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Damian doesn’t quite understand what has happened when the door first slams shut behind him. At first he is just annoyed that he is being kept away from the battle, that it will take precious minutes to get the lock picked in the near darkness when he could be helping take down Mr Freeze.
Then he is confused, when he can’t find a lock to pick.
Then he shines his torch around the small, cramped space, sees the rows upon rows of carefully labelled chemicals and the temperature gauge steadily hovering at not quite freezing.
The confusion turns into a small worm of doubt. This may be harder than he originally thought.
He is some kind of storage cabinet, that much is for sure. Mr Freeze was clearly confident that he wouldn’t get out, when he shoved him inside while Batman was distracted. The storage looks to be for some of his experiments, sort of like a carefully managed pantry, with the space not really intended for a human to be able to fully fit inside – not unless they are very small, that is.
The door is fully sealed, most likely to keep the temperature stable.
The doubt turns to mild concern.
Damian’s suit is insulated and outfitted with heaters especially designed for fighting Mr Freeze. The cold is not a concern. Judging from the size of the space, Damian estimates at least a day’s worth of oxygen, so that should not be a concern either. The chemicals are a more pressing worry, especially given the lack of room to move around. Given that he has no idea what any of them do, he will have to extra careful not to bump any of them around and risk them breaking and boiling off his skin, or something.
Damian takes a deep breath, and takes note of his other senses. He can’t hear anything from outside; the metal walls are clearly thick enough to be soundproof, and quite possibly enough to distort his tracker’s sensor. No one saw him get locked in except Freeze. He may not have any way to signal someone to let him out.
He checks again for a lock, the concern steadily rising, and again finds it conspicuously missing. No one is supposed to be able to even get into this space; the whole thing must lock only from the outside. For chemical storage purposes, it makes sense. It also leaves him very, very trapped.
“Shit,” he breathes. “Shit.”
First he tries the comms.
Batman, then Oracle, then Red Hood. Signal, although he would be sleeping. Stephanie, even though she has exams and her phone on mute. Nightwing and Black Bat, although they are both currently in space. He even tries Red Robin, although he saves him for last because he will never let Damian live this down.
There's not even static. Just silence.
Damian thunks his head into the door. Okay. The situation is bad. He will - unwillingly - forgo dignity in exchange for freedom.
He bangs on the door as hard as he can and yells for Batman.
And yells.
And yells.
Nothing.
That is fine. He is probably still wrapped up in his fight with Freeze. Once that is over, he will start his search for Robin. Damian does not have to wait long. He will start his calls again in a few minutes, when the battle will surely be won.
A few minutes, then more, then more.
No one answers.
Over two hours pass before Damian gives up. No one can hear him. He knows that. He just has to wait for Batman to find him.
Another hour or so later, Damian thinks, he is not going to find me.
No one is coming.
He slams on the door until his fingers bleed under his gloves and screams. He does not know how long it has been.
It occurs to him that screaming will use up more of his oxygen. What hadn't been a concern before suddenly becomes a very pressing issue. He crouches down, puts his head between his knees at best he can in the small space, and works on his breathing.
It's okay.
He'll be okay.
He meditates, as best he can. His legs are starting to cramp but Damian is no stranger to pain, and no stranger to discipline. He closes his eyes and counts his breaths.
At some point in his meditation, his breathing evens out and slows and slows and his eyes stay closed, and he doesn't notice he has been falling asleep until the pain in his neck has him waking. He twists his head left, right, up and down, and hisses.
He tries to find a new position will allow it to relax, but the only one that doesn't have his neck and shoulders burning within minutes is holding it straight up.
He resigns himself to being awake.
At some point the boredom overtakes the fear. He starts to sing, an old nursery rhyme of his mother’s.
He whispers the words to himself, relishing the feeling of the familiar words on his tongue. He does not get a chance to speak Arabic much, these days. Perhaps, if when he gets out of here, he can ask one of his brothers to speak with him.
Unbidden, he stops singing, licks his lips. "Ana aftaqadak ya 'ami,” he whispers. “Limadha taraktum li?”
I miss you, mother. Why did you leave me?
He loves his new life, wouldn't give it up for the world, but he doesn't think it will ever stop hurting, the way she packed a suitcase of clothes as if they could replace a while childhood, and sent him on a one-way flight to Gotham.
Every day, that old life slips a little further away. He misses the food, misses the people, misses the animals, those wary birds and the stray cats he sometimes snuck away to visit. He misses Talia's perfume, and the way she stroked his hair when no one was around to see. It was his home, and the fact he had found a new one doesn't stop the hurt from burning deep in his heart. He cannot even allow himself to mourn it, lest anyone question his dedication to Batman, to Gotham, to the mission.
It aches.
He realises his heavy breathing as he hiccups softly is taking away more of his valuable oxygen. It is that knowledge that finally helps him swallow the tears down.
Is he going to die here?
Damian is so young still, barely in his teens. He doesn't want to die, not yet, certainly not like this.
He has done good, surely, in his time on Earth. He has made a difference. Robin has saved lives, has given people safety and comfort and security. Damian has saved animals from the streets, and Batcow from death. He nursed a family of starlings who had lost their mother to a cat back to health. His life was worth it.
