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Damian has never messed up so bad.
When the metal pierces his skin, when he feels the sharp edges of the blade, he’s sent into his past. He’s feeling a different sensation, in a different place, temporarily dazed into past memories.
When he comes back to himself, it’s only to breathe, and to think. He’s in a precarious situation right now. His opponent is laying on the floor at his feet. The man’s body is slowly slipping down the hangar ramp. Damian had no plans on saving him. He’s too busy trying to get over his shock. He had something in his shoulder, something that really shouldn’t be there, something that could possibly destroy any future hopes of muscle movement in that area.
Damian takes a stumbling step backwards when the ramp rattles. His eyes blow wide when he feels his foot slip.
There’s no more metal to stand on.
He’s falling now. He can’t do anything to stop it. He barely sees his father’s widened lenses, hears Tim’s distant shout, and Stephanie’s cry of surprise. It wasn’t everyday they were ambushed in the air, but Damian had thought he had it handled. He was raised to fight. He was trained to adapt. Why had he let a shoulder injury get to him? Why had he frozen in shock? He knows better.
“Batman!”
Damian watches his father dive from the deck. His father says absolutely nothing as he dives (even if he had, would Damian have heard him?). His face is the definition of determination. His eyes are trained on Damian’s body. Nothing else has his attention. Damian, in turn, gives his father’s enclosing person the same treatment. He thinks about how he’d never really done anything to make his father proud. He’d just, well, existed. Damian feels like his screw-ups far outnumbered his positive choices. He had so much history doing wrong. He’d hurt Tim, badly, and then he had hurt Alfred. He’d messed up several of their missions because of his big-headed pride. He had given no one any reason to like him. He’s not even sure how Dick managed him when their father had died. There was nothing to like.
Damian releases a stunned breath of air when his father’s body collides with him. Damian’s face gets pressed against his shoulder. His father holds the back of his head with a death-grip. Damian is glad his skull is strong. It might have popped like a balloon, otherwise, but who’s to say that wouldn’t eventually happen?
There was still time to hit the ground.
Damian feels the air around them shift. He hears the flutter of violent fabric. His father’s cape. Damian feels their direction change. They’re not barreling to the ground anymore. They’re gliding. Damian has to admit that he is a little surprised. He didn’t know that his father’s cape was strong enough to carry more than his father’s weight.
Damian doesn’t know how long they’re in the air. His vision blurs over unhelpfully, as if he was somewhere between sleep and waking, but it quickly clears up when they land. Damian feels a jolt in his shoulder. The pain is so sharp, so horribly retched, that Damian suppresses a pained scream. His shoulder is on fire. It hurts. He might have a high pain tolerance, but that didn’t mean it didn’t burn.
Damian’s suppressed scream turns into a strangled noise choked in his throat. He feels his body lowered onto a flat, rocky, slab. He twitches violently at the movement.
“I know, sweetheart, I know,” his father croaks. Damian stares up at him with wide, surprised, saucers. He’s not really even focusing on him. He’s listening to his voice, sure, but his eyes see past him. They’re looking into an entirely different dimension. His mind is being tugged into a dissociative world. Damian’s not sure what prompts it. He’s had injuries worse than this. What’s wrong this time? Was it the memories? Was it the flashback?
His father’s fingers run over his shoulder, around the knife wound, inspecting what they were working with. He doesn’t remove the blade.
Damian’s vision wavers. He feels himself drifting away.
“No,” his father commands. Damian feels himself come back to, almost immediately, because Robin obeys. “I need you to stay with me. Do not, under any circumstance, pass out.”
“F-Father?” Damian rasps. He’s confused. Disorientated. Maybe, in a different state, he’d realize he was supposed to be using codenames.
His father must be delirious, too, though, because he doesn’t hand out a single scolding remark.
“I need you to do this for me, Damian.”
“Father. I- I- apologize for- for getting hurt.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I’m sup-supposed to be better,” Damian wheezes.
“We can’t account for everything,” he says.
Damian continues, almost as if he hadn’t heard him, “I’m supposed to be perfect.”
He feels a finger stroke at his hair. His father brushes the strands delicately away from his forehead. He’s so gentle about it, so tender, to the point that Damian’s breath stutters.
“You are perfect,” his father whispers.
Damian stares up at him as he hears the plane landing beside them. He can feel the wind whipping past him. He can see the dirt flying behind his father’s head.
“Da- Batman-!” Tim shouts. He’s running for them with a stretcher. Damian should be mortified. He knew that the stretcher was meant for him. Still. For some reason, he couldn’t find the heart to care, totally entranced with his father’s words.
“We’re going to get you home,” his father promises.
Damian can feel new hands on his body. There was someone stabilizing the knife in his shoulder with bandages. Damian’s felt these hands before. His head lolls to the side where he sees Stephanie working in concentration. Making him suitable for transportation.
Damian can’t even remember seeing her appear at his side.
“You’ve been through tougher, Robin,” Stephanie says in an attempt of comfort, “You’ll be walking in no time after we treat this. And, before you know it, you’ll be using your shoulder again, too.”
Damian gives out another rattling breath.
“You’re going to be okay,” she says.
Damian didn’t feel okay, but, within time, he would be.