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"The human brain is a pattern-seeker above all else. By taking the randomness in our lives and lining it up in a neat, linear pattern to make sense of, the brain can convince itself that it has some amount of control over these events. That they can be prevented. You have to recognize that your thoughts—your obsessions and your compulsions don't affect the world around you."
Dinah smiled at him, then, leaning forward an inch in her chair. They sat in her warm beige office as the white noise machine rumbles outside the door blocking out the rest of the world. Her words are spoken precisely with practiced technique.
"ERP works, first, by assigning a number to how anxious the obsession makes us feel on a scale from zero to ten. Zero is 'I'm fine, I don't feel any real urge to do the compulsion' and ten is 'I will have a panic attack if I don't do the compulsion'. We want to pick something to work with that starts at around four to six."
For Damian, the kitchen chair was a five.
It had been a struggle since he first moved in. What started as an innocent thought, regular anxiety about moving out of an abusive house into an unfamiliar place—if the chair leg scrapes, they'll all know and they'll all get hurt and be so annoyed and if you don't fix it, they'll die—had quickly become a part of his morning routine right after "brush your teeth for one hundred and eighty two seconds or you'll get gum disease", "check your window lock or there will be a home invasion and everyone will die due to your negligence", and "wash your hands after petting Ace or the germs would immediately hop to Tim and kill him due to his failing immune system." (And as for how the Waynes would all know Damian had sat in the chair before fixing it—they just would. They'd all know. Instantly. Dinah explained to him that this was an example of 'magical thinking', but Damian personally couldn't understand what was magical about thinking your family would die.)
Make that a six.
"It makes sense, really. The way you were raised led to you being abused for things that couldn't have possibly been your fault. You were a young boy seeking control and safety, even if that meant blaming yourself for it."
"I was the al Ghul heir."
"You were a child."
Unfortunately, like every other obsession and compulsion in his head, the anxiety around it would only get better with time and practice. Damien had to come downstairs to eat every morning after a shower, pull the chair out (because he couldn't sit in any other chair, this was his chair, and every other chair was wrong and if he took one even if they offered whoever he switched with would die), pull it out and hope it didn't scrape, but of course it scraped every morning due to him having to pull it out the same way, think about the possibility of his family dying at the table if he didn't fix it now now now, and then purposely choose to not fix his chair and hope for the best.
And he had to purposely choose this every morning. It was a unique combination of completely unbearable in that it was torture in his head with alarm sirens screaming that he everyone was going to die and completely bearable since he'd lived with this forever. The screaming hadn't gotten any quieter, but he just had forgotten what quiet sounded like in comparison, so really, it was fine. He didn't mind that much. Really.
Damian's eye twitches as he sits down for Sunday brunch at 10:45 in the chair he pointedly does not fix. Sure, he did have to look to Father to check his breathing after the chair scraped, but then he sat down and that's what counts. His anxiety is still about at a six.
"Doing the compulsion is like scratching an mosquito bite," Uncle Kent had told Damian after his diagnosis, "It doesn't make you bad—it's what your brain wants because it will ease the itch for a moment, but every time you do the poison gets pushed a little deeper into your skin. You have to let it itch and think about other things until it fades on its own."
"Why do mosquito bites have to itch? I wouldn't mind them if it wasn't for that."
"Do you actually want the answer?"
"Yes please, sir."
"When we get hurt and bleed, our blood tries to clot so it doesn't bleed out. Mosquitoes want as much of our blood as they can have. They evolved to have, uh, anticoagulant—I'm pretty sure that's the name—so our blood doesn't clot as fast and they get more. And the body doesn't like foreign things being in it, so our immune system responds. It just happens to be an itchy process."
He'd read the Wikipedia article for anticoagulants afterwards. They worked by blocking parts of the enzyme reactions that would start blood clots and were most commonly used to help people with myocardial infections and pulmonary embolism from forming potentially fatal blood clots. No, wait, don't think about death. Stop thinking about death.
