.
Kate smirks as she ruffles his hair. "I didn't know you kept a photo of your friends in your phone case."
"DON'T TELL ANYONE!" He yelled at her as he quickly put his phone case back on with the photo in it and hung up the Jon and Maya photo on a random shelf's edge.
"Wasn't planning to." She smiles. "Now come on, we have an exhibit to see." She leaves the room with Damian following her. He turns off the lights and closes the door on the room.
The following day, Damian tried the final media he had bought, color pastels. He was saving this for last since he knows a lot of the art kids in school despises this material. He had snagged a photo of Dick in his Robin costume from Tim's computer and used that as a reference. Damian chose the old Robin costume because of how extremely colorful it was, which he originally had thought was a good idea but not even five minutes into the drawing, he realized just how wrong he was. The pastels refused to work with him. The blending was going awful, there were smudge marks everywhere, he was getting the pastels all over the table and himself and places that he didn't want to blend were blending. He tried coloring the green pixie boot but ended up ripping the paper which was his last straw with the pastels.
He frustratingly threw the pastels into the trash bin. He looked over at the mess of the drawing he wasn't even halfway done with and cringed as he felt the texture of the pastels on the paper. He crumbled it up and added it to the trash. He leaves while slamming the door shut on his frustration.
Damian doesn't stop with the different mediums. The room quickly becomes a mess. There's ink and paint spills all over the floor. Little finger marks of where Damian touched the area while having residue all over his hands. There's even a stack of paper on the table that is soaked in paint water that Damian spit out from accidentally drinking.
For the most part, the art room only housed him and was kept a secret from everyone besides Bruce, Alfred, and Kate, who hasn't visited since the one time with the tickets. So you can understand Damian's shock as he walked into his sanctuary to find Dick wandering around it and looking at all the drawings he had hung up around the room. Dick walked by the table and stopped where a wet ink fingerprint was on the table and whipped it off with his hoodie's sleeve.
Damian screeched as he sprinted across the room and slammed his body into him, it wasn't enough to make Dick fall but it was enough to make him stumble back a little. "GET OUT!"
"What is this place, D?" Dick asked as Damian pathetically tried to push him out of the room, Dick didn't budge one bit. "Did Bruce make this place for you?"
"JUST GET OUT ALREADY!" Damian screamed as he kicked Dick's ankle. "IF YOU DON'T LEAVE, NOW I'LL FORCE YOU OUT!"
"Fine. Fine." Dick waved his hand around. "I'll leave." He walks out of the room but before he does he turns around and says with a friendly smile "I really like your art."
As the door closes, Damian lets out a grunt as he flails his arms in the air. He stares down at the now empty part of his table and clicks his tongue in frustration. The emptiness felt wrong, very wrong, very stressfully wrong. He rushed over to the window still where he had left the bottle of ink and dipped the tips of his in it and went over to the ruined part of the table.
He spent hours trying to replicate the mark. Pressing his finger on the table over and over again to make it look the same but every time the marking would still seem wrong. He just couldn't get it back to how it originally looked which ended up making him beyond frustrated.
It wasn't until he felt a buzz from his smartwatch that he realized how long he must have been in there for it to be patrol time already. He tried to get it right one more time in a rush which ended up being perfect. "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" He yelled as he ran over to the sink and quickly washed off the ink. He dries his hands and presses down a part of the wall that slid open to reveal the elevator he made Pennyworth install. He enters the elevator and hits the below zero option. The elevator creaked as it brought Damian down to the area of the Batcave where everyone suited up and prepared for the night's hell.
Once Damian slipped on his Robin uniform, he stalked out of the area and into the main part of the cave where Batman and Oracle stared at the advanced batcomputer. Batwoman was standing a few feet behind them making small talk with Orphan. Nightwing and Red Robin were looking over some papers that Robin had no idea what they were about.
"Hey Robin! Nice to see you finally joining us." Oracle called out as she waved at him.
"Tt-" was the only response Robin gave Oracle.
"You okay Damian?" Nightwing asks as he focuses his attention on Robin.
Robin didn't even give him a sound of a verbal response. He simply glared at him with his 'mini-batglare' as his family calls it.
"Oooo, someone's in a bad mood." Red Robin comments.
"Shut up, Drake. No one wants to hear your voice." Robin spat out as he lined up next to the others, as far away from Nightwing as possible.
"That's not nice, Dami." Nightwing tries to correct him. Robin doesn't pay any attention to what he says.
"Batwoman and Orphan your mission is to go after Bane who is rampaging downtown. Red Robin, you're with me on the latest case that Jim gave us. Finally, Nightwing and Robin, go deal with Riddler." Batman orders as he signals for Red Robin to follow him.
"NO! I'M NOT WORKING WITH GRAYSON!" Robin shouts after Batman who just ignored him and left with Red Robin.
"Last name again? That stings." Nightwing says as he walks towards Robin.
Robin notices Nightwing's advancements and bolts to the other side of the cave while screaming about how Nightwing can take care of Riddler by himself.
He hides himself behind one of the changing room doors and balls his first into his hair. He sits there for a bit doing the breathing exercises Pennyworth taught him a while ago when he hears a light knock on the door.
"Damian? I know you're in there." Nightwing calmly starts. "If we talk it out do you think we can go after Riddler together?"
"Go away." Robin mutters out. As he moves backwards towards the back of the changing room.
"Is this the fact that I found out about your art room?" Nightwing asks as he sits down with his back to the door.
"It's not that you found out about my room, Grayson." Robin explains with an annoyed tone. He knew Dick was waiting for him to explain but there's no way that Damian knows of to properly explain how he feels without sounding weird. How can you fully explain to someone that when anyone moves or get rid of even the smallest thing in his personal space that it stresses him out and makes him want to scream?
"Is it because I cleaned the ink off the table?" Nightwing asked after the lack of continuation became too long.
"Yes! You know I hate it when people change something on me without telling me!" Damian answered while raising his voice.
"But Dami, it was just a small spot I cleaned." Nightwing replied.
"You still changed something!" Damian yelled as he slammed open the changing room door to find a slightly surprised Nightwing on the ground.
Nightwing stood up and put a hand on Robin's shoulder. "I'm sorry I overstepped a boundary. I promise not to do that to you ever again." Seeing Robin's small smile and reading his body language, he added, "Now let's go beat the Riddler."
Robin smiled as he and Nightwing raced to their motorcycles and zoomed away into Gotham's night.