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This is what it was to be Damian Wayne
Fitful bouts of sleep between waking nightmares tinged with green were all that he knew now. The voices at the back of his mind warring on what it was that made him broken, weakpatheticwhelp giveyoucausetoweepboy tilting against killermonsterfreak killedyourlittlebrother at a list that filled his consciousness. Phantom sensation prickled at his body, the Heretic’s sword plunging into his chest competing for attention with the sweep of Jonathan’s thumb over the oozing cut that he tried to pass off as coming from combat competing with the sting of his sai breaking the skin and giving him poisoned succor as his pain became at once all that he could control and also his penance for being broken. Or maybe just for being.
He didn’t know how long it had been since spurts of scarlet panicked him and led him to call Jonathan, because after all this he couldn’t be alone in the end. He didn’t know how long it had been since he woke up in the hospital bed in South Rhelasia with his bandaged wrists handcuffed to the bed and his boyfriend’s ashen face tracked with red pressed against his chest. He was back at the Manor, he knew that much. He was pretty sure he’d had visitors - Maya, Suren, Mia, all staying for an indeterminate amount of time while he nodded and answered in monosyllables and watched the worst moments of his life play out in the middle distance like reruns of daytime soaps on a television only he could see. A few times in the middle of the night, so deep into the night that Father had returned from patrol and fallen into his own fitful sleep, Mother came, sitting by his bed and entwining her fingers with his, or else brushing her fingers against a cheek that was rough with stubble even though Pennyworth had just shaved him that morning. They all left, eventually, though he didn’t remember it. Good. Everyone always leaves. They should. He was a monster.
Jonathan was there most of the time. In a moment of lucidity he remembered something about a leave of absence from his job at the Bludhaven Daily Courant. Father was trying to tell him that Damian was fine here, something about Jonathan’s editor threatening to fire him if he didn’t come back into work. Jonathan shot back that he could make his own decisions. Father stormed off growling about hardheaded kryptonians.
Yesterday they went to the family plot on the grounds of the Manor. Timothy and his parents were there - a few of the rocks left on the headstone were still in place despite the months of wind and rain. Damian avoided looking at it. The reason they visited was that it was Colin’s birthday, and even when he ran away to the League of Assassins he always visited Colin on his birthday. Those two years Pennyworth had even left a care package for him, nestled against one of the stone plinths that marked the gate to the plot. He’d even managed to keep it hidden from Grandfather, laying awake at night reading notes from his friends and family and wishing they understood why he left - wishing he understood, other than the sense of suffocation and inadequacy that came with being Father’s shadow.
It was only in the abandoned cafeteria in Old Arkham that the answer really came to him, repeating itself in a diminishing tattoo that matched Timothy’s fading pulse. Wrong. Freak. Pathetic. Worthless. Broken. Useless. Monster. Killer. Imposter. Weak. The litany grew deafening as Timothy’s pulse grew feebler, until his final breath left him and Damian was left with only silence that screamed in his ears how this was all his fault, that he didn’t belong anywhere, that he would never, that he wasn’t supposed to exist.
Something brushed up against his cheek, and with practiced swiftness his hand snapped upwards and caught a small, bony wrist in a vise. He looked around, and for the first time in a few days he was truly aware of where he was.
He was in one of the dens in the Manor, in an oft-forgotten wing near the library. He glanced to the side, a tiny wrist still caught in his hand, and then looked at its owner, terrified cornflower-colored eyes locked onto his.They belonged to a scrawny boy who could have been anywhere between ten and twelve, given how malnourished he looked, with an untidy mop of curly black hair that seemed in need of a cut.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.
“Uh, Jason,” the boy replied. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, as if assessing whether he was allowed to ask. “Dude, can I have my hand back please?”
Damian loosened his grip, and Jason pulled his hand away and immediately began rubbing his wrist. White finger-marks faded to red and then to a dusky not-quite-brown as the circulation returned to his hand. “ Jesucristo, ” Jason muttered, “I thought you were gonna break my hand off.”
Damian wasn’t sure how to apologize for that. After a moment’s consideration he figured it wasn’t worth the trouble.