Knowing that it's pointless now, Damian sighs around the fork in his mouth. At least the waffles are exquisite. Someone had bought Jason a Death Star waffle maker years back he used to this day—which Damian said was childish, why should food be dressed up and plated as a weapon of war—even if he was privately a little fond of his star destroyer waffles. He watches his other siblings find their way to the kitchen table and thinks about how each and every person he loves could have a brain aneurysm during breakfast and die in their non-squeaky chairs.
Wait. What if having that thought made it more likely to happen? The Brain Aneurysm Foundation stated that one in fifty people had in the United States had an unruptured brain aneurysm. Someone he knew had one. And one ruptured in the US every eighteen or so minutes. He's horrible. Breakfast would take eighteen minutes with everyone going for seconds. Damian knows this because he has spent a normal amount of time researching brain aneurysm first signs after finding out about them. God. His family could die right now. They could keel over in their chairs right now and die in front of him and Damian would be responsible. He's horrible. He thinks it over as he wipes his mouth with a napkin once, twice, three times—can he be held criminally responsible for that? Oh, he so would. He'd get sent to jail and locked away forever because he's horrible.
As Damian goes for another bite of Imperial Star Destroyer waffle, he is acutely aware that all the time spent panicking in his head about his family members' imminent deaths has equated to less than one minute of real world time. Only about eighteen something of those left until breakfast was over. At least the waffles are really good.
The real world comes back as a brutal punch to the face as Richard is lifted out of his seat.
He killed Richard.
Damian jumps up from his seat and follows Father to the medicine cabinet to catch himself up—see how he can help, what he can do, if Richard is dead. If he's dead and gone. If he's horrible.
"What is wrong with Richard?"
"Remember how Dick was hurt when he was a kid?"
As if he could think about anything else right now. He was very aware of how that injury could kill Richard at any moment. That he might have just done it. He's horrible. Damian bit his tongue as Father explained the logistics of the brain injury and migraines and promising it'll all be okay tomorrow before Cass stole him away to help clean breakfast up with Alfred. Damian had asked him to cover the dish-washing duties (as to not accidentally poison anyone by using too much dish soap) and instead is helping Cass carry the plates to their butler. He's horrible.
"I promise he's okay. Dick just wakes up with headaches sometimes." She tries to reassure him. "It's scary, but they're not dangerous."
"Is there anything else we can do? Father has been in there for a long time. Maybe Richard is uncomfortable with the current temperature. We could cool or heat the house. We could also get more medicine ready for him."
Alfred speaks to them without taking his eyes off the dishes. "Master Damian, I assure you. There is nothing we can do right now other than to let Dick's migraine run his course and give him space to recover in silence. If he needs anything, Master Bruce will handle it or ask us for assistance." Damian watches him apply the soap to each cup with care, not because he believes Alfred will do it wrong, because it's better if he does. It makes things safer and—oh God he hadn't pushed his chair in this morning.
He hadn't pushed the chair in, he had thought about brain aneurysms, and now Richard was curled up in a dark room somewhere after being carried out of the dining room, and it was his fault.
This was all Damian's fault.
Brush his teeth. He could brush his teeth. It wouldn't save this. Not even a little bit. But it's a rule and bad things happen when he doesn't follow the rules. It's why bad things happened this morning. He's so screwed. But it'll only get worse if he doesn't brush his teeth. The rules are there for a reason. Bad things happen when he doesn't follow the rules. Compulsions—they're just obsessions and compulsions, and doing them is like scratching a mosquito bite. They don't affect the world around him. They only make his own world a living nightmare.
…even still, it's not a risk he feels comfortable taking. Not right now.
It's all the rationale Damian needs to push his way through his family (who have miraculously not died yet, which makes them all the more likely to die now,) and out of the kitchen upstairs to the bathroom where he immediately locks the door for privacy. Nobody else can see Damian—the al Ghul heir—like this. Not now when Richard's life is on the line, and not ever. He faces his teary reflection in the mirror with a huff. Checks if the door is actually locked. Jiggles on it just to be sure. You never know. The lock could always fail or have been replaced overnight. Maybe it never locked at all, and Damian had just made that detail up in his head.
