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"So this is it?" Jon asked bitterly, "This is it?"
Damian looked away, eyes glowing an unnatural shade of green against the fading sky.
"There isn't anything more to say."
There wasn't anything else Damian was allowed to say. Father had been clear on his instructions for a reason, no one else could know why he was actually leaving. Not even Jon apparently.
"Why not?" Jon snapped sharply, voice choking in his throat. "After everything we've been through Damian why is this it?"
Damian didn't look back at him. He couldn't, else he'd never be able to leave by this point.
"I've already explained this twice Jonathan, it's classified. I need to infiltrate the League and for the sake of the mission-"
"Damn your mission!" Jon interrupted, voice raising up so loud Damian feared someone would hear them. After being confronted on the rooftop nearest to their apartment, Jon had refused to leave without an explanation.
For good reason, Damian likely would've done the same. Yet it didn't make this any easier.
"Why? Why does it always have to be the goddammed mission? Why does it have to be you?"
Jon heaved a deep, shaky breath, realizing belatedly just how far he'd raised his voice.
"Why does it have to be you?" He repeated sadly, shoulders slumped and defeated.
"We were finally getting somewhere Dames, why now?"
Why now?
It was the same thing Damian had bitterly asked Bruce just hours ago. Why did he have to go back? For once in his life, wasn't he allowed a break? Was that too much to ask?
"I don't know," he answered honestly. He really, genuinely didn't know.
"Then why are you leaving?"
"I need to trust," he offered softly, "that what I'm doing will eventually be worth something."
"Is going back to the League worth something?" Jon asked, his voice watery, yet guarded.
"Is our relationship worth anything?"
"This isn't about you Jon," Damian said abruptly. "This isn't about us, it never was."
"...Right."
Jon let out a soft, bittersweet chuckle, which sounded as though it was being clawed out of his throat.
"Of course, it's never about us."
"Jon-"
"Was it ever, at any point, about us, Damian? Did you ever take a minute to think about us?"
'Every waking moment of my life,' Damian wanted to say.
What came out instead was, "Why do you doubt me so much?"
Jon looked at him incredulously, laughing again as he answered, "Because you don't trust me?"
"I don't?"
It wasn't a play of any sort on his part, did Jon genuinely believe Damian didn't trust him?
Jon scoffed in reply. "If you did you wouldn't be running away right now."
Damian bristled sharply, "Excuse me?"
Jon's eyes lit up with a strange fire.
"So that's all that got your attention?"
"Crypticism doesn't suit you Kent, so drop it."
"I meant what I said D, you're running right now, aren't you? You're slipping out of my arms as we speak."
"Jonathan for the last goddamn time I've already told you more than I should, this isn't your fucking pity party-"
"You couldn't wait could you?" Jon yelled back with equal vigor.
"Domestic bliss was never you're style anyway, you wouldn't be Damian Al-Ghul Wayne without it."
Damian stopped.
"What are you implying?"
"Don't fuck with me dames, if you really wanted to, you could talk your way out of a death sentence. You're leaving because you want to."
Damian's narrowed, a cold, icy glare gathering like wisps of frost, the air between them chilling into a standstill.
"I'm leaving, because I'm the only person on hand who's capable of getting the job done."
"Yeah," Jon shook his head, disbelieving. "Keep telling yourself that."
"What exactly are you doubting here Jonathan?" Damian asked softly, voice perfectly pleasant and honeyed with poison.
"My loyalty or my morals?"
Jon scoffed again, muttering under his breath, "It's not like you ever had much of each."
Damian's heart stopped beating for a moment, every ounce of blood in his veins turning to ice.
Jon continued without prompting. "Of course. It's 'classified' right? So what would little old me know?"
Whatever walls time had worn down between them came back up in an instant. Face perfectly placid, Damian stepped closer.
"Do you think I'm running away from you Jon?" Damian asked placidly, unnervingly calm, his voice a whisper.
Jon stared down at him, eyes flickering from the edge of the streetlight wetting his lower lashes, to the warm shape of his mouth. A tantalizing lock of untucked dark hair.
"Are you running away?"
'Not without reason.'
"That doesn't answer my question."
Jon stopped trying.
"How do I know you're not leaving just because you're so eager to kill again?"
Finally, for the first time that night, Jon spoke freely, and he spoke honestly. And Damian could admit, in the safety of his mind, that Jon wasn't wrong. He was born surrounded by bloodshed, of course, even Jon would believe that Damian could never fully run away from it. He simply wasn't redeemable, so Jon was right. Damian was running away. From warmth, from safety, from the one person who was never supposed to doubt him like that.
Because of course, Damian wasn't a hero, not a true one like Jon, but rather a poorly masked facade, and not even Jon was blind enough to not see through it.
What was happiness, stability, or a picket fence house to someone like him? It wasn't as though Damian could ever be dumb enough to have dreamed once of sharing it all with Jon.
He despised him.
He leaned in.
"If I was," Damian whispered softly, inches from Jon's lips, "I would have killed up first."
And nipped the cause of all his foolishness in the bud. For giving him hope, for loving him, for having trusted him enough to not leave him.
It appears all that trust was temporary, for even Jon knew better than to trust him. Jon didn't believe him.
"Yet, you're still alive," Damian chuckled bitterly. "So what does that say about me?"
He spread his arms wide for show, deliberately taking a step back.
"Am I truly the monster you take me for? Or is this how you saw me the whole time?"
Jon says nothing, rooted to the spot. His eyes wide and bloodshot.
What a pity. To have gone so far for someone who'd never been there to begin with. Jon was right once again, domestic bliss really wasn't his style.
"Well, husband," Damian offers in a faraway voice, whispering the word like it was the most hideous curse.
"If you wanted a monster so desperately. A monster you shall have."
It was cruel, to know that the person he'd be loved for so long could be so cold. That Jon could've ever thought so low of him all this time. If all it took was a simple reconnaissance mission to shatter their marriage, it was a wonder then, how they'd even managed to hold on for as long as they had.
He needed to leave. Marital troubles or not, the mission wouldn't complete itself, and Damian would get it done, Jonathan be damned.
Silently stepping away, he grabbed his grappling hook, Jon reaching out in desperate alarm, shook out from his stupor as Damian flipped away, "Dami, wait!-"