He still has so many people he wants to help.
Please, he wants to live.
He wants to live.
He never patched things up with Drake. Timothy. Whatever.
Tim doesn't like him, and Damian has to admit that is fair. At first, it burned, how he took Bruce's attention, how he wrote the Robin colours that Damian so desperately wanted and used his skills to help people in a way Damian's learned violence never could.
And then, through Bruce's patience and Dick’s gentle coaxing, he started to realise he had nothing to be threatened by. He was accepted, here. He was loved.
He tried to kill Tim.
He tried to kill Tim, and he very nearly succeeded. How does one come back from that?
And now, recently, he has been staring to realise - he really would have liked an older brother like him, close to his age, willing to teach him and tease him and be his friend. Friends have been so few and far between, in Damian's life.
His hostility towards Drake, he admits, is not entirely warranted, nor has it ever been. But he cannot stand to look at the boy he wishes to be a brother, to tell him so with words or with actions and genuine want in his heart, only to be met with cold dislike. He cannot bare the thought. One day, he will make it up to Drake, he would tell himself. One day.
He is going to die here, and he never even tried.
Nightwing is going to miss him.
Of course, Damian knows they all will miss him, even Drake, but Richard most of all. He thinks, that when he is dead, he will miss Richard most as well, although he would certainly never admit, especially to mother or father.
Richard is kind, and patient, and a teacher and a friend and a brother all at once. He is everything Damian wishes he could be when he grows up. If he grows up. But Damian cannot deny that he will never truly be like Richard. Damian is his father's son, through and through. He is passion and anger where Dick is kindness and patience and action.
He will never be like him. But Damian would have liked the chance to try.
Slowly, the weakness sets in. Whether it's the oxygen running low or the lack of food or water beyond the meagre rations in his belt compartments, he cannot say for sure. His hands are shaking, ever so slightly. He clenches his fists and then shakes them out again.
Ma tansishi, matinsish lima bidak tanami tataghatay manih, he sings, silently, in his head to conserve oxygen. Matfikari. shu allly mastaniki bahilamuk ma tafakari bas ghamdi.
No one sings with him, certainly not his mother. Not even an echo of his own voice.
He takes another slow, deep breath, and trembles.
There is still so much of the world to see.
Jon promised they could hang out with the cows, next time he came around. Alfred was going to teach him how to cook. Bruce has yet to give him the crash course in the molecular structure of tadpole eggs that he promised Damian in exchange for him studying for his maths test instead of going on patrol.
He has never submitted an artwork to a competition.
He has never asked Timothy to teach him how to use his camera.
He never installed that chicken coop, never finished that documentary about ants, never finished Pride and Prejudice, no matter how often Jason has shoved it into his hands. Has never given in to Stephanie's encouragements to let her dye his hair.
If he weren’t trapped here, he would have requested green. Green, like the shade of Talia's evening gown, the one with the soft material that trailed down her arms and tickled his neck when she would stroke his hair and sing lullabies.
Damian will never get to do any of it, now.
He can't breathe. He can't breathe. Each inhale is shallow, and his vision is getting murkier and murkier.
He feels himself drifting, his thoughts becoming less and less coherent. As he forces himself to keep gasping in breaths that are more carbon dioxide than oxygen, he thinks, at least when I faint, I will no longer be forced to feel this ache in my lungs.
His eyes close.
He thinks, with some confusion, dying sounds very much like metal scraping on metal, and, are those voices?
He wakes up, and the world is far too bright.
"Hey there, chum," Bruce says. "Good to finally see you awake."
"I— What?" Damian says, or tries to. He can't articulate the words as well as he would like over the oxygen mask currently covering his mouth and nose.
"You’ll have to keep it on a little longer," Bruce says apologetically. "Until we know you're definitely okay."
“What happened?” Damian asks, and it sounds only mildly muffled.
"You went missing during the Freeze fight," Bruce says. “I was... worried I had lost you. The tracker wasn’t responding, or your comms. When we couldn't find a body, I thought..."
Bruce shakes his head and doggedly continues. “Mr Freeze told the Arkham guards, when he woke up. They didn't pass it on until this morning, something ridiculous about it being out of working hours. Rest assured I’ll be having a word with them.”
His voice is angry, but also exhausted. He sighs, and takes a deep breath. Damian is struck by how dark his under-eyes are, how tousled his hair is.
“I'm sorry it took us so long to find you, Damian,” Bruce says, his fingers moving to brush Damian's hand before he apparently thinks better of it. “I called in everyone available in Gotham to help find you, we were searching the whole night until the word came in. I promise, we were looking the whole time. I promise.”
Damian's fingers twitch, and then he slowly moves then to lay them on Bruce's hand. Bruce blinks, surprised.
Damian yawns. "Tired," he says instead of replying. "Stay, Father?"
Bruce hesitates for a long moment, almost as if he can't quite convince himself that that is actually what Damian meant to say. Then a warm smile stretches slowly over his face.
“Of course, Damian,” Bruce says. “Of course.”