He then remembers that with the door locked, he could have a stroke or brain aneurysm or heart attack or any other kind of fatal medical emergency in here and no one would be able to get to him in time. If he doesn't lock the door, someone would barge in and see all the big emotions he failed to keep in line. If he does lock the door, he would die of a heart attack alone in here.
(After making sure he is indeed still alone in the bathroom and won't receive a lecture from anyone for it, Damian lets a soft swear fall from his lips.
"Fuck.")
He unlocks the door and glares the knob before standing back in front of the mirror while pointedly avoiding looking at his red cheeks and falling tears he's unable to blink through. Damian takes his toothbrush (kept away from the others to stay clean) and toothpaste (made with zero toxic ingredients, he's checked) out, turns the warm water on, and runs the bristles under the tap. He has to wet the toothbrush before putting toothpaste on, otherwise, all the toothpaste is spoiled. He does not whimper in anticipation of the seemingly impossible task before him as he retrieves the bathroom timer with his free hand.
One hundred and eighty two seconds was easily, cleanly divisible by twenty six teeth into wonderful sevens. Seven was not only a Harshad number and double Mersenne prime, but it was also the only prime number preceding a cube. Seven represents divinity, luck, and completion, as well as the number working memory is theorized to be. Seven is a beautiful, safe number.
Seven point twenty eight is none of these things. Seven point twenty eight is an ugly number. But it's the only solution when dividing one hundred and eighty two seconds by a miserable twenty five teeth. Damian could count seven seconds in his head unlike most people his age, but seven point two eight is beyond even him. Checking that the door is still closed, he allows himself to whimper before finding the stopwatch button on the timer.
Bad things happen if he doesn't follow the rules.
(And speaking of numbers, Damian is pretty sure he's at a ten right now, but what if he's not? What if he's actually at a nine or an eight and actually there's something way, way worse than this that other people go through, and he's an insensitive careless idiot for saying he's a ten? So he's at an eight. A shame that this doesn't factor into twenty-five or twenty-six and it doesn't mean anything, it doesn't help him, it's just more information he has to hold onto until he can put it together in the right order.)
From the bottom left to the bottom right, then the top left to top right, Damian begins brushing each individual tooth for seven point twenty eight seconds. He's developed a routine. He can focus on routines. They quiet the screaming in his head, just for a moment.
With the timer held in his left hand and the toothbrush in his right, Damian presses the start button and begins rocking the toothbrush back and forth on the current tooth as he counts. For the molars and premolars—and there are far too few of these in his opinion—it is an easy five second scrub of the top and into the crevice followed by two point twenty eight seconds of around the sides. He stops and resets the timer when it hits as close to two point twenty eight (usually ranging around two point eighteen and two point thirty six) as he can manage.
The canines and incisors are much more annoying, having a prominent front and back to worry about. One, two. He switches to the back around two and a half, keeps it there til five. At six he goes over the top of the tooth quickly. The last one point twenty eight seconds are used for a quick brush-up of the whole surface area.
It's the only thing that quiets the screaming. It's also the reason the screaming keeps getting louder.
Damian has to count the seconds in his head to get an accurate measure of when to switch the toothbrush around. Looking at the timer that often cuts into his time. But he also has to keep one eye on the timer, because he only has seven point two eight seconds and he needs to be ready for the cutoff halfway into seven. It's so easy to lapse into eight. He can't be careless enough to lapse into eight. Damian also can't pause between teeth to catch his breath. He only gets time to reset the timer. He has to keep moving. One hundred and eighty two seconds is a very strict deadline. At the same time, he has to keep track of which tooth he's on as he moves left to right. He can't screw it up and lose his place. There's no time to redo a tooth, that defeats the entire point, and he certainly can't skip one. That's how people develop gum disease. Damian doesn't want gum disease. He can't have a gum disease, because then it'll get diseased, and he might accidentally kill Tim or Jason or Richard with it. Horrible. Or anyone else—God, how could he forget Cass? Bruce? Alfred? Does he not care about them dying? Does he care about anyone at all? He's horrible. He's horrible. He has to keep track of which tooth he's on. They could die. Richard almost did this morning. He's horrible. He's horrible. His heart gives out and the world collapses twenty five times over as he brushes each tooth for seven point twenty eight seconds. He never stops it at exactly the right time. Not even once. It's always a few hundredths off. Horrible. And he knows by now he's probably screwed it up. Lost his place. Developed gum disease. Horrible. Horrible, horrible, "Horrible," Grandfather's cane cracks against his back, and he feels something inside buckle under the force, "Horrible, horrible boy."