“Who are you?” he asked again.
“I told you, my name is Jason,” the boy replied with a hint of irritation. They sat in silence for a long moment.
“What are you doing here?” Damian asked.
“I live here?” Jason said, “I’ve lived here for like three months?”
That wasn’t possible. There was no way that Damian Wayne, former heir to the Demon’s Head, son of Batman, Ibn al Xuffasch, wouldn’t notice that there was a new child living in his home.
“I don’t believe you,” Damian said. He was pretty sure there was supposed to be a right way to say that, but he didn’t care.
“I was sitting right in front of you at breakfast,” Jason said in exasperation, “I was sitting here reading when you came in!”
Damian wasn’t sure how to react. “Oh,” he said.
Jason shifted his weight on the couch, not sure how to proceed.
“So you’re Nightwing,” he said, “I’m, uh, I’m sorry about Robin. About Tim, I mean. Everybody talks about how great he was and then they get really sad, so I guess he was pretty cool.”
“He was,” Damian said. He was better than him in a hundred ways and Damian hated him for it. Even when everyone around him was telling him to stop, he kept making sure that Tim never felt like he belonged. He knew Tim was insecure about his place, could smell how desperate he was for acceptance, and he exploited that to make him miserable. Because that’s who he is - someone who destroys good things. Like when he smuggled a kitten into his quarters and Grandfather found out and made him strangle it.
Something flew at his face and his hand snapped up once again, catching it in his grip. He turned his head and saw that it was a ballpoint pen.
“Sorry,” Jason said unapologetically, “it’s just you kinda went all spacey again.” He had retreated to the armchair next to the couch.
“What time is it?” Damian asked.
“It’s a little after three,” Jason said, “B said he should be back from patrol pretty soon. I know it’s late, it’s just - “ he considered his words, “This place is really big, and Alfred’s room is kind of far away, and Duke’s with the Titans and Cass is with Bruce, and it’s really quiet here, and I’m kinda used to more noise, so I can’t always go to sleep. So sometimes I grab a book from the library and read at night, ya know?” He raised the book that was perched with the pages open on the arm of the armchair. It was a copy of Sense and Sensibility.
As he said this he seemed to shrink into the armchair, as if apologizing for being there. To what extent of “being there” he was apologizing for, Damian was unsure. Regardless, he understood the feeling.
He didn’t know how to respond to this, however, so after a brief consideration he decided not to bother and asked his next question. “How do you know who we all are?”
Jason played with the sleeve of his sweater before answering. “I, uh, I kinda met Batman before I met Bruce.”
“You did,” Damian said flatly.
“So I lived in Park Row before, ya know,” Jason explained, “alone. My dad worked for Two-Face and he’s locked up upstate, and my mom, well, she OD’d about a year and a half ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Damian said, because he was pretty sure that’s what you were supposed to say when people talked about relatives dying, “now how did you and father meet.”
“Well, I was really hungry and needed something to pawn for cash,” Jason continued, “and everyone knows that Batman likes to park by that old theater in Crime Alley, so I uh,” he said something inaudible.
“You what?” Damian asked.
“I stole the tires off his car.” Jason said.
Damian said nothing for a moment that stretched out into minutes. This child stole the tires off Batman's car. The most feared vehicle in all of Gotham, worth half a million dollars, with experimental weapons and defense technology that even the American military doesn’t have access to - not even the DEO, ARGUS, or Cadmus. The scourge of criminals all across the city. And this child jacked its tires.
He batted away a flying paperclip with a growl.
“What?” he snapped.
“I dunno, man,” Jason objected, “you didn’t say anything for a long time, so I thought you’d spaced out again.”
“You stole the tires off the car.”
“Yes,” Jason groaned, “I stole the tires off Batman’s car. How many times am I gonna have to say that?”
Something within Damian bubbled up. A warm, glowing feeling that was totally unfamiliar to him. It began in his diaphragm and rose up his esophagus, warming his chest as it went, before manifesting itself as the corners of his mouth pulled back and he leaned back and raised his head.
For the first time since before Timothy died, Damian laughed.