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Damian's bedsheets always have a layer of fur on it.
Ever since he moved to the manor. Ever since Alfred gifted him Alfred, and since he found Titus. There has always been just a little bit of hair on his sheets that just refuses to come out in the wash. As well as pencil shavings on the floor. Crumpled paper in the trash can. The smell of tea (good, actual tea, not the British atrocity Alfred makes for himself and Bruce) stuck to the walls.
Even when Damian first moved in, there were evidences of him in the manor. In his room. In the cave. Even as his Father had struggled to accept and care for him, Damian was still present, still visible.
The only way Damian can identify Dr-identify Tim's room inside Drake Manor is through his unmade bed.
The walls are the same boring beige that paints every room in the home and bare . His sheets are the same color as his parent's. The skateboard Damian had mocked once is nowhere to be seen and neither is the camera that used to hang around his neck when they first met.
None of this is news. It's not Damian's first time in this room, but he still forces himself to notice every small detail. To take in every painful and obvious sign that even before it all, something was wrong and he didn't see it. Batman didn't see it.
He makes his way inside with cautious steps, following his own footprints in the dust and sits at the same spot he has before, head resting slightly on the sheets.
He's seen Bruce clutch Tim's old sweater to his chest before. He knows he's trying to remember what Tim smelt like, clinging, like he has any right to, to the memory of a child he failed. But Damian can't even distinguish between the fabric softener and his little brother.
Brother . Right. Like Damian is allowed to even think that word.
The funeral was paid in full by Drake's Industry's new CEO. The Waynes are invited but only as a formality, along with every other CEO and CFO in the city. To the outside world, the Wayne’s were no closer to the Drake’s-any of them- than the regular business partner.
They are right, even if it hurts.
Bruce doesn't have the guts to attend. Damian is off in space, unaware of the spectacle as it happens. And while the funeral is full, there are more headlines about their absence than about the deaths itself.
‘Brucie can't handle being upstaged.’ read a particularly cruel one. It spoke of the death of Matha and Thomas Wayne, and how the death of an entire family in a ‘terrorist’ attack had outdone it, and Brucie, of course, couldn't handle not being top of the headlines for one event.
The Drake CEO sued the paper of course, and plenty of people voiced their disgust with the article, but it has yet to leave its spot on the second drawer to the right of his Father’s desk.
As it turns out, self flagellation runs deep in the Wayne family. That's why Damian sits in his br-in Tim's old room, and waits for a little boy that won't ever come home. Why he spends his time glancing at walls that won't ever be filled and wracks his brain trying to think of something, anything Tim might have one day wanted to fill them with.
Or perhaps. Perhaps this is a feeble attempt at redemption. A way to be there for Tim when he wasn't.
But it doesn't matter, for there isn't any redemption. Nor are there little boys who come home or posters on sad, empty beige walls.
Damian is alone as he so well deserves to be.
He only hopes that somewhere, somehow, Tim knows that Damian will spend the rest of his life repenting. That Damian will regret every vile word and insult that has left his lips until the day they turn cold and blue.
His suffering is the only apology he can spare for Tim.
Damian will make sure it's a worthy one.