He is acutely aware that all the time spent panicking in his head about his family members' imminent deaths has equated to one hundred and eighty two seconds, or just over three minutes, of real world time.
Turning the tap back on, Damian cleans up the mess. He starts with the saliva he's spit into the sink. A stray toothpaste glob caught on the porcelain. Calms his shaky breaths. Feels himself spilling outwards. Runs the bristles back under the water to clean them. Puts his toothbrush away. Dries his tears. Cleans up the mess. He has to clean up the mess before it spills. Before he does something horrible he can't take back, because he's careless and heartless and so, so horrible. Damian al Ghul is a horrible boy.
But he has cleaned the mess, at least.
(Not that it helps. If anything, it only seems to make the screaming louder. Incessant, perpetual, relentless, a million ways to say never ever ending screaming. Nothing helps, nothing has ever helped and really, none of it ever will because he is every bit the selfish careless impolite needy horrible boy his thoughts paint him as, in fact, they're quite rational, and the only reason Damian is upset because he knows somewhere deep down that they're right, and the only thing keeping him in check from becoming the horrible boy he sees in the mirror is having these kinds of thoughts, accurate identifications, and he has to go outside and keep fooling the Waynes that he is good he can be good please let him be good, please let him try to be good, even though he is awful for pretending to be and lying to everyone about it, and even though all of the Waynes have already seen through his pathetically crafted facade, and they will die due to Damian's carelessness and they will die so, so disappointed that they met him at all, regretful that they had ever let this horrible boy pretend he was one of them.
Damian doesn't know when he stopped crying. He does know, though, the sound of footsteps outside the bathroom. He knows it intimately, the slow, uneven rhythm of steps leading up to his bedroom door. Weight shifted to the left, the bottom of the cane scraping against hardwood floor accompanied by an old crick in the lagging right knee. The unlocked doorknob slowly turns before falling open as if it is the easiest thing in the world. It is so easy to hurt Damian.
"Horrible, horrible boy.")
"Five minutes, please," Damian blurts through the door before whoever is on the other side can speak.
Jason's hesitancy carries through the door. "You've been forever. I have to brush my teeth too, you know."
Of course. He digs his knuckles into his face and eyes, trying to rub away whatever evidence is left. It's not nearly enough. Damian wants more than anything to hide in here forever. Maybe he'll get lucky and a burrowing hole will open in the tile. He can stay there for a little while until he gets better, and then it'll be off to the next foxhole. But Damian has only ever had one good thing happen to him, and he had to lie and cheat his way into it, so he accepts reality for what it is and opens the door.
"Please brush your teeth properly. Plaque buildup can lead to gum disease and other infections."
"Okay, Dad. I'll even floss, just for you." Jason's laugh dies in his throat as he makes eye contact with Damian, switching his tone in an instant, "Hey, are—is this about—"
"It's fine."
"You don't have to be. It's scary. Every time, even for me." It's the big brother voice, now.
Dick's name hangs in the air between them, unspoken. To name it would be too obvious.
"It's nothing to be scared of. We all know what it is, why it happens, and how it ends."
"Yeah. But it's still shit scary."
For that, Damian has no response.
"You can talk to me. I know you have your therapist, and you're working with her. But you can talk to me too."
"Please brush your teeth first," Damian forces himself to say, because he needs Jason to brush his teeth and avoid gum disease and because if they talk about this before he brushes his teeth Damian will accidentally let it slip that he's the one who almost killed Dick.
Jason raises an eyebrow before, mercifully, obliging. Damian watches as Jason puts too much toothpaste on his brush before wetting them both together and brushing in seemingly random circles. At first, Damian was just watching to—well, it's just better if he watches, things go wrong if he doesn't watch—but the point is that Damian is now unable to look away from Jason's attempt at brushing his teeth. It's like being unable to tear your eyes away from a car crash. He doesn't even use the timer. Damian has to count the seconds for him, gently kicking his shin when Jason tries to stop seventy-six seconds in, but lets it slide when Jason stops at a hundred and twenty three. It's technically over two minutes.
Jason spits into the sink and rinses the brush, placing it back in it's little home. "Do I actually have to floss?"
"No. You should, though."
"Good, because I wasn't going to."
"Of course not."
The silence hasn't had time to settle before Damian's throat begins swelling. Closing up. Choking. Tell him what you did. Tell him what you did. He hadn't noticed the screaming had stopped—it finally stopped—until it once again erupted into chorus between his eyes, discordant and shrill, tell him what you did tell him what you did tell him what you did tell him what you did tell him what you did tell him tell him tell him.
It continues to be uniquely completely bearable because he had lived with it forever and completely unbearable because it never ever stopped all at the same time.
Jason knows. Damian is certain of this. He's been waiting for Damian to confess. None of this—in his head, whatever's wrong with him—was bearable. It never had been. It never will be. None of this will ever get better and he's going to die like this. He killed Richard and now he's going to die like this. His throat lets out a pitiful cough, a wheeze for breath around the words 'I'm so sorry'.
"Babies don't really have kneecaps," Jason loudly announces.
"I—huh?"
"It's true. I'll prove it."
"No, I wasn't,"
Jason pulls his phone out of his pocket and types for a few seconds before shoving the screen into Damian's face before it's done loading an article about newborns' kneecaps. He skims the overview. Apparently babies are born with kneecaps, but they're made of cartilage instead of bone like they are in adults.
"I wasn't doubting you," Damian crosses his arms as he finishes his earlier thought, "I was wondering why on Earth you thought that was an appropriate thing to say to me."
"Someone once told me that saying something really weird can snap someone out of a spiral. And that was the weirdest thing I could think of." Jason takes back his phone, putting it away.
"…It was an exceptionally weird thing to say to someone, yes."
"Did it, uh, help, though?"
Damian notices, then, that he's not being drowned anymore. "Amazingly? Yes." His head is above the surface and it's almost something quiet.
"Great. Do you want popcorn? Cass and I are going to grab some and then put on the weirdest YouTube scandal video essays we can find." Jason takes his phone back out and taps the screen few times.
"Tch. No, we just had breakfast and brushed our teeth."
Jason taps twice more before putting the phone away. "Too bad, Squirt. I just bolused for it, so we're getting popcorn now." He puts a hand on Damian's shoulder and steers him out of the bathroom and towards the game room.
"Why can't we ever watch normal things? Documentaries? Movies?"
"Because how else would you learn about YouTuber tax fraud?" Cass answers from where she's sat in front of the TV.
"It's better for you than regular television," Jason adds before leaving to put the popcorn on.
Damian rolls his eyes and huffs as he curls up in the corner of the couch, sandwiching himself between the cushions and underneath a blanket. Jason would probably pull it over his eyes when he came back into the room and then he and Cass would pretend it never happened. It was their favorite bit, a healthy dose of gaslighting. (Damian couldn't understand how any amount of gaslighting was healthy, even if these two found it funny.)
Later today, he'll probably have to text his therapist or at least journal about what happened. Keeping track of his compulsions and anxiety levels and all (which is currently at an acceptable three. It's still quiet, mercifully). But that's later, and for now, all he needs to focus on is watching Cass try to skip the two back-to-back YouTube ads before the video and waiting for Jason to come back and try to pull the blanket over him. For now, all he needs to do is exist. Damian lets himself breathe and doesn't fight the smile creeping up on his face.
(That smile quickly fades when Jason flips the blanket up over his eyes.)